西方文化导论课后题答案711章.pdfVIP

1. Please give an account of the setting of the Enlightenment. The fact that the Enlightenment first occurred in France was ascribed to the deterioration in economic, political, social and cultural conditions in the 18th-century France. The French people strongly demanded that the declining situation be arrested and reforms be carried out. Under such circumstances, progressive intellectuals began to think more seriously about the solutions to the crises and tried to resort to intellectual and social means. This movement also asked for more political power to the people as the bourgeoisie joined in with its economic support and thus the cultural movement tinned with political colour as a bourgeois mark. On the other hand, the dissemination of scientific knowledge and the influences of British empiricism also immensely heightened intellectual and political awareness of the people in general. This prepared the political basis of the bourgeois revolution to follow. 2. Briefly introduce one or two representative figures of the Enlightenment and their central ideas. Voltaire and Montesquieu are two of the representative figures of the Enlightenment. Voltaire exposed the dark side of France such as the corruption and injustice of Christianity by launching his theory on human nature. Also, he argued for the freedom and equality of ordinary people. What ’smore, he strongly condemned feudal autocracy and put forward the theory of the enlightened monarchy. Montesquieu ’s political theory developed the principle of dividing political power although the principle itself was not his invention. Montesquieu contributed significantly to the establishment of the modern Western state by exposing the nature of state and human beings in his great work Spirit of Law which has wide-ranging influence on the later generations of modern W