Enlightenment And The Industrial Revolution Essay

The Enlightenment and the Industrial Revolution are closely linked through the standard idea that freedom and autonomy of the human being is what would bring advancement and progress. The age of Enlightenment was characterized by the belief in both human advancement and nature. The human advancement was believed to be achieved through education. The human being was seen as an integral part of nature. Nature, therefore, was acknowledged to be governed by a complex system of interactive laws, as was the human being. As rational entities, human beings, if allowed the freedom to exercise reason, were believed to be righteous, good, and be inclined to help others. This natural behavior is believed to be exhibited only if human beings were free of
Kant understood that abstract reasoning was an acceptable basis to derive moral judgment and religious interpretation.
Immanuel Kant’s philosophy dominated the thought of the nineteenth century. He was a German philosopher that lived from 1724 to 1804 and should be understood within his cultural setting and timeframe as a representative of the Enlightenment period. Kant relies on the exercise of reason as the lynchpin to philosophy and places human autonomy as the centerpiece of it. By definition, autonomy means to give the law to oneself. For Kant, human beings have one universal, fundamental principle of morality. He describes human beings to construct the principles of morality or the law to oneself to be achieved through reason. Kant believed that human beings are the ones that give the moral law to themselves. Furthermore, Kant believed in the universality of this moral law for he transcends cultural, gender, generational, racial and socioeconomic lines. Kant presupposes that human beings are free to exercise moral appraisal and to choose their actions. He discusses a person’s decision to commit