The Age of Enlightenment (or The Enlightenment for short) was an intellectual movement in 18th-century Europe.

The goal of the Enlightenment was to establish an authoritative ethics, aesthetics, and knowledge based on an
"enlightened" rationality. The movement's leaders viewed themselves as a courageous, elite body of intellectuals who
were leading the world toward progress, out of a long period of irrationality, superstition, and tyranny which began
during a historical period they called the Dark Ages. This movement provided a framework for the American and
French Revolutions, as well as the rise of capitalism and the birth of socialism. It is matched by the high baroque era
in music, and the neo-classical period in the arts.

1 Short history of Enlightenment philosophy

The boundaries of the Enlightenment are often thought to cover much of the 17th century as well, though others term
the previous era " The Age of Reason". For the present purposes, these two eras are split, however, it is equally
acceptable to think of them conjoined together as one long period.
Through the 1500s and half of the 1600sCenturies: 16th century 17th century 18th century Decades: 1550s 1560s
1570s 1580s 1590s 1600s 1610s 1620s 1630s 1640s 1650s Years: 1600 1601 1602 1603 1604 1605 1606 1607
1608 1609 Events and Trends November 5, 1605 The Gunpowder Plot to blow up the Brit, Europe was wracked by
religious wars. When the political situation stabilized, after the Peace of WestphaliaGerard Terborch ( 1648) The
Peace of Westphalia also known as the treaties of Munster and Osnabruck is the series of treaties that ended the
Thirty Years' War and "officially" recognized the United Provinces and Swiss Confederation. The Spanish Dutch trea
and the end of the English Civil WarThe English Civil War is the period of conflict in the kingdoms of England,
Scotland and Ireland between 1639 and 1651, and also refers specifically to the two wars ( 1642 1645 and 1648
1649) between the Royalist supporters of Charles I of England and the, there was a sharp turn away from the
mysticism and belief in individual revelation that was perceived to have driven instability. Instead, according to those
that split the two periods, the Age of Reason sought axiomic philosophy and absolutism as its foundations of
knowledge and stability. Epistemology, in the writings of Michel de MontaigneMichel Eyquem de Montaigne (
February 28, 1533 September 13, 1592) was an influential French Renaissance writer, generally considered to be the
inventor of the personal essay. In his main work, the Essais unprecedented in its candidness and personal flavo and
Ren DescartesRene Descartes ( IPA: rne. dekt) ( March 31, 1596 February 11, 1650), also known as Cartesius
worked as a philosopher and mathematician. While most notable for his groundbreaking work in philosophy, he has
achieved wide fame as the inventor of the Cartesi, was based on extreme skepticism, and a quest for the nature of
"knowing". The Age of Reason's quest for knowing from axioms would reach its height in pure philosophy with
Benedictus de SpinozaBenedictus de Spinoza ( November 24, 1632 February 21, 1677), named Baruch Spinoza by
his synagogue elders and known as Bento de Spinoza or Bento d'Espinoza in the community in which he grew up.
Along with Rene Descartes and Gottfried Wilhelm Freiherr von and his Ethics, which focused on a monistic view of
the universe where God and Nature were one. This idea would become central to the Enlightenment from Newton
through Jefferson.
The Enlightenment was, in many ways, a successor to the ideas of PascalBlaise Pascal ( June 19, 1623 August 19,
1662) was a French mathematician, physicist, and religious philosopher. His contributions to the natural sciences
include the construction of mechanical calculators, considerations on probability theory, studies of, Leibniz, Galileo
and other philosophers of the previous period. What changed was a wave across European thinking which was
exemplified by the natural philosophy of Sir Isaac Newton, mathematical genius and creator of physics. The ideas of
Newton, his ability to fuse axiomic proof with physical observation into a coherent system which was easily able to
make useful predictions set the tone for much of what would follow in the century after the publication of his
Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica.
But Newton was not alone in the "systematic revolution" in thinking, merely the most visible and famous example.
The idea of uniform laws for natural phenomenon mirrored the greater systematization in a variety of studies. If the
previous era was the age of reasoning from first principles, the Enlightenment saw itself as looking into the mind of
God by studying creation and adducing the basic truths of the world. This view seems both over-reaching to the
present, where truth is more provisional, but in its time it was a powerful assertion, which turned on its head the basic
notions of the source of legitimacy.
For those that divide the "Age of Reason" from the "Enlightenment", the precipitating figure of Newton offers a
specific example of the importance of the difference, because he took empirically observed and codified facts, such
as Kepler's planetary motion, and the "opticks" which had explained lenses, and began to create an underlying theory
of how they functioned. This shift unified the pure empiricism of such Renaissance figures as Sir Francis Bacon with
the axiomatic approach of Descartes. The belief in a comprehensible world, under an orderly Christian God, was to
provide much of the impetus for philosophical inquiry. On one hand, religious philosophy focused on the importance

