Enlightenment and traditionalist

Jennifer A. Herrera

HIS 112  OM2

Mrs. Randee B. Goodstadt

Final Exam Essay #2

The age of Enlightenment and Traditionalists

In the eighteenth century people’s lives were determined by the church. Until the era of the Enlightenment began when “intellectuals sought to use observation, reason, and logic to discover and explain the natural laws that governed human behavior and institutions.” These Enlightened thinkers wished to promote progress and orderly change in their societies. They sought to reform various institutions but these changes can mostly be felt in the areas of politics, government and even economics. On the other Traditionalists neither “liked nor agreed with the optimistic mainstream of Enlightenment thought” and “longed for the rapidly disappearing social order of “olden times.” In particular, both the Catholic and Protestant church were deeply rooted in the old set ways of the aristocrats that seemingly enough held most if not all of the power and say at the time. However different these two takes on how the people should be governed may be, they have both managed to drip into the still waters of society and ripple through the centuries.

                Most noticeably, the ideals of the era of the Enlightenment greatly influenced the American Revolution as well as the bloody French Revolution of the eighteenth century. John Locke and Jean-Jacques Rousseau who were both social contractarians spread the notion that the government was responsible to the people. Before the French Revolution, the Americans relied heavily upon the works of these two enlightened thinkers. John Locke argued in his Two Treatises on Government that all people are born as equals and thus “have the same natural rights to life, liberty and property.” In the American Declaration of Independence John Locke’s argument was focused on life liberty and the pursuit of happiness instead of property. Jean-Jacques Rousseau in his Social Contract argued that government’s role was to follow through on what the majority of the people wanted and their genuine needs as in the American Constitution declares “We the People.” During the French Revolution in which the old regime was thrown out in place of a new order of republics and democracy’s.  Traditionalist or Conservative Edmund Burke believed that “tradition and stability were the highest values and were represented by church and state.” His work Reflections on the Revolution in France helped shape what is considered modern day Conservatism in which significant change is “inevitable” but whose aim is to “promote respect for traditional religion and government.”

        Following the wake of the Enlightenment movement, in the nineteenth century the Industrial Revolution hit its peak. The early views of the enlightened thought which brought about the French Revolution and overthrew the old system of feudalism had in turn set the stage for a new way of living. The innovation and thought that had brought about such changes also led to the development of new system of economics. Prior to the Enlightenment, the system in place had been that of Mercantilism in which the governments had little if any contact with the “outside world” and limited their exchange and sale of goods within their colonies. The Physiocrats, which included French economists François Quesnay and Anne-Robert Turgot “advocated limiting government’s interference in the economy by reducing land taxes and eliminating some regulations.” Laissez-faire, as this policy came to be known gave way to Laissez-faire capitalism in which free trade was encouraged. Adam Smith a Scottish economist made mention of the financial increase both manufacturing and commerce could produce to the individual and the country. As big factory owners got more money with the cheap labor producing their goods, conservatism or traditionalists who were the rich, again wanted to keep the order of things as much as the Catholic Church eagerly sought to keep their grip on the European governments and in the Congress of Vienna they inevitably redistributed lands and scorned Germany and gave rise to their nationalism.

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