Recently in class, we have been learning about and discussing influential Enlightenment philosophers including Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, Baron de Montesquieu, and Jean- Jacques Rousseau. We then looked at how their philosophies and written works influenced the American Revolution, namely Locke’s words that are present in the Declaration of Independence.

One of the main topics we looked at in class was whether the Declaration of Independence was radical or conservative in terms of its motives. We saw arguments for both perspectives, and I noticed that both arguments only looked at a specific part of the document. The argument for radical motives focuses on the opening of the Declaration of Independence and the Lockean principles that were relatively new and had yet to be instituted in government. The argument for conservative motives points to the list of grievances where numerous offenses by the king of England are listed, showing that the colonists wanted to regain their rights from the English monarchy. Both of the arguments have strong evidence to support them, but there does not seem to be one argument that fits the whole document perfectly. I could see both perspectives, and we noted that there were both radical and conservative parts to the Declaration of Independence.

That caused me to think about motives versus effects for a bit. If the Declaration of Independence was written with conservative motives, but it caused new ideas to be implemented, then it could easily be considered radical because of the new society it helped to form. The opposite could also be true if there were radical motives that caused conservative effects in the real world. This shows that the motives as well as the actual events that occurred from the Declaration of Independence can both be interpreted one way or another. Just from the week or so we spent learning about this in class, I can see why it is a debated topic among historians. Why do historians want to find out the motives for writing the Declaration of Independence? How would discovering those motives benefit the United States in the present day? Did the people who wrote the Declaration of Independence expect their work to be analyzed and discussed in such detail?

Something else that came to mind was about how during the time when documents from the Enlightenment were circulating, people read essays for pleasure reading. Without an education, the essays were likely extremely difficult to read and understand. When thinking about the pamphlet “Common Sense” by Thomas Paine, this may be one of the main reasons why it is written in common language. If new ideas are truly going to cause change in a society, the presented ideas need to be understood by more than just the educated people in that society. The whole society needs to be more or less on the same page, and using language that takes this into account may result in more widely accepted ideas and more efficient spreading of ideas among all members of the society.

For the second semester, our class started our Revolutions Unit. I was expecting to start right away with revolutions of countries, but that was not the case. We started the unit learning about the Renaissance, Protestant Reformation, Scientific Revolution, and Enlightenment. I thought about why the unit starts this way, and I noticed a pattern and came to a realization.

In studying the Renaissance, which occurred from about the 1400s to the 1600s, we learned about new views of human life as shown in art and literature. We looked at the School of Athens painting and noted qualities in the artwork that were specific to the Renaissance. We learned about Renaissance people like Leon Alberti and Leonardo DaVinci who showed society’s message that people should strive to be excellent in many areas and subject matters. Also with the Renaissance, we looked at humanism, the belief that humans are God’s most wonderful creations. The writing of Mirandola clearly shows this way of thinking and goes on to say that humans are above the angels. These ideas were new at the time and changed the way people thought about human life and humanity’s place.

Along with the Renaissance is the Protestant Reformation of the early 1500s. Martin Luther’s 95 Theses and the Diet of Worms showed a shift in belief within the Catholic Church and led to the formation of Protestantism. People were beginning to move away from recognizing the pope as the authority of the Church and turned to the Bible as the authority of the Church. People were also starting to speak up against corruption in the Church regarding the pope and indulgences.

The Scientific Revolution, lasting approximately from the 1500s to the 1700s, brought about significant changes in the way people understood the world. A major change in understanding is the heliocentric theory. This is the concept that the sun is in the center of the solar system and contrasts with the geocentric theory in which the earth is the center of the solar system. The law of gravity as discovered by Isaac Newton gave a scientific perspective on matter in the Universe. Francis Bacon and Rene Descartes helped to develop the scientific method. The combined methods Bacon and Descartes stressed the importance of experimentation to gain knowledge in addition to implementing logical reasoning and mathematics.

The Enlightenment, lasting from the late 1600s to the early 1800s, saw the publication of John Locke’s “Essay Concerning Human Understanding,” a philosophical work. This gave rise to the idea that human nature could be changed and knowledge is acquired through experience. People also started to trust and base decisions on their own reasoning instead of getting all of their information from church. People felt like they were gaining an ever-increasing understanding of the world and felt emboldened.

After thinking about all four of these time periods separately, I thought about how they overlap both with regards to time and concepts. The Renaissance covered change in social standards and expectations, and the Protestant Reformation dealt with religion. The Scientific Revolution involved new scientific knowledge and logic, and the Enlightenment seems to have combined all three. There was a wave of new thought entering the human experience all at the same time in many different aspects of life. Combining all of these things, I became aware that the beginning of the Revolutions Unit was all about changes in people’s views of themselves and the world. Now I see why these lessons precede the revolutions of countries. The reason is that physical revolutions of countries often begin with and stem from revolutions of human thought.