Enlightenment Influence

Philosophically, the declaration discussed two crucial aspects from Locke's Enlightenment thinking: individual (life, liberty etc.) and the right of revolution.  In addition Locke's concept of the Social Contract had an impact on the drafting of the Declaration.  This concept asserted that people would have to give up some right to government in order to receive and preserve a social peace and order.  While maintaining individual rights, the writers in sense establish a social contract with the people of the states that is no longer tied to Britain.  The declaration established the states as legitimate authorities and the people consented.  

Also interesting is the profound influence both Enlightenment thought and the American revolution had upon the French and their revolution.  Like the Americans they believed that if the government is corrupt they had the right to overthrow it.  However initially, Enlightenment belief of the equality of all men led to many in France to critique the lavish lifestyle's of the monarchy and seek to improve their conditions under the monarchy.  For example, the Third Estate which consisted of anyone who wasn't of the nobility and clergy sought to obtain more authority and power in making political decisions in France.  This eventually led to a revolution and a complete break with the monarchy.  This just shows how influential Enlightenment thinkers were on politics during the second half of the 18th CE in both France and America.  

Lisbon Earthquake

Some 90,000 people died in Lisbon-more than one third of its population.The earthquake also pounded Europe's political and cultural thinking.  Lisbon lessened either God's beneficence or his power. The quake also lessened their estimation of human reason and a reasonable world.   Voltaire published a Poem on the Lisbon Disaster:

Unhappy mortals! Dark and mourning earth!
Affrighted gathering of human kind!
Eternal lingering of useless pain!

Voltaire reveals, from those opening lines, the despair of a thinker who's inspired by the intellectual consequences of this event. Voltaire also inserted the earthquake into Candide's absurdly catastrophic life. From a ship in Lisbon harbor, Candide watched helplessly as the good drown and the wicked survive. His friend Martin concludes that if the world has any purpose at all, it is to drive us mad.

Reflection on Passion and Reason

"Placed on the Isthmus (land between two bodies of water) of a middle state,

A being darkly wise and, rudely great: 

With too much knowledge for the sceptic side,

With too much weakness for the stoic's pride,

He hangs between; in doubt to act or rest;

In doubt to deem himself a god, or beast;

In doubt his mind or body to prefer;" Epistle II, very beginning 

I thought this was an interesting quote and decided, in my own way, to sketch it above.  I think when Pope says too much to knowledge for a skeptic refers to the fact that humans possess enough proof of God existence to ever question its validity.  While on the other hand, Stoicism emphasizes the use of reason to attain Logos or cosmic wisdom which Pope says humans cannot attain because of their weakness to correctly use reason for this purpose.  The Stoic ideal was to absolve oneself from passions in order to attain a state of harmony with nature and the universe by showing no emotion  to pleasure, pain or personal gain and loss.  Pope emphasizes in his second epistle the need for both reason and self-love seen as passion in man.  

Pope explains a need for passions at the end of the epistle: "To these we owe true friendship, love sincere, Each home-felt joy that life inherits here;"