enlightenment
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History has been and always will be a continuous flow of knowledge sought only through trial and error such that of the Enlightenment. The beliefs of the Enlightenment and the philosophes were contradicted for years to come. Emmanuel Kant explained the age of the Enlightenment as a time where people began to find ways and truth on their own, instead of following those of the past.
One belief of the philosophes was that human beings are born free and autonomous. Edmund Burke, a British statesman and philosopher rejected these ideas. His main claim, along with many other conservatives, was that the philosophes observed life too closely and real life not close enough. The belief that "All decent drapery of life is to be rudely torn off" as stated in The Moral Imagination refers to anything "decent" was no more because men were free, in a sense; free meaning men were independent, which took away from the concept of family that had been around for centuries before. Having families contributes new ideas and new customs to society, but being your own person contributes nothing. Besides, most men were born into families which continues to contribute new things. Burke believed that the philosophes praised man too much and men too little; in other words, they praised the individual over society...