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Enlightenment

By: History.com Editors

Updated: February 21, 2020 | Original: December 16, 2009

European politics, philosophy, science and communications were radically reoriented during the course of the “long 18th century” (1685-1815) as part of a movement referred to by its participants as the Age of Reason, or simply the Enlightenment. Enlightenment thinkers in Britain, in France and throughout Europe questioned traditional authority and embraced the notion that humanity could be improved through rational change. 

The Enlightenment produced numerous books, essays, inventions, scientific discoveries, laws, wars and revolutions. The American and French Revolutions were directly inspired by Enlightenment ideals and respectively marked the peak of its influence and the beginning of its decline. The Enlightenment ultimately gave way to 19th-century Romanticism.

The Early Enlightenment: 1685-1730

The Enlightenment’s important 17th-century precursors included the Englishmen Francis Bacon and Thomas Hobbes, the Frenchman René Descartes and the key natural philosophers of the Scientific Revolution, including Galileo Galilei, Johannes Kepler and Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz. Its roots are usually traced to 1680s England, where in the span of three years Isaac Newton published his “Principia Mathematica” (1686) and John Locke his “Essay Concerning Human Understanding” (1689)—two works that provided the scientific, mathematical and philosophical toolkit for the Enlightenment’s major advances.

Did you know? In his essay 'What Is Enlightenment?' (1784), the German philosopher Immanuel Kant summed up the era's motto in the following terms: 'Dare to know! Have courage to use your own reason!'

Locke argued that human nature was mutable and that knowledge was gained through accumulated experience rather than by accessing some sort of outside truth. Newton’s calculus and optical theories provided the powerful Enlightenment metaphors for precisely measured change and illumination.

There was no single, unified Enlightenment. Instead, it is possible to speak of the French Enlightenment, the Scottish Enlightenment and the English, German, Swiss or American Enlightenment. Individual Enlightenment thinkers often had very different approaches. Locke differed from David Hume, Jean-Jacques Rousseau from Voltaire , Thomas Jefferson from Frederick the Great . Their differences and disagreements, though, emerged out of the common Enlightenment themes of rational questioning and belief in progress through dialogue.

The High Enlightenment: 1730-1780

Centered on the dialogues and publications of the French “philosophes” (Voltaire, Rousseau, Montesquieu, Buffon and Denis Diderot), the High Enlightenment might best be summed up by one historian’s summary of Voltaire’s “Philosophical Dictionary”: “a chaos of clear ideas.” Foremost among these was the notion that everything in the universe could be rationally demystified and cataloged. The signature publication of the period was Diderot’s “Encyclopédie” (1751-77), which brought together leading authors to produce an ambitious compilation of human knowledge.

It was an age of enlightened despots like Frederick the Great, who unified, rationalized and modernized Prussia in between brutal multi-year wars with Austria, and of enlightened would-be revolutionaries like Thomas Paine and Thomas Jefferson, whose “Declaration of Independence” (1776) framed the American Revolution in terms taken from of Locke’s essays.

It was also a time of religious (and anti-religious) innovation, as Christians sought to reposition their faith along rational lines and deists and materialists argued that the universe seemed to determine its own course without God’s intervention. Locke, along with French philosopher Pierre Bayle, began to champion the idea of the separation of Church and State. Secret societies—like the Freemasons, the Bavarian Illuminati and the Rosicrucians—flourished, offering European men (and a few women) new modes of fellowship, esoteric ritual and mutual assistance. Coffeehouses, newspapers and literary salons emerged as new venues for ideas to circulate.

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The Late Enlightenment and Beyond: 1780-1815

The French Revolution of 1789 was the culmination of the High Enlightenment vision of throwing out the old authorities to remake society along rational lines, but it devolved into bloody terror that showed the limits of its own ideas and led, a decade later, to the rise of Napoleon . Still, its goal of egalitarianism attracted the admiration of the early feminist Mary Wollstonecraft (mother of “Frankenstein” author Mary Shelley) and inspired both the Haitian war of independence and the radical racial inclusivism of Paraguay’s first post-independence government.

Enlightened rationality gave way to the wildness of Romanticism, but 19th-century Liberalism and Classicism—not to mention 20th-century Modernism —all owe a heavy debt to the thinkers of the Enlightenment.

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The Enlightenment

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The Enlightenment (Age of Reason) was a revolution in thought in Europe and North America from the late 17th century to the late 18th century. The Enlightenment involved new approaches in philosophy , science , and politics. Above all, the human capacity for reason was championed as the tool by which our knowledge could be extended, individual liberty maintained, and happiness secured.

Origins of the Enlightenment

The Enlightenment is usually dated from the last quarter of the 17th century to the last quarter of the 18th century. During the Renaissance (1400-1600), when intellectuals and artists looked back to antiquity for inspiration, there arose the humanist movement, which stressed the promotion of civic virtue, that is, realising a person's full potential both for their own good and for the good of the society in which they live. The ideas of the Enlightenment flourished from these roots and blossomed thanks to events like the Protestant Reformation (1517-1648), which diminished the traditional power of the Christian Church in everyday life. Most enlightened thinkers did not want to replace the Church, but they did want greater religious freedom and toleration.

The Enlightenment derives its name 'light' from the contrast to what was then seen as the 'darkness' of the Middle Ages. We now know that the medieval period was perhaps not quite as 'dark' as once thought, but the essential fact remains that religion , superstition, and deference to authority did permeate that period of human existence before philosophers began to challenge these concepts in the 17th century. It was no longer possible to simply accept received wisdom as truth just because it had been unchallenged for centuries.

In this new atmosphere of relative intellectual freedom, reason challenged accepted beliefs. Just like the practical experiments scientists were conducting in the Scientific Revolution to discover the laws of nature, so, too, philosophers were keen to apply reason to age-old problems of how we should live together in societies, how we can be virtuous, what is the best form of government, and what constitutes happiness. This was a battle of reason against emotion, superstition, and fear; its principal weapons were optimism for a better world and both the freedom and ability to question absolutely everything. Not for nothing were the new enlightened philosophers also called 'free-thinkers'.

Pre-Enlightenment Thinkers

The Enlightenment was driven forward by philosophers, although given that many were also writers of non-philosophical works or even dabbled in politics, they might be better described today as intellectuals. These thinkers challenged accepted thought and, it is important to stress, each other, since there was never any consensus as to the answers to the questions everyone was trying to answer. What is sure is this process of examining and building knowledge was a long one, with different strands in different places. With hindsight, we can reconstruct the chain of ideas we collectively call the Enlightenment, but the participants at that time were aware that they were involved in a new movement of thought.

There is a group of thinkers who are often called 'pre-Enlightenment' philosophers since they established some of the key foundations upon which the Enlightenment was built. This group includes Francis Bacon (1561-1626), Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679), René Descartes (1596-1650), Baruch Spinoza (1632-1677), and John Locke (1632-1704).

Bacon stressed the need for a new combined method of empirical experimentation (i.e. observation and experience) and shared data collection so that humanity might finally discover all of nature's secrets and improve itself. This approach was adopted by many enlightened philosophers. Bacon's thoughts on the need to test our knowledge to see if it is actually true and his belief that we could build a better world if we all applied ourselves were also influential.

Hobbes, an English politician and thinker, proposed the idea of a state of nature , a brutish existence before we got together into societies. Hobbes believed that citizens must sacrifice some liberties in order to gain the security of society, and they do this when they form a social contract between themselves, that is, a collective promise to abide by certain rules of behaviour. He also believed, because of his pessimistic view of human nature, where people act entirely out of self-interest, that a very strong political authority was required, his Leviathan, named after the biblical monster. These ideas and Hobbes' attempt to disentangle philosophy, morality, and politics from religion would all inspire Enlightenment thinkers, either in support or in providing alternative models.