of piety, and the majesty and mystery of God's ultimate nature; on the other hand, ideas such as Deism stressed that
the world was amenable to human reason, and that the "laws" which governed its behavior were understandable. The
analogy of a "clockwork god" or "god the watchmaker" became prevalent, as many in the time period analogized the
increasing sophistication of their ability to craft precision machines which kept order, and the universe which seemed
to run in an orderly fashion. That navigation and exploration brought a wider variety of circumstances to European
notice, and encouraged the search for underlying rules which could be applied to them, is part of the intellectual
process at work.
This focus on law, on the separation of rule from the particulars of behavior, was also essential to the rise of a
philosophy which had a much stronger concept of the individual, his rights as being based on other than ancient
usage, or tenure, and instead on an intrinsic quality of a person. John Locke wrote his Two Treatises on Government
to argue that property was not a family right by tenure, but an individual right brought on by mixing labor with the
object in question, and securing it from other use. This focus on process and procedure would be honored, at times,
in the breach, as England's own "Star Chamber" court would attest to. However, once the concept was established,
that there were "natural" rights, as there were "natural" laws - it became the basis for the exploration of what we
would now call economics, and political philosophy.
In his famous 1784 essay " What Is Enlightenment? ", Immanuel Kant defined it as follows:
"Enlightenment is man's leaving his self-caused immaturity . Immaturity is the incapacity to use one's own
understanding without the guidance of another. Such immaturity is self-caused if its cause is not lack of intelligence,
but by lack of determination and courage to use one's intelligence without being guided by another. The motto of
enlightenment is therefore: Sapere aude! Have courage to use your own intelligence!"
The Enlightenment began then, from the belief in a rational, orderly and comprehensible universe - and proceeded, in
stages, to demand a rational and orderly organization of knowledge and the state, such as found in the idea of
Deism. This began from the assertion that law governed both heavenly and human affairs, and that law gave the king
his power, rather than the king's power giving force to law. The conception of law as a relationship between
individuals, rather than families, came to the fore, and with it the increasing focus on individual liberty as a
fundamental reality, given by "Nature and Nature's God", which, in the ideal state, would be as expansive as possible.
The Enlightenment created then, the ideas, of liberty, property and rationality which are still recognizable as the basis
for most political philosophy even to the present era: that is, of a free individual being most free within the context of a
state which provides stability of the laws.
The "long" Enlightenment is seen as beginning out of the Renaissance drive for humanism and empiricism. Building
on the natural philosophy that was growing with the application of algebra to the study of nature, and the discoveries
brought about by the invention of the microscope and the telescope. There is also an increasingly complex
philosophy of the role of the state and its relationship to the individual. The turbulence of religious wars had brought
about a desire for balance, order, and unity.
A good paradigm for understanding why there are those that split the Age of Reason from the Enlightenment is the
work of Thomas Hobbes and John Locke. Hobbes, a product of the age of reason, systematically pursues and
categorizes human emotion, and creates the need for a rigid system to hold back the chaos in his work Leviathan.
While John Locke is clearly an intellectual descendant, for him the state of nature is the source of all rights and unity,
and the protection of the state is to protect, and not hold back, the state of nature. This fundamental shift, from a
rather chaotic and dark view of nature, to a fundamentally orderly view, is an important aspect of the Enlightenment.
A second wave of Enlightenment thinking begins in France with the Encyclopdists, the founders of the sort of
project of which Wikipedia is an example. Their ideal that there is a moral architecture to knowledge, mixing personal
comment with the attempt to codify knowledge, Diderot and D'Alambert sought liberation for the mind in the ability to
grasp knowledge.
The Enlightenment was suffused with two competing strains, on one hand there is an intense spirituality, and faith in
religion and the church. On the other hand, there is a growing streak of anti-clericalism which mocked the distance
between the supposed ideals of the church, and the practice of priests. For Voltaire "crasez l'infme!" would be a
battle cry for the ideal of a triumphant, rational, society.
By mid-Century the pinnacle of purely Enlightenment thinking was being reached with Voltaire - whose combination
of wit, insight, and anger made him the most hailed man of letters since Erasmus. Born Francois Marie Arouet in

