The 

Age of Enlightenment, or simply the Enlightenment was an intellectual and philosophical

movement that dominated Europe in the 17th and 18th centuries with global influences and
effects. The Enlightenment included a range of ideas centered on the value of human happiness, the
pursuit of knowledge obtained by means of reason and the evidence of the senses, and ideals such
as liberty, progress, toleration, fraternity, and constitutional government.
The Enlightenment was preceded by the Scientific Revolution and the work of Francis Bacon,
among others. Some date the beginning of the Enlightenment back to the publication of René
Descartes' Discourse on the Method in 1637, featuring his famous dictum, Cogito, ergo sum ("I think,
therefore I am"). Others cite the publication of Isaac Newton's Principia Mathematica (1687) as the
culmination of the Scientific Revolution and the beginning of the Enlightenment. European historians
traditionally date its beginning with the death of Louis XIV of France in 1715 and its end with the
1789 outbreak of the French Revolution. Many historians now date the end of the Enlightenment as
the start of the 19th century, with the latest proposed year being the death of Immanuel Kant in
1804.
Philosophers and scientists of the period widely circulated their ideas through meetings at scientific
academies, Masonic lodges, literary salons, coffeehouses and in printed books, journals,
and pamphlets. The ideas of the Enlightenment undermined the authority of the monarchy and
the Catholic Church and paved the way for the political revolutions of the 18th and 19th centuries. A
variety of 19th-century movements, including liberalism, communism, and neoclassicism, trace their
intellectual heritage to the Enlightenment.
The central doctrines of the Enlightenment were individual liberty and religious tolerance, in
opposition to an absolute monarchy and the fixed dogmas of the Church. The principles of sociability
and utility also played an important role in circulating knowledge useful to the improvement of society
at large. The Enlightenment was marked by an increasing awareness of the relationship between the
mind and the everday media of the world, and by an emphasis on the scientific
method and reductionism, along with increased questioning of religious orthodoxy—an attitude
captured by Immanuel Kant's essay Answering the Question: What is Enlightenment, where the
phrase Sapere aude (Dare to know) can be found.
The Age of Enlightenment was preceded by and closely associated with the Scientific
Revolution. Earlier philosophers whose work influenced the Enlightenment included Francis
Bacon and René Descartes. Some of the major figures of the Enlightenment included Cesare
Beccaria, Denis Diderot, David Hume, Immanuel Kant, Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, John
Locke, Montesquieu, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Adam Smith, Hugo Grotius, Baruch Spinoza,
and Voltaire.
One particularly influential Enlightenment publication was the Encyclopédie (Encyclopedia).
Published between 1751 and 1772 in thirty-five volumes, it was compiled by Denis Diderot, Jean le
Rond d'Alembert, and a team of 150 other intellectuals. The Encyclopédie helped in spreading the
ideas of the Enlightenment across Europe and beyond. Other landmark publications of the
Enlightenment included Voltaire's Letters on the English (1733) and Dictionnaire
philosophique (Philosophical Dictionary; 1764); Hume's A Treatise of Human Nature (1740);
Montesquieu's The Spirit of the Laws (1748); Rousseau's Discourse on Inequality (1754) and The
Social Contract (1762); Adam Smith's The Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759) and The Wealth of
Nations (1776); and Kant's Critique of Pure Reason (1781).
Enlightenment thought was deeply influential in the political realm. European rulers such
as Catherine II of Russia, Joseph II of Austria and Frederick II of Prussia tried to apply
Enlightenment thought on religious and political tolerance, which became known as enlightened
absolutism. Many of the major political and intellectual figures behind the American
Revolution associated themselves closely with the Enlightenment: Benjamin Franklin visited Europe
repeatedly and contributed actively to the scientific and political debates there and brought the
newest ideas back to Philadelphia; Thomas Jefferson closely followed European ideas and later
incorporated some of the ideals of the Enlightenment into the Declaration of Independence;
and James Madison incorporated these ideals into the United States Constitution during its framing
in 1787. The ideas of the Enlightenment also played a major role in inspiring the French Revolution,
which began in 1789.
Francis Bacon's empiricism and René Descartes' rationalist philosophy laid the foundation for
enlightenment thinking.] Descartes attempt to construct the sciences on a
secure metaphysical foundation was not as successful as his method of doubt applied in philosophic
areas leading to a dualistic doctrine of mind and matter. His skepticism was refined by John
Locke's Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1690) and David Hume's writings in the 1740s.
His dualism was challenged by Spinoza's uncompromising assertion of the unity of matter in
his Tractatus (1670) and Ethics (1677).
According to Jonathan Israel, these laid down two distinct lines of Enlightenment thought: first, the
moderate variety, following Descartes, Locke and Christian Wolff, which sought accommodation
between reform and the traditional systems of power and faith, and second, the Radical
Enlightenment, inspired by the philosophy of Spinoza, advocating democracy, individual liberty,
freedom of expression, and eradication of religious authority. The moderate variety tended to
be deistic, whereas the radical tendency separated the basis of morality entirely from theology. Both
lines of thought were eventually opposed by a conservative Counter-Enlightenment, which sought a
return to faith.
In the mid-18th century, Paris became the center of philosophic and scientific activity challenging
traditional doctrines and dogmas. The philosophical movement was led by Voltaire and Jean-
Jacques Rousseau, who argued for a society based upon reason as in ancient Greece rather than
faith and Catholic doctrine, for a new civil order based on natural law, and for science based on
experiments and observation. The political philosopher Montesquieu introduced the idea of
a separation of powers in a government, a concept which was enthusiastically adopted by the
authors of the United States Constitution. While the philosophes of the French Enlightenment were
not revolutionaries and many were members of the nobility, their ideas played an important part in
undermining the legitimacy of the Old Regime and shaping the French Revolution.
Francis Hutcheson, a moral philosopher and founding figure of the Scottish Enlightenment,
described the utilitarian and consequentialist principle that virtue is that which provides, in his words,
"the greatest happiness for the greatest numbers". Much of what is incorporated in the scientific
method (the nature of knowledge, evidence, experience and causation) and some modern attitudes
towards the relationship between science and religion were developed by Hutcheson's protégés in
Edinburgh, Scotland, David Hume and Adam Smith. Hume became a major figure in the skeptical
philosophical and empiricist traditions of philosophy.
Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) tried to reconcile rationalism and religious belief, individual
freedom and political authority, as well as map out a view of the public sphere through private and
public reason. Kant's work continued to shape German thought and indeed all of European
philosophy, well into the 20th century.
Mary Wollstonecraft was one of England's earliest feminist philosophers.] She argued for a society
based on reason and that women as well as men should be treated as rational beings. She is best
known for her work A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1791).