Descartes, a French rationalist philosopher, proposed that all knowledge must be subjected to doubt because our senses are unreliable, we may be dreaming, or we may be living in a deception created by an evil demon. Descartes' conclusion of applying doubt to everything is his founding principle of indubitable truth Cogito, ergo sum ("I think, therefore I am"). From Decartes' ideas came Cartesianism and the position that the mind and body (or matter) are two distinct things but, in some way that thinkers had yet to determine, they interact with each other. While some critics point out that Descartes' hunting down of doubts can lead to absurdities and total scepticism, his strategy has importance for the Enlightenment since it demonstrates the value of questioning everything and not taking at face value knowledge we have inherited from previous generations – knowledge that may, in fact, turn out to be not knowledge at all but only belief.

The Dutchman Spinoza attacked superstition and challenged the traditional role of God in human affairs, suggesting God does not interfere in our everyday lives. Combining rationalism and metaphysics, Spinoza was greatly interested in science and believed that by using our reason and studying nature we could come to better know ourselves and the divine. He also called for greater religious toleration.

The Englishman Locke proposed that there should be limits on state power in order to guarantee certain liberties, especially the right to hold property, which he considered a natural right (i.e. it is not given by a government or law code). Locke's perfect state has a separation of powers, and the government can only operate if it has the consent of the people. Further, citizens can overthrow a government if it does not perform its role of protecting their rights. Locke believed humans can work together for a common good. He believed that individuals are more important than institutions like absolute monarchs and the Church. He believed that all citizens are equal and the state should educate its citizens to be reasoned and tolerant citizens. More than any other thinker, perhaps, Locke's ideas not only inspired other thinkers but also influenced real-world affairs.

There were many other thinkers that influenced the Enlightenment, but space precludes discussion of them here; men like the German polymath Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (1646-1716), who believed that all knowledge was interconnected. In short, a whole body of international thinkers had already come up with the essential playing cards of the Enlightenment game before it had even started. Later philosophers now reshuffled these, selected some, and rejected others in their search for the winning hand of just how humans should live and knowledge be acquired.

10 Key Enlightenment Thinkers

Having set the foundation, then, a new wave of thinkers set about building a new edifice of Western knowledge. Disagreeing just as often they agreed with each other, all of the thinkers had the common objective of finding a better world to live in.

One of the first texts of the Enlightenment proper was the 1687 Principia Mathematica by Isaac Newton (1642-1727). Newton's book is in many ways a culmination of the Scientific Revolution, and it presents the view that the world around us can be understood, and the best tool for that purpose is science, in particular, mathematics. In his discovery of the force of gravity (and others besides), Newton showed that empiricism and deduction were the best methods to increase knowledge. Philosophers took this approach in their own work. Newton also showed that there was harmony and order in nature, which was something that philosophers sought to recreate in human society.

The French philosophe Montesquieu (1689-1757) was mostly concerned with avoiding authoritarian government. Going beyond Locke, he researched the history of politics – essentially founding political science – and famously articulated a separation of powers between the executive, legislative, and judiciary. He is another thinker who advocates the protection of individual liberty through laws, non-government interference, and toleration. To give an idea of the battle with the Establishment many enlightened thinkers had to face, Montesquieu's book The Spirit of the Laws was put on the Catholic Church's Index of Prohibited Books in 1751.

The French author Voltaire (1694-1778) "more than any other represented the Enlightenment to his contemporaries" (Chisick, 430). Less an original philosopher and more a destroyer of the old attitudes, Voltaire was critical of the power of the Catholic Church, he called for more individual liberty and religious toleration, and championed our power of reason and innate capacity for moral behaviour. Voltaire also chastised philosophers for not coming up with practical solutions to society's problems.

David Hume (1711-1776) was a Scottish philosopher, who presented a positive view of human nature – we all possess a capacity for sympathy and a natural moral sense – but a sceptical view of religion's usefulness. Hume believed knowledge comes only from experience and observation but also acknowledged there are some things we can never know such as, why is there evil in the world? Hume expanded the notion of reason to include emotion.

The Swiss thinker Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778) contributed with his mixing of Hobbes and Locke in stating that humans in a state of nature are free, equal, and have two basic instincts: a sense of self-preservation and a pity for others. The people must gather in a community based on consent and with the ultimate objective of that society being the common good. For Rousseau, the general will is a compromise where individuals sacrifice complete liberty to achieve the next best option: a restriction on liberty in order to avoid a situation of no liberty at all. Whatever the general will turns out to be, that is the right one. Rousseau does recognise the need for a system of laws and strong government to guide the general will of the people when it might inadvertently err and to protect property, for him, an unfortunate creation of society. Rousseau was also concerned with ridding society of its obvious inequalities and injustices by having the state encourage its citizens through education to adopt a less self-interested approach to community life.

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The thoughts of the Frenchman Denis Diderot (1713-1784) may be summarised as a humanistic belief in individual autonomy and the positive use of modern, non-religious, and, if possible, scientific arguments and methods to challenge age-old knowledge based on faith and superstition alone. Diderot was editor of the multivolume Encyclopedia , often described as the ' Bible of the Enlightenment' and summarised by N. Hampson as "an anthology of 'enlightened' opinions on politics, philosophy, and religion" (86). Diderot spent time advising both Catherine the Great (empress regent of Russia, 1762-1796) and Frederick the Great in Prussia (l. 1712-1786), examples of so-called 'Enlightened despots'.

Adam Smith (1723-1790) was a Scottish philosopher and economist. He believed that economics is a science and follows certain laws, what he called the 'Invisible Hand'. These laws, like any laws of nature, can be discovered through the use of reason. Smith called for free trade and limited interference in markets by governments, for which he is seen as the founder of liberal economics. A. Gottlieb describes Smith's The Wealth of Nations as "the founding text of modern economics" (198).

The German philosopher Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) challenged the dominance of empiricism and rationalism in Enlightenment thought as he believed that some knowledge must be independent of sensation, examples given include our concepts of space and time. These things are a priori knowledge, things that we can think about without ever experiencing them directly. Consequently, Kant shifted the focus of philosophy to an examination of general concepts and categories. In ethics, Kant stated that moral worth comes from a person's intentions and not from the results of their actions, which could be accidental. Good actions spring from following rules without exceptions like "never tell lies", what he called categorical imperatives. Kant also stressed the need for toleration, education, and cooperation between nations.

Edmund Burke (1729-1797) stated that any nation and its institutions, including religious ones, were a product of a rich and long history, and so one particular generation should not simply cast away such time-tested guardians of our safety and liberty. Burke also thought that intuition and imagination were just as important tools as reason in understanding our world.

Thomas Paine (1737-1809), in his pamphlet Common Sense , famously called for the American colonies to rebel against British rule. Paine denounced slavery, was opposed to any form of privilege, believed all men are equal and should have the right to vote, and he called for a system of progressive taxation that could fund a fairer society.

Here we have considered only ten enlightened thinkers, but there were, of course, many more, but, unfortunately, space precludes their mention. The trend to apply enlightened thought to practical everyday problems was continued. Cesare Beccaria (1738-1794) called for prison reform and the end of excessive punishments for criminals. Mary Wollstonecraft (1759-1797) called for equal education opportunities for men and women and stressed the benefits to society of improving the situation of women. Jeremy Bentham (1748-1832) offered a way to measure the success of new laws with his utilitarianism and its "greatest happiness of the greatest number principle". Thinking about a better world had been the priority of the Enlightenment, but as the 18th century wore on, actually making one became the new priority.

