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Evaluate the extent to which Enlightenment thought continued to influence political and social debates across the world throughout the period 1750–1900.
Evaluate the extent to which Enlightenment thought continued to influence political and social debates across the world throughout the period 1750–1900.
Answer:The Enlightment influenced political debate until the year 1900, and even today.The Enlightement gave origin to the political philosophy of Liberalism, a philosophy whose principal idea is that the individual is more important than the collective, whether the collective is the state, a society, a tribe, or a family.From this idea, liberalism holds that people have natural rights: life, liberty and property, and that the function of government is to protect those rights.Besides, from the Enlightment also came a revival of the ideas of republicanism and democracy, which are not Enlightment original ideas (republicanism is a Ancient Roman idea, and democracy an Ancient Greek idea), but were again at the forefront of political discourse.The American Revolution and the subsequent drafting of the American Constitution, the oldest constitution in the world, were greatly influenced by Enlightment ideas, and Elightment thinkers like John Locke, Montesquieu, and Jean-Jacques Rosseau.In Europe, the examples of the American Revolution and the French Revolution, which resulted in a tyranny, continued to influence political discourse, to the point that by the mid 1800s, political ideologies that were anti-liberal, such as marxism, socialism, and anarchism, were born....