American and French Revolutions

The Enlightenment has been frequently linked to the American Revolution of 1776 and the French
Revolution of 1789—both had some intellectual influence from Thomas Jefferson in real time. One
view of the political changes that occurred during the Enlightenment is that the "consent of the
governed" philosophy as delineated by Locke in Two Treatises of Government (1689) represented a
paradigm shift from the old governance paradigm under feudalism known as the "divine right of
kings." In this view, the revolutions of the late 1700s and early 1800s were caused by the fact that
this governance paradigm shift often could not be resolved peacefully and therefore violent
revolution was the result. A governance philosophy where the king was never wrong would be in
direct conflict with one whereby citizens by natural law had to consent to the acts and rulings of their
government.
Alexis de Tocqueville proposed the French Revolution as the inevitable result of the radical
opposition created in the 18th century between the monarchy and the men of letters of the
Enlightenment. These men of letters constituted a sort of "substitute aristocracy that was both all-
powerful and without real power." This illusory power came from the rise of "public opinion," born
when absolutist centralization removed the nobility and the bourgeoisie from the political sphere. The
"literary politics" that resulted promoted a discourse of equality and was hence in fundamental
opposition to the monarchical regime. De Tocqueville "clearly designates... the cultural effects of
transformation in the forms of the exercise of power."