Classical Social Theory Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2250 words

Classical Social Theory - Essay ExampleIn Condorcets historical account of the heroic march of human reason, it is invariably priestlike deception and barbarity which threatens future progress or plunges mankind into lengthy periods of darkness and ignorance. Speaking for many of his philosophe peers, Condorcet depicts the Middle Ages as historys bleakest epoch Nothing could disseminate the profound darkness save a few shafts of talent, a few rays of kindness and magnanimity. Mans only achievements were theological day-dreaming and superstitious imposture, his only morality religious intolerance.The cut en cast downenments special virulence toward the contemporary institutions of organized religion can be attributed to the uniquely powerful position of the French clergy as members of the ruling elite. The resolution of the Gallican list in 1682 cemented an especially close relationship between the clergy and the crown in France. Moreover, French religious dissenters and freethink ers confronted an especially hostile and oppressive environment in the race of the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes, guaranteeing minimal toleration to Protestants, in 1685. This atmosphere of intolerance and rigid absolutism bred a particularly bitter anticlericalism the perceived power machinations and dissolution of the clergy encouraged scathing denunciations of priestly hypocrisy and cynical manipulation. In relatively more tolerant Protestant England, such intense animosity was unlikely to arise. Nonethe slight, the radical principles of enlightenment thought produced skeptical and critical accounts of revealed religion across national boundaries, and English deists were especially active in promulgating the foundation for a more rational, simplified, and less doctrinaire faith.Voltaire, Letters in England , trans. Leonard Tancock (New York Penguin Books, 1980), 120.In his final letter from England, Voltaire systematically attempts to dismantle the claims of Blaise Pascal in the Pensees. Profoundly disturbed by the hateful light in which Pascal appears to depict man, Voltaire proposes to champion humanity against this sublime misanthropist. Voltaires crusade against Pascals misanthropy neatly illustrates many of the central objections which enlightenment thinkers made against religion, and Christianity in particular.Voltaire, Letters in England , trans. Leonard Tancock (New York Penguin Books, 1980), 120-122.Voltaire, a relative moderate on religious questions, does not actually seek to dismantle belief in God. Rather, he takes exception to the misery, wickedness, and helplessness which Pascal, attributes to mankinds inbred condition, as well as the social disarray which is held to follow from mans corruption. Claiming that Pascal attributes to the essence of our nature what applies only to certain men, Voltaire does not accept that original ungodliness is a permanent and irrevocable stain on all of humanity. Rather, he insists that man has both go od and bad impulses, and that we can use our reason to range our passions so as to lead upright lives He man is, like everything else