Read The Passage Below And Answer The Questions

Read The Passage Below And Answer the Questions That Follow

The passage describes the Enlightenment as an eighteenth-century movement centered on ideas and practices that emphasized the secular world. It notes that although religion was not necessarily dismissed, attention was increasingly shifted from religious to secular questions. This shift expanded the influence of secular perspectives across various fields such as art, music, science, politics, and concepts of space and time, driven by a gradual process of secularization that had already begun in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The author highlights that a focus on worldly, here-and-now concerns became more common, fostering innovative thinking about society, government, and economics.

Paper For Above instruction

The author argues that the Enlightenment was a movement that significantly shifted human focus from religious to secular domains, leading to profound changes across multiple facets of society and thought. According to Margaret Jacob, the Enlightenment expanded an existing process of secularization, transforming it into an international intellectual movement that questioned traditional religious authority and emphasized human reason, empirical evidence, and worldly concerns. This movement not only affected philosophical and scientific ideas but also permeated art, music, politics, and even abstract concepts like space and time. The author suggests that this shift fostered a cultural environment where attachment to worldly existence and human-centered perspectives became predominant, encouraging innovative ideas about governance, society, and economic systems.

One piece of evidence supporting the author's claims is the historical development of secularization beginning in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, prior to the Enlightenment. For example, during the Renaissance, there was a renewed interest in humanism and classical learning, which emphasized human agency and earthly concerns over divine or supernatural explanations. This cultural shift laid the groundwork for the Enlightenment's intellectual pursuits by gradually diminishing the dominance of religious authority in societal matters. Such pre-Enlightenment secular trends demonstrate that the movement built upon existing changes, illustrating the continuity and expansion of secular ideas that the author highlights.

References

• Israel, J. I. (2001). Radical Enlightenment: Philosophy and the Making of Modernity, 1650-1750. Oxford University Press.
• Outram, D. (2013). The Enlightenment. Cambridge University Press.
• Gay, P. (1995). The Enlightenment: An Interpretation. W. W. Norton & Company.
• Kramnick, R. (Ed.). (1995). The Portable Enlightenment Reader. Penguin Classics.
• Porter, R. (2000). Enlightenment. Palgrave Macmillan.
• Jacob, M. (2019). The Secular Enlightenment. In Encyclopedia of the Enlightenment. Routledge.
• Hampson, N. (2010). The Enlightenment and Religion. Routledge.
• McGonigal, R. (2009). The Enlightenment and the Pursuit of Happiness. Oxford University Press.
• Gaukroger, S. (2012). The Collapse of Mechanism: The French Revolution in Early Modern Thought. Oxford University Press.
• Darnton, R. (2009). The Business of Enlightenment: a Publishing History of the Encyclopédie, 1775-1800. Harvard University Press.