https://doi.org/10.36719/2663-4619/110/15-21
Ofelya Muslumova
Ganja State University
Doctor of Philosophy in Philology
UOT: 811
https://orcid.org/0009-0009-5221-2877
ofelya.muslumova@inbox.ru
German Enlightenment Thinkers and Their Struggle Against Classismgerman-enlightenment-thinkers-and-their-struggle-against-classism
Abstract
As the author notes, the period of enlightenment is understood as a period of preparation for bourgeois revolutions in Europe, a period of struggle against the feudal system and its ideology. Enlightenment thinkers in all countries were representatives of the then progressive, revolutionary bourgeois class. The peculiarity of that time was that the Enlightenment thinkers protested against feudal rules, serfdom, the omnipotence of the church, represented the interests of all democratic sections of the people, and supported national unification in Germany. According to the author, this was the revolutionary significance of the Enlightenment movement throughout Europe.
Enlightenment in each European country had a special character, especially in terms of the degree of its revolutionary aspirations. Many of the thinkers of the Enlightenment believed that the kingdom of reason could be achieved peacefully, primarily by re-educating all men and above all by re-educating monarchs who should come to their senses. As the author said, at that time, literature was considered as an effective means of moral-intellectual education and improvement of people. At that time there were many magazines of this kind, whose subjects were mainly educational ethics, including women's education, children's education, fashion, including literature, theater, language, and religion. Political issues were hardly discussed. Unlike the French Enlightenment, the German Enlightenment was not political in nature, but more literary in nature. German misery weakened the rebellious character of the Enlightenment; the disintegration of the country made German Enlightenment thinkers lose all hope of revolution. Until the middle of the 18th century, German literature developed very slowly, and a little later produced world-class great personalities such as Lessing, Goethe and Schiller. The most productive period of the German Enlightenment began only in the 50s and 60s with Lessing.
Keywords: enlightenment period, enlightened thinkers, kingdom of reason, enlightenment movement, moral-intellectual education, ways of struggle