Immanual Kant: Enlightenment
1. Using the primary source document Immanual Kant: What is Enlightenment explain the Enlightenment world view. In your post, please quote and discuss at least one specific passage from the Kant excerpt. After discussing Kant’s views as expressed in this primary source excerpt, use at least one other assigned course reading, video, or lecture for this week to describe the political or social impacts of the Enlightenment in Europe, Haiti, the United States, or Russia. Clearly state your sources at the point of use.
2. Using the primary source document the Bill of Rights (through Amendment 10) explain how the ideas expressed in this document were influenced by Enlightenment thinkers. In your answer, please quote and discuss at least one passage from the Bill. Then, using and at least one other assigned reading, video, or lecture for this week, please also address the following: How did the traditional view of monarchical authority and of rights change in the 18th century? Clearly state your sources at the point of use.
3. Using the primary source document, Maximilien Robespierre: Report on the Principles of Public Morality (attached), discuss the similarities and differences between the French Revolution and the American and Haitian Revolutions. In your answer, please quote and discuss at least one passage from Robespierre’s work. What does this piece tell us about the reasons for the French Revolution or the course of the Revolution? After discussing the report, compare and contrast the FR with the AR and HR. What was unique about the FR? For this second half of the prompt, use the Doyle reading, the readings from Thackeray and Findling, Fick, or the video lecture material “Egalite for All: Toussaint Louverture and the Haitian Revolution.” Clearly state your sources at the point of use.
4. Using the primary source document, selections of Catherine the Great explain how the impact of Enlightenment ideals differed between Russia and Europe. First, answer the following: what is Catherine the Great’s attitude toward liberty and equality according to these excerpts? Please quote and discuss at least one passage from the excerpts in your post. Next, after discussing the excerpts pertaining to Catherine, use the Ziegler reading or the lecture, Absolutism to Revolution, assigned for this week, to explain what the impact of the Enlightenment was in Russia. How was this different from the way the Enlightenment impacted Europe? What accounts for the differences? Clearly state your sources at the point of use.
Sample Solution
Immanuel Kant: Enlightenment
Enlightenment is man`s emergence from his self-imposed nonage. Nonage is the inability to use one`s own understanding without another`s guidance. This nonage is self-imposed if its cause lies not in lack of understanding but in indecision and lack of courage to use one`s own mind without another`s guidance. “Have the courage to use your own understanding,“ is therefore the motto of the enlightenment. Kant understands the majority of people to be content to follow the guiding institutions of society, such as the Church and the monarchy, and unable to throw off the York of their immaturity due to a lack of resolution to be autonomous.
