One of the most famous works that represents the Enlightenment is titled 'What is Enlightenment', the book discusses in great detail about Enlightenment. According to this book 'Enlightenment is man's emergence from his self incurred immaturity '. Here the word immaturity means lack of courage to use one's understanding. (Kant, 1784)
There are numerous qualities which distinguish Enlightenment thinkers from …show more content…
We can find the explanation for this in his book 'The social contract'. Rousseau focuses on reason and in the social contract every point presented in the social contract is based on a reason. Even the first line of the book 'Man is born free but everywhere he is in chains' makes the reader think about how we are all somehow chained. An example can taken from the part where he talks about slavery and war. He mentions that war can never be private because in the state of nature nothing is privately owned and wars only arise because of the relations between things.. Another example of this can be when he talks about 'The limits of the sovereign power'. In this part of the book he presents the reader with numerous reasons about what an act of sovergnity really is. The reasons he provides to the reader make the reader think about things from different perspectives. His reasoning also helps him to make the argument stronger and effective as it directly effects people since he makes them use their own power of reasoning. (Rousseau, …show more content…
According to Burke when we classify something as beautiful or sublime we feel some emotions. The emotions we feel by when we see beautiful objects are those of love, pleasure and liking whereas the emotions we feel when we see something sublime are of power, fear and astonishment. (Murray, 2013)
In the romantic era people used to present their thoughts in their work. Burke presented his thoughts of the beautiful and the sublime in his book 'A philosophical enquiry into the origin of our ideas of the sublime and the beautiful'. Furthermore he talks about pain, pleasure, joy and grief which are also some of the main topics of the romantic era. Burke also talked about beauty. According to him beauty has nothing to do with perfection. A beautiful object can be imperfect. Burke also thought that symmetry was not considered necessary to call a thing beautiful. Things without symmetry and perfection can also be beautiful. (Scott, 2002)
I will conclude this paper by saying that Rousseau was an enlightened thinker as he makes the reader think and use his or her sense of reason which is also the main subject matter of Kant's definition of enlightenment whereas Buke is not an enlightened thinker but he belongs to the romantic era as he focuses more on feelings and senses and