With the creation of writing came the philosophical ideas and questions that would later be studied by philosophes and other artists during critical periods of time, such as the Enlightenment. ... The intellectual revolution, known as the Enlightenment, would bring in new ideas of rationalism and secularism still widely used today. ...
The problem with the human condition in Confucianism and Taoism lies in people's inability to access the perfection that surrounds them and the solution is enlightenment to the fact that the nature within and around them holds innate spiritual meaning. ...
For example, in Buddhist Thailand, young men become sons of Buddha through a ceremony in which they reenact key parts of the historical Buddha's search for enlightenment (see Theravada Buddhism). ... Most major religions provide paths that deliver individuals from the bondage of sin, immorality, ignorance, and other types of impurity or disharmony and lead them toward a state of purity of soul, spiritual knowledge, wisdom, godliness, enlightenment, or even eternal life. ...
There are countless other ways to reach the ultimate goal of happiness but they are ephemeral to the nirvana-like state of philosophical enlightenment Aristotle considers himself to possess that is a constant state of psychological bliss. ...
As Diana Reese states in her article, "A Troubled Legacy: Mary Shelley's Frankenstein and the Inheritance of Human Rights," "Shelley's monster moves across the shifting terrain of his own indetermination at "superhuman speed"; traversing the slash between man/citizen, reasoner/human, general/individual will in ways that pose a delicate challenge to the work of reason in Enlightenment projects for a new authorization of law" (Reese 49). ...
Locke and Rousseau were two great philosophers of the Enlightenment. While both writers agreed that before civilized society man existed in a state of nature, that is, humans lacked society or structure, they disagreed on what constituted freedom. Differences in their opinion on freedom stems from t...
