Enlightenment role-play reflection

By ; Oil Ramita 5961017 1105

In our class, there are only nine people so our class has just one
group to perform the enlightenment role-play. In the role-play, I acted
as Mary Wollstonecraft who is a English writer, philosopher, and she
advocate herself to women's rights. Her famous work is A Vindication
of the Rights of Woman which is Vindication of the Rights of Woman
pressed for educational reforms.
The role-play begin with the scene that I and other six
philosophers in the past around 400 years ago traveled through time to
the present Hague, Netherland. At first, I met 3 of them and we all
visited the 'Vredespalei' or the peace palace, which is the place that I
want to visit the most. Vredespalei is an international law
administrative building that represents the ideal manifestation of
humanitys Rationalist desire for fairness and rule of law and respect for
womens rights and equality in this monument to peace and justice. It
houses the International Court of Justice, the Permanent Court of
Arbitration, the Hague Academy of International Law and the Peace
Palace Library. After that we went out from the Vredespalei, I met the
other three philosophers on the way to visit Mauritshuis. On the way to
different places, we argued about which place we should visit since
everyone has different place that they want to visit in their mind. We all
uses our own ideas and philosophy to convince each others to visit their
places. In the end, we visited only three places due to the limit of time
we had which are; Vresdespaleis, Nieuwe Kerk, and Binnenhof.
Through the conversations with other philosophers, I learnt
about the history and interesting parts of those seven places each of us
wants to go, and we also shared our ideas of rights, and human nature.
From this activity, it make me understand deeper about how Medieval
European society was shaped by Christianity, disease, warfare, and
feudalism. The places that were influenced or built in the medieval
period like museums, medieval palace, and churches are most of the
places that the philosophers want to visit. The way medieval people
lived, also their actions and believes are shown by those philosophers.
Mary Wollstonecraft, as an example, had influenced the Medieval
Europe society. She presents the idea that humanity's greatest gift is its
ability to reason. And since men and women are born with the same
ability to reason, women should enjoy just as much education, power,
and influence in society as men do. The only reason women don't seem
as smart as men, is because they aren't given the same education. The
one thing she willing to admit is that men might have an advantage in
physical strength. But in a modern civilization, this advantage shouldn't
really mean anything. For a gentleman living in my time, there were
very few occasions in life where he would be called upon to use all of his
strength. Other writers state that women shouldn't busy themselves
with too much reading or studying. They should focus on dressing nicely
and being quiet. But she thinks that they end up causing a lot of social
problems. For example, how can people expect a woman to raise
children well if she has no education and no ability to reason? Further,
how can women be moral and virtuous if all they're ever taught is how
to look moral and virtuous? This kind of education focuses only on
appearances and makes women totally superficial. The education
should be available equally to both boys and girls regardless of how
wealthy their families are. She think that a future with educated women
will be much brighter than a future without them. For other
philosophers, they also take part in the reformation in medieval Europe
much the same way as Mary Wollstonecraft did but on different aspects.
Ideas developed during the Renaissance, Scientific Revolution,
Reformation, and Enlightenment led to the political, economic, and
cultural changes, including the major revolutions and the rise of the
New World exploration and exploitations.