The Enlightenment Essay

The Enlightenment is a unique time in European history characterized by revolutions in science, philosophy, society, and politics. These revolutions put Europe in a transition from the medieval world-view to the modern western world. The traditional hierarchical political and social orders from the French monarchy and Catholic Church were destroyed and replaced by a political and social order from the Enlightenment ideals of freedom and equality(Bristow, 1). Many historians, such as Henry Steele Commager, Peter Gay, have studied the Enlightenment over the years and created their own views and opinions.
Henry Steele Commager was a fan of the Enlightenment and he was interested in the changes it brought to the Western world. In 1977, Henry Steele Commager wrote a book called The Empire of Reason: How Europe Imagined and America Realized the Enlightenment. Through this book he expressed, like many other historians, that he was in agreement with the ideals of the Enlightenment and that it progressed human advancement. However, Commager did have a view of the Enlightenment a little different than most historians. He believed that “the Old World imagined, invented, and formulated the Enlightenment, but the New World-certainly the Anglo-American part of it-realized it and fulfilled it.”
Most historians accredit the Enlightenment to the Enlightened thinkers like Rousseau, Diderot, Kant, Voltaire, and Locke. All of these men are, of course, European men who conducted the ideas, words, and writings of the Enlightenment. Therefore, the credit for the Enlightenment is given only to the Europe. Commager did not agree with this thought of most historians. He believed that the Europeans designed the new modern society but the Americans really c...

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...that the Americans did in fact influence the Enlightenment movement because the Enlightenment ideas and beliefs were tried out for real in the government of the United States. Commager’s view is so unique because most historians just see this as a result of the Old Worlds actions. They still believe that the main credit should go to the Old World for the men that created the Enlightened ways.
Within cultural history, historians also studied regionalism to analyze what occurred within a society as a result of the Enlightenment. Dena Goodman illustrated the regionalism from the Enlightenment in her Republic of Letters. She wrote, “the practices of intellectual sociability and discourse which defined the Enlightenment Republic of Letters were grounded in cultural and epistemological assumptions shared by those who considered themselves to be citizens of that republic.”