A Great Mixing of Ideas

For ideas to spread and take root, there needed to be interaction between intellectuals, and this was achieved (beyond merely physically visiting each other) by several new means. The printing press allowed not only books to be distributed relatively cheaply but also treatises, pamphlets, and magazines. Never before had so much paper been passed across Europe. Ideas, and perhaps even more importantly, critical reaction to those ideas, and so the stimulus for yet more ideas, could be spread faster than ever before.

Another means for intellectuals to interact was the rise of academies and societies, where papers were published in in-house magazines, and meetings and debates were held. People also met in coffee houses to discuss new ideas. Yet another means of spreading ideas was the salon, particularly in Paris , although soon the idea caught on everywhere. These salons, so often managed by women, further aided the transmission of ideas not only between intellectuals but also different sections of society. For the first time, perhaps, philosophers, artists, politicians, and business people were able to meet together informally. Further, there was even some mixing of different levels of society in salons since the intellectuals and artistic creators could now meet aristocrats and those with great wealth, a meeting that often led to patronage, and so yet more ideas could be created.

The Impact of the Enlightenment

A key idea of enlightened thinkers was the belief that human existence could be improved through human endeavour. Developments in science and technology as well as progressive thinking in political philosophy meant that a better standard of living could be achieved for everyone. Reforms were championed that reduced society's inequalities and diminished the impact of such negative but all-too-present phenomena as famine, disease, and poverty. Reformers called for real change in education so that more young people could attend school and become better citizens by developing their natural ability to reason. Just as individuals were to be left to pursue their own liberty and happiness in the new politics of liberalism, there developed the idea of laissez-faire economics, that is, minimising government interference to let the economy develop as the markets dictated it should. Modern liberal democracies then are based on the Enlightenment idea that some areas of life are no business of the state, a marked difference to societies of the Middle Ages.

To these general consequences of the Enlightenment, there can be added definite practical ones. As the Enlightenment specialist N. Hampson notes, the danger of studying the Enlightenment only in intellectual terms can lead to the conclusion that "the Enlightenment was everything in general and nothing in particular" (Cameron, 296). Some practical particulars include the end of the persecution of heretics, no more witches being burnt at the stake, serfdom coming to its final stage, and torture being removed from judicial processes. There were powerful movements to end slavery and the death penalty. The Church was formally separated from the state in some places, notably France. More universities and libraries were founded. Greater fairness was achieved in electoral systems.

The impact of the progress in science would be seen in the British Industrial Revolution (1760-1840) and its counterparts across the world. Many enlightened thinkers also foresaw the darker side of 'progress', such as an unrestrained individualism opposed to the common good and minority-controlled technological development that alienated large groups of people and destroyed the environment.

It was not just the intellectuals who believed they could shape a better future. It took a long time for the high ideas of intellectuals to filter down to the lower classes, but descend they eventually did. Ordinary people of all classes now considered taking direct action to improve their lot in life and the political systems in which they lived. The two clearest examples of this action for a better world are the French Revolution and the American Revolutionary War . Revolutionaries in both events were inspired by and frequently quoted the works of enlightened philosophers; their revolutionary documents like the French Bill of Rights and the US Declaration of Independence were replete with the language these philosophers were using such as "inalienable rights" and "pursuit of happiness".

Criticisms of the Enlightenment

In some areas like the arts, there was a reaction to the Enlightenment and the new dominance of reason. This reaction was seen most clearly in the movement we call Romanticism (1775-1830), where, in literature and art, emphasis was given to new forms and modes of emotional and spontaneous expression.

Other critics of the Enlightenment lament its contradictory results such as a possible overemphasis on individuals and yet also a strong state. Critics point to the rejection of cultural traditions, the reduction in value of faith and religious beliefs, that economic, scientific, and technological 'progress' is, in fact, only 'regression' in terms of our humanity, and that the Eurocentric philosophers were ignorant of what makes humans different in different places (or even the same place). In short, the Enlightenment has been blamed for all the ills of modernity, whether it be the Holocaust or the destruction of the Brazilian rainforest. One might counterargue, and plenty of historians have, that such blanket criticisms can only be made against the Enlightenment if one takes it as an entirely homogenous collection of ideas, something this article hopefully discourages.

Into the 21st century, the achievements of the Enlightenment, particularly liberty, freedom of thought, and toleration are still in existence in many places, but certainly not everywhere. As the historian H. Chisick points out these freedoms are not immune to ever-present threats like racism, political extremism, and religious fanaticism:

Apparently, the key values of the Enlightenment are not acquired once and for all. Rather, they must be appropriated by each generation and each culture in turn, or they will be submerged and lost. (160)

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Bibliography

• Chisick, Harvey. Historical Dictionary of the Enlightenment . Scarecrow Press, 2005.
• Gottlieb, Anthony. The Dream of Enlightenment. Liveright, 2016.
• Hampson, Norman. The Enlightenment. Penguin Books, 1991.
• Isaiah Berlin. Age of Enlightenment[The Mentor Philosophers Series]. New American Library, 1963.
• Law, Stephen. The Great Philosophers. Quercus, 2009.
• Popkin, R H et al. Philosophy Made Simple . Routledge, 1993.
• Robertson, Ritchie. The Enlightenment. Harper, 2021.
• Yolton, John W. & Rogers, Pat & Porter, Roy & Stafford, Barbara. A Companion to the Enlightenment . Wiley-Blackwell, 1991.

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Cartwright, M. (2024, February 29). The Enlightenment . World History Encyclopedia . Retrieved from https://www.worldhistory.org/The_Enlightenment/

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Cartwright, Mark. " The Enlightenment ." World History Encyclopedia . Last modified February 29, 2024. https://www.worldhistory.org/The_Enlightenment/.

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A Summary and Analysis of Immanuel Kant’s ‘What is Enlightenment?’

By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)

‘What is Enlightenment?’, full title ‘Answering the Question: What is Enlightenment?’, is a 1784 essay by the philosopher Immanuel Kant (1724-1804). As the longer title suggests, Kant’s essay is a response to a question (posed by a clergyman, Reverend Johann Friedrich Zöllner) concerning the nature of philosophical enlightenment .

What is enlightenment, and how best might it be achieved in a civilised society? These are the key questions Kant addresses, and poses answers to, in his essay, which can be read in full here . Below, we summarise the main points of his argument and offer an analysis of Kant’s position.

‘What is Enlightenment?’: summary

Kant begins ‘What is Enlightenment?’ by asserting that enlightenment is man’s emergence from self-imposed immaturity. He defines ‘immaturity’ here as the inability to use one’s understanding without guidance from another. Kant’s message to his readers is that they should have the courage to use their own understanding, rather than relying on another person’s guidance. That is the ‘motto’ of enlightenment.

Kant acknowledges that remaining ‘immature’ is the easy option for most people, because it’s the lazy option. People can turn to a priest to be their moral conscience for them, or a doctor to determine their diet. Women have been rendered perpetually immature by men in order to keep them meek and ignorant.

The key to enlightenment, Kant asserts, is freedom. If people are granted that, enlightenment will follow. The problem is that most people aren’t free. Even those ‘guardians’ and authority figures who keep others enslaved are themselves victim of this system, which they inherit from those who have gone before them.

