Enlightenment and Modernity Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2000 words

Enlightenment and Modernity - Essay Example Intellectuals emerged and new knowledge permeated every facet of educated life. The Enlightenment period welcomed Industrial Revolution. This created jobs for the rural and educated dwellers. The advancements of Enlightenment transformed the European nations into more intelligent and self-aware civilization. The thinkers and writers believed that they were more enlightened than their fellow citizens were and therefore took the initiative to educate them. They held that through reasoning people could build a better world. People could solve problems through rational thought and experimentation. This was because a reasonable person could eradicate ignorance, superstition, and autocracy (Beales, 2005:81). People increased their reading habits because of availability of books from the publishing firms. This paper will endeavour to establish the role that publishers and readers played in the dissemination of enlightenment thought. The principles of enlightenment spread throughout Europe a nd America mainly through reading and writings. Debating societies, coffeehouses, salons, and literary circles came into being all over Europe. People interacted through studying and discussing wide rage of topics. The inquiry of knowledge led to emergence of big academies such as the Royal Society of London and Academy of Sciences in Paris. The academy concentrated on sciences such as biology, anatomy, botany, and astronomy. The academies gave little consideration on religious and spiritual studies. In Germany, only aristocracy and bourgeoisie studied in the academies. Conversely, French academies allowed all the citizens to participate in learning regardless of religious beliefs, social classes, and gender (Beales, 2005:83). Great writers, readers, and publishers came up to disseminate information on enlightenment thoughts. Authors passed their ideas to the readers in form of plays, essays, newspapers, journals, pamphlets, and books. Many people craved for knowledge and wanted fre e access to the literary works of the intellectuals who spearheaded enlightenment. Public libraries remained accessible to all people due to increasing demand to fight illiteracy. People could participate in society of Enlightenment. The publishers and readers were very active in dissemination of the writings of the scholars such as Baron de Montesquieu, Voltaire, and Jean-Jacques Rousseau. The availability of publication machines in Europe was an indispensable tool for quick dissemination of enlightenment thoughts. The expansion of large printing machines generated journals, reviews, letters ensuring faster transmission of information and images in coffee rooms, salons, lodgings, scientific societies, provincial academies, and debating clubs (Brewer, 2006:10). With this information in their midst, people could read for themselves, interrogate, and chat the way forward to achieve the benefits of Enlightenment. Intellectual people imparted new knowledge to the masses thus decolonisin g their primitive and backward thoughts. The vast information in form of printed materials expanded the comprehension base of the readers. The intellectuals criticised the church for misleading the people. The views in the print materials acted as guiding principles for creation of strong nations that embraced reasoning. Continued reading and publication of enlightenment materials brought significant changes in Europe. People could challenge the church and monarchies. Intellectuals viewed the church as an impediment to the forward march of human

Death penalty Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1250 words - 1

Death penalty - Essay Example And if it can, under what circumstances should it be used? Does the punishment acts as a deterrent? What are the alternatives? Does it contribute to a safe and secure environment? This debate is unlikely to end soon (Stearman, 2007). This debate is clearly one that is bound to go on for a long time with passionate debaters and defenders of stands on both sides of the argument. In this essay I take a stand on this debate by supporting the death penalty. I offer several reasons for this stand and provide references on the same. Some advocates of the death penalty offer support to the practice arguing that the death penalty justifies itself because it saves taxpayers the greater costs of supporting an inmate for a lifetime, or many decades, in prison. This economic assumption rests in part on the belief that executions happen more quickly and efficiently than serving a life sentence (Gerber & Johnson, 2007). Another related belief among supporters of capital punishment lies in the notio n that the system of justice, like the legal system generally, is nearly infallible. While the system may commit an occasional mistake, such mistakes readily appear and can be made to disappear in the magic of the appellate process. This view normally also maintains that our capital machinery accurately separates the guilty from the innocent and punishes accordingly, without regard to race or social status or finances. Some people nursing this cluster of beliefs like to say that the wheels of justice move slowly but â€Å"exceedingly fine.† The legal process always succeeds, eventually, in separating the wheat from the chaff and does so impartially. Given their career investment in this system, judges have been known to entertain this belief (Gerber & Johnson, 2007). Some supporters of the death penalty also take a moralistic approach. To these kinds of people the main justification for the death penalty lies in giving every offender his â€Å"due.† In this philosophic al position capital punishment finds its support in the notion of moral â€Å"desert†, where desert implies a punishment required to be proportionate in kind, severity, or amount of pain matching the original crime. Advocates of this view maintain that the most convincing justification for the death penalty lies in the assertion that punishment should mirror the gravity of the initial crime, as in the phrase, â€Å"an eye for an eye, and a life for a life† (Gerber & Johnson, 2007). A particularly recent justification for the death penalty considers the plight of suffering victims. Some victim advocates maintain that the death penalty finds its primary justification in its ability to nurture victims in either or both of two ways – by providing a kind of â€Å"closure† to their painful victimization and/or by providing an outlet for their emotional need for vengeance. The ascendancy of these victim rationales for punishment plays a major role today in suppo rt for capital punishment. Some segments of the victim rights movement assert that the wishes of hurting victims alone require capital punishment of those who had caused their unfortunate plight (Gerber & Johnson, 2007). Another more legalistic belief, espoused by some constitutional scholars, including some Supreme Court justices, asserts that fidelity to the constitution requires adherence to the beliefs and practices of our Founders. When a constitutional text about capital