The cultural identity of the Enlightenment can be described as emphasizing the possibilities of human reason. This idea can be illustrated with such examples as Thomas Jefferson, Denis Diderot, and Protestantism. Thomas.
Jefferson was considered among one of the most brilliant American exponents of the Enlightenment culture. He had the time and the resources to educate himself in many topics including history, literature, law, architecture, science, and philosophy. He had the motivation and the connections to apply Enlightenment political philosophy to nation-building. Denis Diderot was a French.
encyclopedist and philosopher, who also composed plays, novels, essays, and art. He greatly influenced other Enlightenment thinkers with his translations of Encyclopedie ou dictionnaire raisonne des sciences, des arts et des metiers, usually known as Encyclopedie. He used this translation as a powerful propaganda weapon against Ecclesiastical authority, and the semifeudal social reforms of the time. Protestantism is a good example also. It is one of the three major divisions of Christianity. It displays the release of traditional religion and the movement to worldly learning and the rise of protests against the controlled way of expressing one's self. It allows the human himself to reason out the way that he thinks, instead of an authority telling him how to do so therefore, extending his mind.
The Enlightenment Writers.
The central ideas of the Enlightenment writers were similar to, yet very different from, those of the writers of earlier periods. Four major Enlightenment writers were Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Paine, Thomas Jefferson, and Patrick Henry.
Their main purpose was to write to educate and edify and not so much as to write for aesthetic purposes. Most of their work was designed to convey truth or give sound instruction on such issues of political, social, or economic interest as Benjamin Franklin's "The Way to Wealth.