Kant distinguishes between what he considers a public freedom to exercise one’s reason (and to question the way things are) and the civic duty we have to obey orders without questioning them. For instance, a soldier engaged in military action cannot afford to question the order his superior gives him: he needs to obey the order without question, because that is his ‘civic’ duty at that moment.

But off-duty, if that soldier wished to philosophise publicly (e.g., in the role of a scholar) about the flaws in the military system, he should be free to do so.

The same goes for paying taxes. One can argue in parliament, or write pamphlets and newspaper articles about whether high taxation is a good thing (i.e., exercising one’s public duty to question things), but when the taxman sends you a bill, you’d better pay up (i.e., observe your civic duty).

Kant invites us to consider whether a society of priests could set down some rules which would be binding for generations to come. He says this would be wrong, because it denies future generations the chance to question such rules, and social development would be impeded as a result. He also argues that an enlightened monarch would allow his subjects true freedom to think and do as they wish in religious matters, and the monarch should keep his nose out of such matters.

Next, Kant argues that, at the time of writing, people are not living in an ‘enlightened age’ but in an ‘age of enlightenment’: that is, we’ve not attained full enlightenment yet because the process is a long one, but progress is (gradually) being made, thanks largely to the enlightened monarch under whom Kant himself is living, Frederick the Great.

Kant concludes ‘What is Enlightenment?’ by considering the difference between civil and intellectual and spiritual freedom. Perhaps paradoxically, the less civil freedom people have, the more intellectual freedom they gain, and as their intellectual abilities grow, so the health of a particular society grows as governments can start treating people with dignity.

‘What is Enlightenment?’: analysis

‘What is Enlightenment?’ is concerned with every citizen’s public right to use their reason: everyone in a civilised society, Kant argues, should have the freedom to question the status quo and take part in a debate about how society should be governed and maintained. But such public rights and freedoms need to be balanced by the citizen’s private or civic responsibility to obey the law, and observe the status quo, when required to.

In other words, even while we discuss and philosophise about how to improve society, we have to live in the one we currently have, and civilisation would break down if people chose, for instance, to stop following laws they considered unjust or refused to pay their taxes because they disagreed with the levels of taxation.

‘What is Enlightenment?’ is fundamentally a clarion-call to people about the need to ‘dare to be wise’. What is required is not merely intellect but also a willingness to engage one’s reason and exercise that reason upon the everyday things that govern our lives: political systems, financial structures, education, trade, and much else.

Enlightenment is mankind’s coming-to-maturity, a willingness to think for oneself and emerge from an immature state where we hand over the power and responsibility to authority figures, whether they’re priests, doctors, teachers, or politicians.

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What Is the Enlightenment and How Did It Transform Politics?

Explore how calls for liberty, equality, and individual rights caused revolutions around the world, from the American Revolution to the French and Haitian Revolutions.

A painting depicts Enlightenment thinkers — including Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Montesquieu, and a bust of Voltaire — in a drawing room, gathered for a reading of Voltaire’s play “L’Orphelin de la Chine” in 1755.

Source: Anicet Charles Gabriel Lemonnier via Château de Malmaison

In 1627, officials in Cologne, Germany, accused Katharina Henot—a local postmaster and influential socialite—of witchcraft. They claimed she wielded magic and worked with the devil. The officials even accused Henot of infesting a local nunnery with a plague of caterpillars. For these alleged crimes, she was repeatedly tortured and publicly executed.

While extraordinary by today’s standards, Henot’s case was alarmingly common for the time. Between 1520 and 1700, Europe executed tens of thousands  of people—mostly women—on charges of witchcraft.

How did this happen? Surely anyone using science and reason could have deduced that such charges were ludicrous, right?

Then again, science and reason have not always prevailed.

For centuries, intellectual and political authority came from religion and other traditional beliefs. To understand the world—including phenomena such as plagues of caterpillars—people would turn to supernatural belief in witches or religious belief in Satan. To explain political systems—like why a particular family had absolute rule over a kingdom—leaders turned to religion, claiming a divine right from God. 

But during this time, a series of religious, political, and scientific upheavals began challenging the status quo, culminating in the Enlightenment.

This resource explores the history of the Enlightenment and the radical ways in which Enlightenment ideas changed society for centuries to come.

What was the Enlightenment?

The Enlightenment was an intellectual movement in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries that sought to improve society through fact-based reason and inquiry. The Enlightenment brought secular thought to Europe and reshaped the ways people understood issues such as liberty, equality, and individual rights. Today those ideas serve as the cornerstone of the world’s strongest democracies.

What events led to the Enlightenment?

Prior to the Enlightenment, the Catholic Church reigned supreme as Europe’s preeminent religious and intellectual leader. However, during the 1500s and 1600s, several events began to challenge its hold on power.

Let’s explore three of the most important historical developments:

Religious Reformation: In the year 1517, a German monk and professor of theology named Martin Luther pinned a list of ninety-five arguments, or theses, to the doors of a cathedral. Those theses accused the Catholic Church of corruption and abuse of power. Luther claimed that every individual possessed a connection with God and that the Church did not monopolize the path to salvation.

Luther’s action produced a split within the Catholic Church and encouraged individuals to challenge the institution’s previously unquestionable authority. Thanks to rising literacy rates and the invention of the printing press just decades prior, Luther’s message reached a wide audience. The Bible was now being printed in the vernacular, and people began reading it for themselves rather than having priests explain it to them.

Political Upheaval: Europe reached a state of near-constant conflict in the 1500s, as leaders fought over land, resources, and competing interpretations of Christianity. An entire century of religious wars culminated in one of history’s deadliest conflicts: The Thirty Years’ War (1618–48). 

Two major consequences emerged from that conflict. First, the resulting peace helped establish the bedrock principle of international relations known as sovereignty —the concept that guarantees countries get to control what happens within their borders and prohibits meddling in another country’s domestic affairs. Second, it produced further criticism of the continent’s political and religious leaders after decades of combat had claimed millions of lives.

Scientific Revolution: In the early 1600s, English philosopher Francis Bacon revolutionized intellectual thought by demonstrating that scientific discovery could not be achieved through faith and religion but rather rigorous research and observation. His scientific method set the gold standard for future research. It also coincided with a wave of breakthroughs in the fields of astronomy, mathematics, and physics by scientists such as Galileo Galilei, Johannes Kepler, and Isaac Newton.

Although many of those intellectuals were devout Christians who believed that science and religion were easily reconcilable, religious authorities nonetheless viewed those discoveries as threats to their power. Officials, for instance, placed Galileo under house arrest for his writings on how the earth revolved around the sun, which undermined the teachings of the Catholic Church.

Despite protestations from the Church, this era—known as the Scientific Revolution—led to a flourishing of empirical thought in Europe.

How did the Enlightenment change society?

On the heels of the Scientific Revolution came the Enlightenment—a movement that sought to apply similar methods of inquiry and discovery to the fields of law, religion, economics, and politics. Enlightenment scholars believed that such thinking could produce societies that were more equitable, just, and not beholden to the unchecked power of monarchs and religious leaders.

Let’s explore five influential ideas that emerged from the Enlightenment in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries:  

Opposition to Absolute Monarchy: Intellectuals such as Jean-Jacques Rousseau and John Locke introduced the idea that no ruler should have unlimited power. Both argued that leaders derived their authority not from God but from the people. And Locke claimed that if the people opposed their leader, they had the right to replace their government with one that respected their rights.

Notably, few Enlightenment thinkers called for democracy as people understand the term today. Many intellectuals such as Voltaire believed that monarchy was the best way to advance social, political, and economic goals. However, the idea that citizens could hold their leaders accountable was revolutionary.

