Explain how science and Enlightenment values ​​(E values) produce various types of social engineering in the 20th century that are designed to produce a world best. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”? Get the original essay The Enlightenment values ​​espoused by 18th-century philosophers were a significant shift for Western culture and guided individuals and governments to achieve both good and bad decisions. The core values ​​of the Enlightenment were based on the liberation of humans from the old order, or Acian regime, using reason and the power of the human intellect. Kant's essay “Was ist Aufklarung?” describes the fundamental principle that "Awakening is the emergence of man from his... inability to use [his] understanding without the help of others... Having the courage to use one's own understanding is therefore the motto of Lights. » The idea that standards of living and human happiness could improve with more knowledge and progress fueled Rousseau's argument for a society based on reason and a new civil order based on natural law and science. During this period, politics began to focus more on citizens and the protection of individual rights through a fair rule of law through a democratic process, as seen in documents such as the Declaration of Human Rights and the Declaration of Independence. Such political freedom was difficult to obtain in the feudal system. One proponent of these ideas was John Locke, who argued for democracy, individual liberties, and the eradication of religious authority – all opposing the old feudal order and religious domination. Locke also proposed an idea that all Enlightenment thinkers could agree on: freedom is impossible without a guarantee of property, which the state must protect. Locke stated that "the State...is a society of men established for the sole purpose of establishing, preserving, and promoting their civil interests...life, liberty, the possession of external goods, such as money , the land, the houses, the furniture. , and things of that nature. This is based on the idea that only those who own property can defend and care for the state. Enlightenment thinkers hoped that everyone could own property, a concept impossible in previous centuries when property was limited to certain levels. Humanity's progress could come through better policies and a better use of reason, not only through political thought but also through science. The “enlightened” saw the potential of science to improve living standards by exploiting nature through industrialization and human liberation. Andrew Ure theorized that steam engines not only employed many workers, but also left "thousands of fine arable fields free for the production of food for man, which otherwise should have been reserved for the sustenance of the horses.” Thanks to industrialization, man could have a better life and consume more. The rise of science and technology through an increasingly educated population contributed to the fall of religious authority in that they brought tangible benefits in a way that humans could control, unlike religion. Additionally, the availability of technology has allowed some to derive more wealth from their property. Science and technology have enabled the success of many industries in countries that haveadopted the values ​​of the Enlightenment. They were adopted by many “enlightened” politicians and leaders because they gained them support for improved lives. For some, science was a way to improve technology and improve standards of living, and for others, science was practiced to discover more and advance. reason. Charles Darwin fell into this second general category, and although his work became the basis of evolutionary studies, it was also perverted by those who transformed Darwin's natural evolutionary theory into "social Darwinism." Simply put, Darwin proposed that members of a species more adapted to an environment and responsive to change would be more likely to succeed and reproduce. Species might evolve through changes within populations, not through individuals, and nature is unable to determine who is fit and who is not. His ideas contradicted the Lamarckian theory of inheritance of acquired characteristics, according to which changes in an individual due to their environment could be passed on to their offspring. Interestingly, both theories of evolution would be used to justify social engineering in the 20th century. Thanks to the Age of Enlightenment and the values ​​that accompanied it, Europeans produced new standards for humanity by quantifying the presence of democracy, social mobility and individualism for all. One of the problems of the Enlightenment and factors in the future manipulation of its ideas was its Eurocentric nature. People, especially Europeans, could use reason and could therefore use it to transform less perfect societies into utopias. Those who adopted Enlightenment values ​​considered themselves superior to the “uncivilized” and believed that the triumph of Europeans was due to a natural superiority of their political and financial skills, seen as based on science. Some elites adopted Lamarck's theory of evolution to justify their position, because they believed that acquired cultural skills could be passed on to offspring, thus marking the beginning of population genetics. Enlightenment values ​​implied that humans could control their destiny and had a right to the earth and its resources. Even if nature could not determine who was fit, the appropriate combination of reason and science could identify suitable Europeans for protection to produce a superior human being. It is through this thinking that the success of science and technology began to be used to legitimize social systems/policies and ideologies. European superiority in science and technology revived the building of empires in Africa and Asia through the mission to “civilize”. The French Prime Minister at the time, Julien Ferry, defended colonial expansion using social Darwinist and Lamarckian ideas when he declared the civilizing mission: "in fact, the superior races have a right over the inferior races... because 'they have the duty... to civilize the inferior races... I maintain that the European nations acquit themselves with generosity, with grandeur and with sincerity of this higher civilizing duty. But at the same time, it was about spreading French civilization, and therefore a better life, freedom and property. This was the beginning of the twisted application of Enlightenment ideas to legitimize superiority abroad and at home. The beginning of the superiority complexes fueled by the Enlightenment arose from a mixture of the idea that man could progress thanks to advances in science and reason, and the idea that only finite domains wereboundaries. resources and goods exist. As a population exhausts its resources and seizes property, competition will ensue and only the fittest will survive and possess the right to available property. Through a Darwinist interpretation of evolution, it has been proposed that all populations have a distribution of traits and that certain members have exclusive advantages, making them a favored elite group and adaptable to change. Once a favored group became so distinct, it could no longer breed with the original group, now considered inferior, and the new group became a superior species. It was through the prejudices and quantifiable traits of the Enlightenment mentioned earlier (i.e. democracy, reason) that Europeans were able to identify the superior group and use social policies to advance them. A glaring problem with Enlightenment values ​​was that the emphasis on celebrating reason led some to classify non-homogenous belief systems (i.e. indigenous beliefs) as irrational, thus rendering them illegitimate . A division materialized when some Europeans believed those inferior to them could be civilized through education or colonialism, while others viewed the lack of successful traits as a lack of qualification to reproduce. Herbert Spencer, who coined the term "survival of the fittest" and strongly supported Social Darwinism, said that "the forces which work out the grand scheme of perfect happiness, taking no account of incidental suffering, are exterminating sections of the humanity who find themselves in this situation. in their own way, with the same severity with which they exterminate beasts of prey and herds of useless ruminants”, with a comparison of the inferior to beasts of prey and herds of useless ruminants. From this were born the principles of Nazi and Soviet social engineering. While the Nazi and Soviet political elites had divergent views on the definition of a perfect society and what the level of humanity should be, both used Social Darwinism and Enlightenment values ​​to justify planning social. and their respective ideology. The NSADP saw value in Social Darwinism, and the perversion of Enlightenment values ​​manifested itself in Nazi ideology, as they believed they were applying scientific facts to produce the Übermensch. While the application of the Übermensch in Nazi Germany was racial, Nietzsche's concept of the Übermensch arose from the Enlightenment struggle to liberate the population from the old religious order. Nietzsche himself said: “God is dead. God remains dead”, and the “Übermensch will be the meaning of the earth! » Humans now created new values, because the value system given by the religious order was dead. For the Nazis, politics was simply about applying science to advance the struggle for living space by eliminating "inferior" peoples and repopulating the earth with the Aryan Übermensch. Hitler declared that "this land is a trophy for the hardworking man." And rightly so, in the service of natural selection. He who does not possess the necessary strength to ensure his Lebensraum… must withdraw and let stronger peoples pass.” The Nazis manipulated science, in this case natural selection, to justify their ideology and programs of racial superiority. From there was born the Nazi eugenics program aimed at selecting the characteristics favorable to the ideal Aryan and proliferating them, while deselecting those which are unfavorable through the extermination of the weakest peoples. Another.