THE AGE OF REASON

OUTLINE

1. INTRODUCTION.
   During the eighteenth century, a high optimism about mankind and about what his reason could accomplish swept over Europe, England and America. In Germany it was called Aufklarung, The Enlighment, and in France the Age of Reason. The term has been used to characterize 18th century curlture in England, France, and Germany. It was given this name as the result of the system of mechanics that was discovered by Isaac Newton (1642-1727) at end of previous century. By the middle of the eighteenth century the Newtonian system was widely accepted, not only in England, but also in Europe, particularly in France. In his Principia (1687) Newton set forth, not only a system of terrestrial mechanics, but also of celestial mechanics; the solar system is governed by the same laws of mechanics as are the bodies on earth. Newton's work was not only the end of geocentric view of Ptolemy, but of Aristotelian view of physical reality as two separate realms, the terrestrial and the celestial, each with their own mechanics. It was the beginning of a new view of the universe that established, not only the heliocentric system, but an universal system of physical laws. This revolution in the understanding of the physical universe impacted every phase of curture in the 18th century with the results of what is possible by man's reason. As a philosophical movement of the eighteenth century, it called for a critical examination of all previously accepted doctrines and institution from the point of view of rationalism.

2. RATIONALISM.

3. EMPIRICISM.

4. PROTESTANT SCHOLATICISM.

5. COMMON SENSE REALISM.

6. DEISM.

7. MECHANISM.

8. DETERMINISM.

9. MATERIALISM.

10. ATHEISM.

11. MORALISM.

12. CONCLUSION.
    The French philosophers of the eighteenth century became critics, attacking in the name of reason the medieval distortions of Christianity in the Roman Church. These attacks led to the French Revolution in which the authority of the French kings and the Roman Church was overthrown in the name of Reason. At the height of French Revolution the goddess of Reason, in the person of a well-known actress, was enthroned in the Cathedral of Notre Dame, Our Lady of Reason in the Temple of the Queen of Heaven. Thus the age of reason ended in this curious episode as a symbol and summation of the century. Atheism becomes the religion of Reason. This shows that atheism is not possible for man; man is a religious animal and he must have a God; he only replaces one god by another, and the true God by a false god. The god of atheism is no god.