Separation of Powers: The Baron de Montesquieu argued that power should not be concentrated in just one person. Instead, he called for a balanced distribution of power between executive, legislative, and judicial authorities.

Enlightenment thinkers similarly called for a separation of church and state—the idea that government should not interfere in religious affairs, and vice versa. Writers such as Voltaire were highly critical of religion’s outsize influence in European policymaking, which had contributed to generations of conflict on the continent.

Liberty and Individual Rights: John Locke introduced the idea that all men possess natural rights to life, liberty, and property. Those rights, he argued, were inalienable, meaning they could not be taken away or constrained by law.

Calls for individual rights contributed to increased religious tolerance in Europe as various governments began providing religious minorities greater freedom to worship.

Equality:  Pre-Enlightenment Europe was highly unequal, with powerful individuals known as the nobility possessing exclusive rights to own land, avoid taxes, and hold privileged jobs, while the poorest members of society struggled to survive. The Enlightenment challenged this arrangement, as thinkers like Locke argued that all men were created equal and that no one should be born into more power than another.

However, many intellectuals believed that such equality only applied to white men. Rousseau saw groups such as women, ethnic minorities, and enslaved people as inherently inferior to white men. Nevertheless, marginalized groups often used those same Enlightenment arguments to advance their own cases for equality. English thinkers such as Mary Astell and Mary Wollstonecraft wrote extensively in support of women’s access to the same rights and opportunities as men.

Free-Market Capitalism :  Scottish economist Adam Smith railed against the era’s prevailing economic policies such as mercantilism, in which each country sought to produce as much as possible domestically and import as little as possible from abroad. Through careful observation and research, Smith came to introduce groundbreaking economic theories —including supply and demand, free-market capitalism, comparative advantage, and minimal regulations —arguing that countries become richer when they make what they are best at producing and import what they are not. Those ideas continue to form the backbone of international trade .

Where did the Enlightenment inspire revolution?

As Enlightenment texts spread across the Atlantic, their ideas inspired revolutions .

American Revolution:  Political and intellectual leaders in Britain’s thirteen American colonies used Enlightenment values to justify their declaration of independence in 1776. Following the American Revolution , those Enlightenment principles—including liberty, equality, and individual rights—became enshrined in the U.S. Constitution, even though many rights were initially reserved mostly for landowning white men. It would take nearly a century for the United States to abolish the institution of slavery and several decades longer to extend the right to vote to women.

French Revolution:  News of the United States’ Enlightenment-inspired revolution ricocheted around the world. In 1788, Thomas Jefferson—then the U.S. minister to France—wrote to George Washington, noting that France “has been awakened by our revolution, they feel their strength, they are enlightened, their lights are spreading, and they will not retrograde.” Indeed, the following year France experienced its own revolution, which ultimately toppled the country’s monarchy.

Haitian Revolution:  In 1791, the inhabitants of France’s most profitable colony—Haiti, then known as Saint-Domingue—began demanding their own right to liberty and equality. Enslaved Haitians outnumbered slaveholders ten to one on the island. After a thirteen-year war, the Haitians defeated the French and established the first Black-led republic. European powers, however, did not immediately recognize Haiti as an independent country and instead forced Haiti to pay reparations to France over more than a hundred years.

Latin American Revolutions:  In the early 1800s, Enlightenment-educated leaders such as Simón Bolívar led movements for independence in Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, and Venezuela. However, while revolutionaries pledged to eliminate the colonial era’s racial and social hierarchies, independence rarely brought about equality. Instead, leaders frequently perpetuated the same unequal, undemocratic systems that benefited the landowning elite.

Across Latin America—as in the United States, France, and Haiti—Enlightenment values began the march toward fairer and more equitable societies, but it would take generations for many countries to begin fully realizing those ideals.

Where do we see Enlightenment ideas today? 

More than three centuries after John Locke wrote about the relationship between people and their government, the core tenets of his writing and those of his Enlightenment contemporaries continue to shape society. Many of the world’s strongest democracies, for example, actively support liberty, equality, and individual rights through their laws and norms .

But just as leaders did not universally accept Enlightenment ideas in Locke’s time, the same holds true today.

Many societies—above all, authoritarian countries —actively reject some or most of the Enlightenment’s founding principles. Governments in countries such as China, Egypt, Iran, North Korea, Russia, and Saudi Arabia quash civil liberties, oppose free and fair elections, reject perceived checks to their power, and—in certain instances—ignore separation of church and state.

Enlightenment ideas have even come under attack in democratic countries such as Brazil, Hungary, the Philippines, and Turkey. Leaders there have attempted to increase their power by undermining political freedoms and civil liberties in a trend known as democratic backsliding . As a result, the world has become less free and less democratic every year between 2005 and 2019.

The United States, as well, has long struggled to embrace all tenets of the Enlightenment. Inequality and systemic racism remain significant challenges, and sharp disparities persist in access to housing, wealth, education, and health care. Further, many in the United States dismiss facts and scientific inquiry; former President Donald J. Trump, for example, repeatedly sidelined top scientific experts while endorsing unproven COVID-19 medical treatments. And on January 6, 2021, the country’s free and fair elections came under direct assault when armed rioters—many with white supremacist ties—stormed the U.S. Capitol seeking to overturn the results of the presidential race.

Although trials for witchcraft are no longer a normal part of life around the world, many countries still have a long way to go before fully embodying the founding principles of the Enlightenment.

The Age of Enlightenment, an introduction

Joseph Wright of Derby, A Philosopher Giving a Lecture at the Orrery , c. 1766, oil on canvas, 147.2 x 203.2 cm ( Derby Museums and Art Gallery, England )

In A Philosopher Giving a Lecture at the Orrery by Joseph Wright of Derby we see an orrery— a mechanical model of the solar system. In the center is a gas light which represents the sun (though the child who stands in the foreground with his back to us block this from our view); the arcs represent the orbits of the planets. Wright concentrates on the faces of the figures to create a compelling narrative.

With paintings like these, Wright invented a new subject: scenes of experiments and new machinery. This was the beginning of the Industrial Revolution (think cities, railroads, steam power, gas and then electric light, factories, and machines). Wright’s fascination with light, strange shadows, and darkness, reveals the influence of Baroque art .

Jean-Antoine Houdon, Voltaire , 1778, marble, 36.5 x 21.3 x 21.3 cm ( National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. )

Enlightenment

Toward the middle of the eighteenth century a shift in thinking occurred. This shift is known as the Enlightenment. You have probably already heard of some important Enlightenment figures, like Rousseau, Diderot and Voltaire. It is helpful I think to think about the word “enlighten” here—the idea of shedding light on something, illuminating it, making it clear.

The thinkers of the Enlightenment, influenced by the scientific revolutions of the previous century, believed in shedding the light of science and reason on the world in order to question traditional ideas and ways of doing things. The scientific revolution (based on empirical observation, and not on metaphysics or spirituality) gave the impression that the universe behaved according to universal and unchanging laws (think of Newton here). This provided a model for looking rationally on human institutions as well as nature.

Reason and equality

Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Du contract social ou Principes du droit politique (or The Social Contract or Principles of Political Right ), 1762, France (photo: R.A. Leigh )

Rousseau, for example, began to question the idea of the divine right of Kings. In The Social Contract , he wrote that the King does not, in fact, receive his power from God, but rather from the general will of the people. This, of course, implies that “the people” can also take away that power.

The Enlightenment thinkers also discussed other ideas that are the founding principles of any democracy—the idea of the importance of the individual who can reason for himself, the idea of equality under the law, and the idea of natural rights. The Enlightenment was a period of profound optimism, a sense that with science and reason—and the consequent shedding of old superstitions—human beings and human society would improve.

