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What was the Radical Enlightenment?

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What was the Radical Enlightenment?
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The radical enlightenment occurred after 1650 throughout most of Europe and later spread across the world. During this time, philosophical thinkers, such as Spinoza and Locke, spread the ideals of losing connection to all religious ties and simply use human reasoning for everything. This led to a pretty much full-scale attack on secularization, both figuratively and occasionally literally. In addition to secularization, the Radical Enlightenment brought up the core values of freedom of lifestyle, equal rights for sexes, democracy, and freedom of an individual’s opinion. In Israel’s terms he claims that it was a “drama which profoundly involved the common people, even those who were unschooled and illiterate. This is because the Radical enlightenment directly affected the elite classes of society, those of which would continue to teach and influence all those underneath them and indirectly instill the thoughts and values of the Radical Enlightenment upon them.

2. The Radical Enlightenment was all about cutting all ties to the church and religion and instead relying solely upon human thought and reasoning to take over what was once controlled by the church. Thinkers such as Spinoza and Hobbs supported secularization and rationalism, leading to the biggest changes in European history. The Counter-Enlightenment took the complete opposite stance and occurred after the Radical Enlightenment and occurred, as many think, due to the undermining of traditional values during the French Revolution. This Counter-Enlightenment took the opposite stance as the Radical Enlightenment and believed that society should return back to its core traditions of faith over everything and decry the new mechanical sciences and critical Bible studies. A main advocate of this theology was Cardinal Bellarming. The Moderate Enlightenment occurred multiple times throughout history, including the times of philosophers such as Plato and Socrates and also that of Locke and Leibniz. These

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