Question

The European Enlightenment was marked, as the textbook notes, "by boundless faith in human reason" and its capacity to bring about the improvement of humanity and the human condition. In what ways were Condorcet's ideas regarding achieving human progress indicative of this optimism? Was this belief in human capacity novel?

Answer 1

Until Enlightenment, Europe was under the clutches of the Church which enslaved people in the name of God and religion. Almost all the empires were controlled by the Christian Church. All the forms of arts were restricted in the name of obscurity and obscene. Humans were told that they were sinners and that they carry their sins from Adam and Eve in the form of original sin thus bringing a guilty feeling in people. This stopped people from being real and blocked the imaginations of people. People's mind was restricted to think in a narrow way thus preventing them from using their full potential. Enlightenment came to the rescue of people that human beings are the highest entities and that they could achieve great heights if the unleash their potential. Human capacity is not an imagined one because our brain is a very complex system and even genius people have even used only 15% of their brain's capability. It was this liberation from religion that the world was able to progress in science, technology, medicine and arts.

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