You can probably tell already that the Enlightenment was anti-clerical; it was, for the most part, opposed to traditional Catholicism. Instead, the Enlightenment thinkers developed a way of understanding the universe called Deism—the idea, more or less, is that there is a God, but that this God is not the figure of the Old and New Testaments, actively involved in human affairs. He is more like a watchmaker who, once he makes the watch and winds it, has nothing more to do with it.

The Enlightenment, the monarchy, and the French Revolution

The Enlightenment encouraged criticism of the corruption of the monarchy (at this point King Louis XVI), and the aristocracy. Enlightenment thinkers condemned Rococo art for being immoral and indecent, and called for a new kind of art that would be moral instead of immoral, and teach people right and wrong.

Louis-Michel van Loo, Diderot , 1767, oil on canvas, 81 x 65 cm ( Musée du Louvre, Paris )

Denis Diderot, Enlightenment philosopher, writer and art critic, wrote that the aim of art was “to make virtue attractive, vice odious, ridicule forceful; that is the aim of every honest man who takes up the pen, the brush or the chisel.” [1]

These new ways of thinking, combined with a financial crisis (the country was bankrupt) and poor harvests left many ordinary French people both angry and hungry. In 1789, the French Revolution began. In its initial stage, the revolutionaries asked only for a constitution that would limit the power of the king.

Ultimately the idea of a constitution failed, and the revolution entered a more radical stage. In 1792, King Louis XVI and his wife, Marie Antoinette, were deposed and ultimately beheaded along with thousands of other aristocrats believed to be loyal to the monarchy.

[1] Denis Diderot, Essai sur la peinture , 1765.

Bibliography

The Enlightenment from The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

The Enlightenment from Professor Paul Brian at Washington State University

Images for teaching and learning

Smarthistory images for teaching and learning:.

[flickr_tags user_id=”82032880@N00″ tags=”orrery,”]

More Smarthistory images…

Important fundamentals

Read more about the enlightenment and the end of empires in Europe in a  Reframing Art History chapter

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The Enlightenment: A Very Short Introduction

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A foundational moment in the history of modern European thought, the Enlightenment continues to be a reference point for philosophers, scholars, and opinion-formers. Enlightenment: A Very Short Introduction offers a concise historical introduction to the Enlightenment as an intellectual movement of eighteenth-century Europe. Discussing its intellectual achievements, it also explores how its supporters exploited new ways of communicating their ideas to a wider public, creating a new ‘public sphere’ for critical discussion of the moral, economic, and political issues facing their societies. But what is the relationship between the historical Enlightenment and the idea of ‘Enlightenment’, and can these two understandings be reconciled?

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The Enlightenment

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The Enlightenment was both a movement and a state of mind. The term represents a phase in the intellectual history of Europe, but it also serves to define programs of reform in which influential literati, inspired by a common faith in the possibility of a better world, outlined specific targets for criticism and proposals for action. The special significance of the Enlightenment lies in its combination of principle and pragmatism . Consequently, it still engenders controversy about its character and achievements. Two main questions and, relating to each, two schools of thought can be identified. Was the Enlightenment the preserve of an elite, centred on Paris, or a broad current of opinion that the philosophes , to some extent, represented and led? Was it primarily a French movement, having therefore a degree of coherence , or an international phenomenon, having as many facets as there were countries affected? Although most modern interpreters incline to the latter view in both cases, there is still a case for the French emphasis, given the genius of a number of the philosophes and their associates. Unlike other terms applied by historians to describe a phenomenon that they see more clearly than could contemporaries, it was used and cherished by those who believed in the power of mind to liberate and improve. Bernard de Fontenelle , popularizer of the scientific discoveries that contributed to the climate of optimism, wrote in 1702 anticipating “a century which will become more enlightened day by day, so that all previous centuries will be lost in darkness by comparison.” Reviewing the experience in 1784, Immanuel Kant saw an emancipation from superstition and ignorance as having been the essential characteristic of the Enlightenment.

Before Kant’s death the spirit of the siècle des Lumières (literally, “century of the Enlightened”) had been spurned by Romantic idealists, its confidence in man’s sense of what was right and good mocked by revolutionary terror and dictatorship, and its rationalism decried as being complacent or downright inhumane. Even its achievements were critically endangered by the militant nationalism of the 19th century. Yet much of the tenor of the Enlightenment did survive in the liberalism, toleration, and respect for law that have persisted in European society. There was therefore no abrupt end or reversal of enlightened values.

Nor had there been such a sudden beginning as is conveyed by the critic Paul Hazard’s celebrated aphorism: “One moment the French thought like Bossuet; the next moment like Voltaire.” The perceptions and propaganda of the philosophes have led historians to locate the Age of Reason within the 18th century or, more comprehensively, between the two revolutions—the English of 1688 and the French of 1789—but in conception it should be traced to the humanism of the Renaissance , which encouraged scholarly interest in Classical texts and values. It was formed by the complementary methods of the Scientific Revolution , the rational and the empirical . Its adolescence belongs to the two decades before and after 1700 when writers such as Jonathan Swift were employing “the artillery of words” to impress the secular intelligentsia created by the growth in affluence, literacy, and publishing. Ideas and beliefs were tested wherever reason and research could challenge traditional authority.

What Is Enlightenment?

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Summary: “what is enlightenment”.

The philosopher Immanuel Kant published “What Is Enlightenment?” (full title, “An Answer to the Question: What Is Enlightenment?”) in 1784. This guide uses the translation by Ted Humphrey from the volume Perpetual Peace and Other Essays , published by Hackett in 1983. All quotations will be cited with the page number from this volume followed by the page number from the official Akademie collection of Kant’s works. Most publishers will put the latter in the margins of the text for ease of reference for readers using different editions. (The essay appears in volume eight of the collected works, so each marginal citation will be formatted “8:marginal #.”)

Kant submitted his essay, which is now recognized as one of the key texts of the Enlightenment , to the Berlinische Monatsschrift ( Berlin Monthly ) in response to an open invitation to reply to the question, “What is enlightenment?” Kant gives his answer from the outset: “ Enlightenment is man’s emergence from his self-imposed immaturity ” (41, 8:35). (Kant defaults to masculine terms like “man” and “mankind” as well as masculine pronouns throughout, both because of convention and because of the gender bias of his time; this guide updates the language to reflect greater gender neutrality.) Kant suggests that the unenlightened have not developed the ability of Thinking for Oneself or making decisions based on one’s own reason. In this, they are much like children who have not yet developed the full capacity to reason. This state is self-imposed, however, because it is the result of “laziness and cowardice” rather than lack of capacity (41, 8:35). Enlightenment’s “motto,” then, is “ Sapere Aude! ‘Have courage to use your own understanding!’” (41, 8:35).

Kant observes that when people gladly remain unenlightened, their thinking and their beliefs—and hence their decisions—are easily controlled by others, who install themselves as their “guardians” or external authorities. Because these authorities encourage people to remain unenlightened, it is difficult for an individual to achieve enlightenment. Enlightenment is more likely at the collective level—i.e., for the public. Kant says that the only prerequisite for the enlightenment of the public is the freedom to make public use of one’s reason.

