Age Of Enlightenment Research Paper

The Age of Enlightenment was a time where major breakthroughs in the Scientific Revolution had led to a more intellectual endeavor on a public scale in society where, most notably in Western Europe, many individuals are in the pursuit of new knowledge obtained by the use of deductive reasoning as well as new scientific discoveries. A group of these free thinking intellectuals in France were titled the philosphes, people who applied reason to the study of areas of learning such as science, politics, religion, and social issues. An individual who had struck out from most of the philosophes was a French playwright that went by the pen name of Voltaire. He was most famous for his satirical work in Candide where he had taken his chance to provide his social commentary and simultaneously to …show more content…
Candide was stricken with curiosity and so had asked several questions about religious life in Eldorado and had asked to see some of their priests. The inhabitant, an old man, explained that the residents were all priests and that it was not necessary to have special people to interfere with their worship of God. Candide then asks in a sarcastic undertone, “ Do you mean to say you have no monks teaching and disputing, governing and intriguing, and having people burned if they don’t subscribe to their opinions?” (80). To which the old man stated it would simply be a stupid decision. Voltaire used this example as a way to express that there are other religions that can be better than the traditional religions being practiced. He expressed that a clergy would be unnecessary and possibly harmful. It could have been taken as a hint that a more simple religion might just be beneficial for other Europeans. This discovery gave Candide a different approach to thinking and made him speculate and ponder about his own personal