Chapter 13, The Enlightenment

Habib states that the Enlightenment was "a broad intellectual tendency, spanning philosophy, literature, language, art, religion, and political theory," and has been called the "age of reason."
Among the philosophers mentioned in that chapter, we will focus upon John Locke, Edmund Burke, and Mary Wollstonecraft.
Locke:
Encourages to look at the world as a group of facts, that result in sensations which wev process mentally and arrive at truths and abstract ideas. Language should be used to clarify an idea and therefore we should attempt to be concise with word and expression "literalization of language" to avoid abusing the language with "error and deceit." An advocate for empirialism, Locke suggests we create the world through language and allow it to provide coherence to external reality. So, we need to be clear, sober, and true when using language....not metaphor and illusion!
Burke:
Desires "to conserve the essential economic and political fabric of feudalism." He's a conservative who thinks we must adjuct to gradual change with a starting point at reality, not the absract and idealist set of principles not related to actual conditions. He maintains that human use falsehoods to reason and that our sensory perceptions tend to rule our thoguhts and translations of the world around us. (BAD HUMANS!)Yet, he does interject that the imagination allows us to produce new images,therefore we can create and "enlarge our stock" of knowledge.We need "refined judgement" via sense, imagination, and the conclusions we draw from such information. Sublime is "the strongest emotion which the mind is capable of feeling" i.e. pain, danger, and terror...and they are vast, rugged, often obscure and dark.We can use wit stimulate our pleasure, becuase it is wit enables us to make connections between things we are familiar with. We must come to a place of understanding with the use of "good taste" when we "extend our knowledge" and exercise our brain with by assimilating new ideas. I guess, not so much reason and clarity, but the usefullness of what we do experience.
Wollstonecraft:
Hmmm, a feminist! Yes, finally. She felt women could have reason and felt women should benefit from education as men had throughout the centuries. "A Vindication of the Rights of Women" in 1792 expressed her concerns for the economic and educational rights of women. That truth must be common to all...and she does anticipate a negative male reaction to her asssertions! the simple truths should not just include the male intellect....but all individuals. No predujice and misogyny...men contribute to the degradation of females as "artificial, weak characters" and this is a mistake.Women should not be enslaved by the ideas of men and held captive by societal expectation that a women look nice and BE nice and controllable. Social equality will lead to educational equality....but not quickly she concedes. The entire political and economic system is built upon the separation of women from education and societal position. Though, later feminists took some issue with her thoughts about marriage and her ideas that "morality and virtue shoudl be founded on eternal and immutable principles." Yes, feminists come in different forms and vary in opinion...as they should, being individuals and all! She did demand a radical restructuring of the social and political orders to garner female equality.