Kant distinguishes public uses of reason from private uses. The public use of reason, he says, is “the use that anyone as a scholar makes of reason before the entire literate world ” (42, 8:37). In other words, people reason publicly when they put forth positions and provide arguments for them in the public sphere—what Kant elsewhere calls Freedom of the Pen . Private uses of reason, on the other hand, are those that people employ in more specific contexts, such as their jobs. To illustrate this, Kant employs the examples of a member of the military, a tax-paying citizen, and a clergyman throughout the essay. He acknowledges that private uses of reason can be subject to all sorts of restrictions, while public uses of reason must be unrestricted for the public to achieve enlightenment. For instance, the military officer must obey the orders of his superiors without question; however, the same officer, acting as a scholar rather than as a member of the military, must also be able to publicly criticize the orders and the strategies of those above him in the military hierarchy (e.g., by writing an editorial in a newspaper).

Kant devotes the most attention to the example of the clergyman because he sees enlightenment in the arena of religion and spiritual well-being as the most important. The latter half of the essay, then, turns to an argument against any government interference in free speech or free thinking on religious matters. Kant says that it is never legitimate to restrict public discussion or criticism of religious beliefs and practices, advocating a form of The Separation of Church and State . Even those in the clergy, who must follow the dictates of their church when acting as clerics, must be able to publicly criticize those same dictates.

Kant states that while the public has some progress to make before it can be considered enlightened, he and his contemporaries nevertheless “live in an age of enlightenment” (44, 8:40). Rulers who recognizes the importance of free discussion of religious matters make this possible, and Kant praises Prussia’s King Frederick the Great for being the first monarch to allow for completely free discussion of religious and spiritual issues. Thus, Kant says, the time of his writing “is the age of enlightenment, the century of Frederick” (45, 8:40).

Kant closes on a confident and hopeful note: The free public use of reason under Frederick the Great is sure to bring about the public’s enlightenment, even though other freedoms may be strictly curtailed. History has put in place the conditions for humanity to begin thinking for itself, which will inevitably improve government institutions and bring about a more just republic.

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Home — Essay Samples — Philosophy — Enlightenment — The Age of Enlightenment

The Age of Enlightenment

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Published: Nov 19, 2018

Words: 710 | Pages: 2 | 4 min read

Works Cited

• Appleby, J. H., Hunt, L., & Jacob, M. C. (2017). Telling the truth about history. W. W. Norton & Company.
• Darnton, R. (2018). The business of enlightenment: A publishing history of the Encyclopédie, 1775-1800. Harvard University Press.
• Gay, P. (2019). The Enlightenment: The rise of modern paganism. W. W. Norton & Company.
• Israel, J. I. (2019). Enlightenment contested: Philosophy, modernity, and the emancipation of man, 1670-1752. Oxford University Press.
• Kramnick, I. (Ed.). (1995). The Portable Enlightenment Reader. Penguin Books.
• Outram, D. (2019). The Enlightenment. Cambridge University Press.
• Porter, R. (2001). Enlightenment: Britain and the creation of the modern world. Penguin Books.
• Schmidt, J. D. (2019). The Enlightenment: A sourcebook and reader. Routledge.
• Vovk, Y. (2019). The intellectual origins of the European Enlightenment. Cambridge University Press.
• Zinman, C. (2019). Philosophy, science, and religion in England, 1640-1700. Cambridge University Press.

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Late Modern Philosophy

3.4: enlightenment philosophy and thought.

In 1784, a Prussian philosopher named Immanuel Kant published a short essay entitled  What is Enlightenment?  He was responding to nearly a century of philosophical, scientific, and technical advances in Central and Western Europe that, he felt, had culminated in his own lifetime in a more enlightened and just age. According to Kant, Enlightenment was all about the courage to think for one’s self, to question the accepted notions of any field of human knowledge rather than relying on a belief imposed by an outside authority. Likewise, he wrote, ideas were now exchanged between thinkers in a network of learning that itself provided a kind of intellectual momentum. Kant’s point was that, more than ever before, thinkers of various kinds were breaking new ground not only in using the scientific method to discover new things about the physical world, but in applying rational inquiry toward improving human life and the organization of human society. While Kant’s essay probably overstated the Utopian qualities of the thought of his era, he was right that it did correspond to a major shift in how educated Europeans thought about the world and the human place in it.

Following Kant, historians refer to the intellectual movement of the eighteenth century as the Enlightenment. Historians now tend to reject the idea that the Enlightenment was a single, self-conscious movement of thinkers, but they still (usually) accept that there were indeed innovative new themes of thought running through much of the philosophical, literary, and technical writing of the period. Likewise, new forms of media and new forums of discussion came of age in the eighteenth century, creating a larger and better-informed public than ever before in European history.

The Enlightenment was a movement that lasted about one hundred years, neatly corresponding to most of the eighteenth century; convenient dates for it are from the  Glorious Revolution  in Britain to the beginning of the  French Revolution : 1688 – 1789. The central concern of the Enlightenment was applying rational thought to almost every aspect of human existence: not just science, but philosophy, morality, and society. Along with those philosophical themes, central to the Enlightenment was the emergence of new forms of media and new ways in which people exchanged information, along with new “sensibilities” regarding what was proper and desirable in social conduct and politics.

We owe to the Enlightenment fundamental modern beliefs. Enlightenment thinkers embraced the idea that scientific progress was limitless. They argued that all citizens should be equal before the law. They claimed that the best forms of government were those with rational laws oriented to serve the public interest. In a major break from the past, they increasingly claimed that there was a real, physical universe that could be understood using the methods of science, in contrast to the false, made-up universe of “magic” suitable only for myths and storytelling. In short, Enlightenment thinkers proposed ideas that were novel at the time, but were eventually accepted by almost everyone in Europe (and many other places, not least the inhabitants of the colonies of the Americas).

The Enlightenment also introduced themes of thought that undermined traditional religious beliefs, at least in the long run. Perhaps the major theme of Enlightenment thought that ran contrary to almost every form of religious practice at the time was the rejection of “superstitions,” things that simply could not happen according to science (such a virgin giving birth to a child, or wine turning into blood during Communion). Most Enlightenment thinkers argued that the “real” natural universe was governed by natural laws, all watched over by a benevolent but completely remote “supreme being” – this was essentially the same as the Deism that had emerged from the Scientific Revolution. While few Enlightenment thinkers were outright atheists, almost all of them decried many church practices and what they perceived as the ignorance and injustice behind church (especially Catholic) laws.

The Enlightenment was also against “tyranny,” which meant the arbitrary rule of a monarch indifferent to the welfare of his or her subjects. Almost no Enlightenment thinkers openly rejected monarchy as a form of government – indeed, some Enlightenment thinkers befriended powerful kings and queens – but they roundly condemned cruelty and selfishness among individual monarchs. The perfect state was, in the eyes of most Enlightenment thinkers, one with an “enlightened” monarch at its head, presiding over a set of reasonable laws. Many Enlightenment thinkers thus looked to Great Britain, since 1689 ruled by a monarch who agreed to its written constitution and worked closely with an elected parliament, as the best extant model of enlightened rule.

Behind both the scientific worldview and the rejection of tyranny was a focus on the human mind’s capacity for reason. Reason is the mental faculty that takes sensory data and orders it into thoughts and ideas. The basic argument that underwrote the thought of the Enlightenment is that reason is universal and inherent to humans, and that if society could strip away the pernicious patterns of tradition, superstition, and ignorance, humankind would arrive naturally at a harmonious society. Thus, almost all of the major thinkers of the Enlightenment tried to get to the bottom of just that task: what is standing in the way of reason, and how can humanity become more reasonable?

