Anthology of Ideas

During the Age of Enlightenment, western society examined itself through religious texts; it found that the religious doctrines of the past lacked unchanging principles and most of them hearkened to a more mystical mindset and flew in the face of scientific thinking. For some, this demonstrated that the religious texts themselves were flawed: it was in this mindset that the concepts of deism — a religious belief that if there is a god, he is not involved in the day-to-day affairs of human lives, and any human attempts to create rules and rituals concerning this god are corrupted by human nature — were first accepted as, partially, acceptable in mainstream thought.

Swift was often criticized of misanthropy based on his satirical writings in “Gulliver’s Travels” and his other works. However Swift uses the his book Gulliver’s Travels as a way to make a mockery of what western society (particularly England) had become and to warn against excess of any one form of thought not to show a personal hatred of mankind. He uses allegory, satire and exaggeration to figuratively beat his point into his readers; humans in his mind were nowhere near what he thought they could be yet this does not mean he was misanthropic.

During the Age of Enlightenment, western society examined itself through religious texts; it found that the religious doctrines of the past lacked unchanging principles and most of them hearkened to a more mystical mindset and flew in the face of scientific thinking. For some, this demonstrated that the religious texts themselves were flawed: it was in this mindset that the concepts of deism — a religious belief that if there is a god, he is not involved in the day-to-day affairs of human lives, and any human attempts to create rules and rituals concerning this god are corrupted by human nature — were first accepted as, partially, acceptable in mainstream thought.

Swift was often criticized of misanthropy based on his satirical writings in “Gulliver’s Travels” and his other works. However Swift uses the his book Gulliver’s Travels as a way to make a mockery of what western society (particularly England) had become and to warn against excess of any one form of thought not to show a personal hatred of mankind. He uses allegory, satire and exaggeration to figuratively beat his point into his readers; humans in his mind were nowhere near what he thought they could be yet this does not mean he was misanthropic.