In Medieval times Christianity took over as the dominant form of ethics and through feudalism, divine law organized social and political hierarchy. As religiosity was replaced by humanism, and the Catholic church by alternative viewpoints (Protestantism) political and social structures were torn apart, forcing change and a decline in the structure of feudalism and the opening of a new, more individualistic, some say greedy, system of capitalism. Philosophies of the Age of Englitenment further distanced themselves from using religion as the sole basis for structure with such philosophers as John Locke, Thomas Hobbes, Rene Descartes and others holding that human existence was more individual -- and therefore more dependent upon individual morals and judgements. Romanticism took these ideas and, through fusion, merged them with ideas on nature, emotion, and the grand capacity for actualization, but again, through the individual (Tumin and Plotch, 1977; (Bluhm and Heineman). The modern age is...
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