The Enlightenment Research Paper

The second half of the eighteenth century marked the height of the period of intellectual curiosity and simulation known as the Enlightenment. This intellectual movement, which spread throughout Europe, encouraged people to question everything they once thought to be true, from the laws of science to methods of government. Enlightenment philosophers and writers pushed for reforms, and, because of this new concept of debating such a wide variety of once widely held truths, people from all over Europe began to express their ideas and gain a following of like-minded intellectuals and embracers of logic. Several different ideologies emerged during and after the Enlightenment, each of them proposing different views on the vitally important topics
565). One of the central ideas of this time period was the need for “natural rights” for humans, which were assured by “natural laws.” It was evident to Enlightenment philosophers that the basic building blocks of any society, including human nature and the purpose of the state, had to be addressed in order for something else to be developed. For this reason, almost all new thinkers developed their own theories on the basic fundamental concepts that were seen as the foundation on which a society of people is built. The advocates for each of these ideologies returned to the foundation of society because this is what everything seemed to stem from. Industrial capitalism and Marxian socialism are two drastically different ideologies that describe and explain the fundamental building blocks of society. They illustrate the array of interpretations that thinkers of the time came up with during this period of free
Marx believed that the poor were working their fingers to the bone to create value for society, while the rich simply siphoned off a portion of that value, which had been created by the poor. The rich do this without putting any effort into creating this value or their own value. In order for society’s productivity to be maximized, rich people’s syphoning off of a share of production must be done away with. Instead, the means of production (factories, stores, natural resources, etc.)—which rich people owned and used in order to siphon off poor people’s productivity—ought to be owned by the people themselves as a collective group. This prevents the rich from using their ownership position to syphon off a portion of society’s productione. Now, the people would continue to do all the producing, but the results of production would benefit only the people. In other words, each member of society must do what he or she can to produce the good and services society