One of the major causes of the Enlightenment was the  Scientific Revolution . It cannot be overstated how important the work of scientists was to the thinkers of the Enlightenment, because works like Newton’s  Mathematical Principles  demonstrated the existence of eternal, immutable laws of nature (ones that may or may not have anything to do with God) that were completely rational and understandable by humans. Indeed, in many ways the Enlightenment begins with Newton’s publication of the  Principles  in 1687.

Having thus established that the universe was rational, one of the major themes of the Enlightenment was the search for equally immutable and equally rational laws that applied to everything else in nature, most importantly  human  nature. How do humans learn? How might government be designed to ensure the most felicitous environment for learning and prosperity? If humans are capable of reason, why do they deviate from reasonable behavior so frequently?

Among the other causes of the Enlightenment, perhaps the most important was the significant growth of the urban literate classes, most notably what was called in France the  bourgeoisie : the mercantile middle class. Ever since the Renaissance era, elites increasingly acquired at least basic literacy, but by the eighteenth century even artisans and petty merchants in the cities of Central and Western Europe sent their children (especially boys) to schools for at least a few years. There was a real reading public by the eighteenth century that eagerly embraced the new ideas of the Enlightenment and provided a book market for both the official, copyrighted works of Enlightenment philosophy and pirated, illegal ones. That same reading public also eagerly embraced the quintessential new form of fiction of the eighteenth century: the novel, with the reading of novels becoming a major leisure activity of the period.

Thus, the Enlightenment thought took place in the midst of what historians call the “growth of the public sphere.” Newspapers, periodicals, and cheap books became very common during the eighteenth century, which in turn helped the ongoing growth of literacy rates. Simultaneously, there was a full-scale shift away from the sacred languages to the vernaculars (i.e. from Latin to English, Spanish, French, etc.)., which in turn helped to start the spread of the modern state-sponsored vernaculars as spoken languages in regions far from royal capitals. For the first time, large numbers of people acquired at least a basic knowledge of the official language of their state rather than using only their local dialect. Those official languages allowed the transmission of ideas across entire kingdoms. For example, by the time the French Revolution began in the late 1780s, an entire generation of men and women was capable of expressing shared ideas about justice and politics in the official French tongue.

There were various social forums and spaces in which groups of self-styled “enlightened” men and women gathered to discuss the new ideas of the movement. The most significant of these were coffee houses in England and  salons  in France and Central Europe. Coffee houses, unlike their present-day analogs, charged an entry fee but then provided unlimited coffee to their patrons. Those patrons were from various social classes, and would gather together to discuss the latest ideas and read the periodicals provided by the coffee house (all while becoming increasingly caffeinated). Salons, which were common in the major cities of France and Germany, were more aristocratic gatherings in which major philosophers themselves would often read from their latest works, with the assembled group then engaging in debate and discussion. Salons were noteworthy for being led by women in most cases; aristocratic, educated women were thought to be the best moderators of learned discussion by most Enlightenment thinkers, men and women alike.

One of the best-known salons, run by Marie Thérèse Rodet Geoffrin, seated on the right. All of the men pictured are their actual likeness. Two are of particular note: seated under the marble bust is Jean le Rond D’Alembert, noted below, and the bust is of Voltaire (also described below), whose work is being read to the gathering in the picture.

Outside of the gatherings at coffee houses and salons, the ideas and themes of the Enlightenment reached much of the reading public through the easy availability of cheap print, and it is also clear that even regular artisans were conversant in many Enlightenment ideas (to cite a single example, one French glassworker, Jacques-Louis Menetra, left a memoir in which he demonstrated his own command of the ideas of the period and even claimed to have chatted over drinks with the great Enlightenment philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau). The major thinkers of the Enlightenment considered themselves to be part of a “republic of letters,” similar to the “republic of science” that played such a role in the Scientific Revolution. They wrote voluminous correspondence and often sent one another unpublished manuscripts. Thus, from the thinkers themselves participating in the republic of letters down to artisans trading pirated copies of enlightenment works, the new ideas of the period permeated much of European society.

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What Is Enlightenment?

By immanuel kant.

• What Is Enlightenment? Summary

Kant begins his essay by defining enlightenment as humanity’s emergence from immaturity. Immaturity is the inability to think without external help. Such immaturity is self-imposed, as its cause lies not in a lack of capacity, but in fear. He coins a motto for the Enlightenment: “Sapere aude!” (Latin for "dare to know") which he glosses as, “Have the courage to use your own understanding!” Laziness and cowardice are the two major obstacles to enlightenment. Kant claims that while people are naturally endowed with the capacity for intellectual maturity, they prefer the ease of being led. People rely on authorities to think and make decisions, making it easy for societal guardians to control and exploit them.

After defining enlightenment and mentioning its barriers, Kant goes on to suggest possible paths to achieving it. Kant recognizes the difficulty of freeing oneself from immaturity through personal effort. He also dismisses a rebellion against the guardians, as this only ends oppression temporarily. He suggests that real enlightenment arises from a collective effort, and it happens slowly. To achieve enlightenment, nothing is needed besides freedom. Once society is granted freedom, the public will enlighten itself. Initially, a few individual pioneers will come to think independently, then they will spark enlightenment among the rest of the society.

Kant finetunes his discussion of freedom by distinguishing between the public and private uses of reason. The public use of reason refers to people’s free expression of their opinions in public, in writing. The private use of reason relates to people’s specific social roles, and particularly, the performance of their occupational duties. He argues that the public use of reason should be given complete freedom, allowing citizens to debate and argue on all social matters, whereas the private use of reason should be restricted to maintain public order. For instance, while a soldier must obey orders, he should be able to question them in writing addressed to the general public; he questions not in his capacity as a soldier, but as a “scholar.” Enlightenment, as Kant sees it, is an intrinsic part of human progress. Any attempts to hinder enlightenment violate fundamental human rights.

Kant believes that the society of his time is an “age of enlightenment” but not an “enlightened age.” This means that the restraints on free thinking are slowly being lifted, but not entirely. He approves of enlightened monarchs such as Frederick the Great of Prussia, who grants religious freedom to his subjects. An enlightened ruler, in Kant’s view, doesn't impose religious beliefs on his people. Instead, he allows freedom of religion and speech. Only such a ruler can lead his people out of immaturity. When the ruler permits freedom in all areas, including art, science, and religion, people can naturally come out of barbarism themselves.

Kant concludes by emphasizing the urgency of religious freedom. This is because authorities are less interested in controlling thoughts in areas like arts and sciences. He warns that restrictions on religious freedom are the most harmful of all. An enlightened ruler sees the value of intellectual freedom. Such a ruler recognizes that freedom of speech threatens neither society nor the ruler’s sovereignty. For enlightenment to spread, a ruler must be both enlightened, allowing freedom of speech, and at the same time equipped to maintain order with a strong army. The spirit of this kind of leadership is exemplified by the motto “Argue as much as you like, and about what you like, but obey !” Eventually, the influence of enlightenment will extend to governmental systems, reshaping the social sphere, and leading to a state that respects the autonomy of its citizens.

What Is Enlightenment? Questions and Answers

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What is Enlightenment?

Kant begins with a simple explanation of what constitutes being enlightened: throwing off the shackles of self-imposed immaturity. He then follows with a more precise definition of immaturity: the lack of an ability to take what one has come to...

Industrial Revolution

This is a great question but unfortunately this is only a short answer space.

What are the vices that keep men from entering an enlightened state?

Study Guide for What Is Enlightenment?

What Is Enlightenment? study guide contains a biography of Immanuel Kant, literature essays, quiz questions, major themes, characters, and a full summary and analysis.

• About What Is Enlightenment?
• Character List

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• Introduction