Katelynn

Voltaire



By: Katelyn Stephens

Voltaire was one of the famous philosophers of the Enlightenment era. He focused on tolerance, reason, freedom of religion and speech. He also believed in the idea of deism which is a view of God as removed from the actions of humans [abc-clio]. Along with John Locke and Sir Isaac Newton he believed along the same lines as them about how the church made up the rules but the had different ideas then what the church said. Voltaire has gotten in trouble with the church and government because of how he wanted things to change and where the church did not control everything. During this time he wrote several plays that deals with some of the issues he was dealing with because of the struggle against the church. Later on he died on March 30, 1778 at eighty but he his body was reburied at the pantheon after the American Revolution. Their ideas lived on from there and from that our whole government changed because of these ideas.

Voltaire. __World History: The Modern Era__. 2009. ABC-CLIO. 6 Aug 2009 by Elisabeth Mc Caffery

Descartes

By: Katelyn Stephens

Descartes was one of the modernist leaders that was paving a way into new thinking and to get away from the church thinking and how they controlled everything. He founded the foundation for modern science and he thought that by separating the human mind from mechanical actions of the human body but from all the natural world [abc-clio 1]. This went along with how he saw humans were not perfect and how if God was perfect then he would not try to trick humans or try to take away the truths that were self evident. He just thought that we lacked several traits that was needed for just understanding. Two categories he placed how we are for example the human mind was in the first and everything else in the world. That meant that if we were to understand how everything worked we would have get understanding. He later wrote some philosophy concerning cosmology called principles of cosmology. He was later invited to see the queen that wanted to hear his ideas along with other philosophers but because of the weather he got pneumonia and never fully recovered from it which caused him to die on February 11, 1650. Today however his ideas are still present and are still thought of because of his ideas and that caused some enlightenment that our society has now.

Rene Descartes.__World History: The Modern Era. 2009.ABC-CLIO. 6 Aug 2009  by Elisabeth Caffery