The Enlightment Era has many causes but the one that I think the most important is that the people began to question everything they knew,even the power of the king.But before starting talking about the enlightment I think I should start explaining what is it?; As I understand the enlightment era is the period between the century XVII to the start of french revolution, where the people leave the taboo of thinking by themselves and just follow what the catolic church said, therefore they started( as I said at the begining of the entry) they started questioned everything and as a result they got new ideas and created new concepts and things.
One of the main characteristics of this era for me, is how the man left all what they thought and began to think by themselves, I think that here is where the man really started to think again because the church forbade them almost talk if they weren´t praying, but in the enlightment era they started questioning if this was right; of course they reached the point it was not right follow without thinking (not only with the church also with the king) and as a consequence they rised up against the authority( the knig) to fight for something just.
For being such an important era, the enlightment era had important characters, in this case the main characters were Rene Descartes and David Hume. Descartes in France and Hume in Scotland.
DESCARTES:- rationalism- In his book,Meditations, he explained what he thinks, starting form the point of believing that nothing it´s true and he must find the real true. He says the senses aren´t useful to find the true, the only thing is real is the idea,the ideas of people if we don´t think, we don´t exist; here his famous said " I think; therefore I exist". Because of the ideaswe exist,where do we get our ideas? therefore he concludes God exist.
HUME:- empiricism- He is the exact opposite of Descartes, he says the way to find the true is trough our senses,according to him they don´t fail. He thinks that nothing is better than a vivid experience and these are the real trues, for this, he concludes that God doesn´t exist, because we can see,touch or hear him.
I will conclude this entry by adding my own opinion( I think is the best way to end a document), I must say that for me, both Hume and Descartes are right in many ways, I agree more with Descartes because it is true that our senses aren´t perfect they deceived us in so much ways and vivid experiences are not exactly always confident, but I think a perfect theory would be the one that takes both( empiricism and rationalism) and mixed them with the best they have.
