Rousseau's Contribution To The Age Of Enlightenment

The Age of Enlightenment is an era of realization that lasted from the 1620s to the 1780s. It occurred in Western Europe and it was during this moment in time that intellectuals began to inspect the principles in which the monarchies governed by. The standards that they enforced during this time held everything together from the government to religion. As the movement expanded more and more people began to think for themselves and the world as they were taught it began to be under examination and scrutiny. There wasn’t just one single epiphany movement in unison, but instead, there were a plethora including the French Enlightenment, and the English, or American Enlightenment. The scholarly thinkers of this time had very different approaches …show more content…
As a response to the viewpoints of Voltaire, Jean-Jacques Rousseau wrote The Social Contract. His writing was a piece of work advocating a custom government centered on small, direct democracy that directly reflects the will of the population (The Enlightenment n.d.).Far along in his career he wrote Confessions, which was a deeply personal reflection on his life. His profound perspectives that were presented contributed to a romantic era that emphasized art and literary based upon on emotion and instead of reason called romanticism.
Another result from Enlightenment ideals is skepticism. To be skeptic during this time was to question whether or not humankind is really perfected through the lenses of reason and deny the ability of rational thought to reveal the truth. (Staff 2009) Many believed what the church taught about the world and that no other truths actually existed. David Hume was a thinker who sought out to change the nature of European thinking. He took the scientific method, added epistemology from Locke’s work and described how the mind worked. He then concluded that no theory of reality is possible; there can be no knowledge of anything without