1694, he was exiled to England between 1726 and 1729, and there he studied Locke, Newton, and the English
Monarchy. Voltaire's ethos was that "Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities" that if people believed in what is unreasonable, they will do what is unreasonable.
This point is, perhaps, the central point of contention over the Enlightenment: whether the construction of reason and
credibility creates, inherently, as many problems as it deals with. From the perspective of the Enlightenment, credible
reports, viewed through the lens of reason annealed knowledge, and knowledge should be compiled into a source
which stood as the authoritative one. The countervailing view, held with increasing force by the Romantic movement
and its adherents, is that this process is, inherently, corrupted by social convention, and bars "truth" which is unique,
individual and immament from being spelt or spoken.
The Enlightenment balanced then, on the call for "natural" freedom which was good, without "license" which would, in
their view, degenerate. Thus the Age of Enlightenment sought reform of Monarchy by laws which were in the best
interest of the subjects, and the "enlightened" ordering of society. The idea of enlightened ordering was reflected in
the sciences by, for example, Linnaeus' categorization of biology.
These ideas became volatile at the point where the idea that natural freedom was more self-ordering than hierarchy,
since hierarchy was the social reality. As that social reality repeatedly disappointed the fundamentally optimistic ideal
that reform could end disasters, there became a progressively more strident naturalism which would, eventually, lead
to the Romantic movement.
Thinkers of the last wave of the Enlightenment - Jean Jacques Rousseau and Immanuel Kant as well as Adam Smith,
Thomas Jefferson and the young Johann Wolfgang von Goethe adopted the increasingly biological metaphor of selforganization and evolutionary forces. This represented the impending end of the Enlightenment: which believed that
nature, while basically good, was not basically self-ordering - see Voltaire's Candide for an example of why not - but
instead had to be ordered by reasoning and maturity. The impending Romantic saw the universe as self-ordering,
and that chaos was, in a real sense, the result of an excess of rational imposition on an organic world.
This boundary would produce political results: with increasing force in the 1750s there would be attempts in England,
Austria, Prussia and France to "rationalize" the Monarchical system and its laws. When this failed to end wars, there
was an increasing drive for revolution or dramatic alteration. The Enlightenment idea of rationality as government
found its way to the heart of the American Declaration of Independence, and the Jacobin program of the French
Revolution, as well as the American Constitution of 1787.
The French Revolution, in particular, represents the Enlightenment philosophy through a violent and messianic lens,
particularly during the brief period of Jacobin dictatorship. The desire for rationality in government lead to the attempt
to end the Catholic Church, and indeed Christianity, in France, change the calendar, clock, measuring system,
monetary system and legal system along lines suggested by what was seen as an orderly rationality. It also took the
ideas of social and economic equality further than any other state.
But it would be with Napoleon that the Enlightenment and its style would breathe its last, and longest. Napoleon
reorganized France into departments, and would fund a host of projects. One example of the Enlightenment idea at
work in Revolutionary and Imperial France was the metric system. In a uniform system of weights and measures,
based on axiomatic units - the radius of the earth, the weight and thermodynamic properties of water - prices would
float based on measurable quantities, rather than price being fixed. It was thought that this would liberate industry
from the tyranny of old production laws, and hence from Medieval structure.