How Did The Enlightenment Contribute To The French Revolution

Immanuel Kant said the Enlightenment is described as "a man's release from his self-incurred tutelage. Tulage s man's inability to make use of his understanding without direction from another." The Enlightenment was a movement of intellectual thinkers who believed that science could clarify everything in society and nature. Enlightenment thinkers during this period began to seek rational thoughts to figure out and understand nature and also to guide the human existence. The Enlightenment glorified the ability of reason and was also an era of thoughts and intellectual accomplishments. A new social class known as the Philosophes emerged, they encouraged the French population to question their society. These ideas impacted the social, economical, political, and scientific aspects of society and were the cause of the French Revolution. The new proposition of government and society based upon the Enlightenment ideals of democracy, citizenship, and human rights set ahead by the philosophers such as John Locke, Montesquieu, Rousseau, and Voltaire spread throughout France. It changed how people viewed the government and its policies. As a result the French Revolution came to play from 1789-1799. It started when the working classes known as
Throughout the period of this time, different governments were initiated, but all shared the same beliefs which was liberty and equality. Those ideas were taken from the Enlightenment Philosophes and used to make a better system of government. The First Republic led to the Reign of Terror and the government contained ideals of Enlightenment that was known as democracy, citizenship, and individualism that gave the common people freedom to express their thoughts. This inspired the Enlightenment thinkers to use and create powerful reason, which led to an overall higher standard of living with greater freedoms for the French