TRADITIONS OF THE ENLIGHTENMENT AND ITS POLITICAL REFLECTIONS

Abstract

It is really difficult to make a full definition of the Enlightenment. This difficulty arisesfrom the fact that the Enlightenment has penetrated into not only many but all aspectsof life. The most common thing that will be spoken regarding the Enlightenment is thatit is a mental activity. The roots of this mental activity sprang up in the West. Thisintellectual movement in the West formed different traditions of thought in diversegeographies of Europe. The Enlightenment was shaped in a “rationalistic” quality inFrance and “empiricist” character in Britain The distinction between the FrenchEnlightenment and the British Enlightenment concurrently gave rise to the divisionbetween social structures. In this context, the British empiricism led to a “peacefulrevolution” whereas the French rationalization resulted in a “bloody revolution”. Inthis article, my aim is to deal with the distinctions between the French rationalizationand the British empiricism, and to display how these differences influenced on socialchange.