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Feb 29, 2024 · Definition. 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 ...
- Mark Cartwright
- Overview
- The age of reason: human understanding of the universe
Historians place the Enlightenment in Europe (with a strong emphasis on France) during the late 17th and the 18th centuries, or, more comprehensively, between the Glorious Revolution in 1688 and the French Revolution of 1789. It represents a phase in the intellectual history of Europe and also programs of reform, inspired by a belief in the possibility of a better world, that outlined specific targets for criticism and programs of action.
What led to the Enlightenment?
The roots of the Enlightenment can be found in the humanism of the Renaissance, with its emphasis on the study of Classical literature. The Protestant Reformation, with its antipathy toward received religious dogma, was another precursor. Perhaps the most important sources of what became the Enlightenment were the complementary rational and empirical methods of discovering truth that were introduced by the scientific revolution.
Renaissance
Learn more about the Renaissance.
Reformation
The powers and uses of reason had first been explored by the philosophers of ancient Greece. The Romans adopted and preserved much of Greek culture, notably including the ideas of a rational natural order and natural law. Amid the turmoil of empire, however, a new concern arose for personal salvation, and the way was paved for the triumph of the Christian religion. Christian thinkers gradually found uses for their Greco-Roman heritage. The system of thought known as Scholasticism, culminating in the work of Thomas Aquinas, resurrected reason as a tool of understanding. In Thomas’s presentation, Aristotle provided the method for obtaining that truth which was ascertainable by reason alone; since Christian revelation contained a higher truth, Thomas placed the natural law evident to reason subordinate to, but not in conflict with, eternal law and divine law.
The intellectual and political edifice of Christianity, seemingly impregnable in the Middle Ages, fell in turn to the assaults made on it by humanism, the Renaissance, and the Protestant Reformation. Humanism bred the experimental science of Francis Bacon, Nicolaus Copernicus, and Galileo and the mathematical investigations of René Descartes, Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, and Isaac Newton. The Renaissance rediscovered much of Classical culture and revived the notion of humans as creative beings, and the Reformation, more directly but in the long run no less effectively, challenged the monolithic authority of the Roman Catholic Church. For Martin Luther, as for Bacon or Descartes, the way to truth lay in the application of human reason. Both the Renaissance and the Reformation were less movements for intellectual liberty than changes of authority, but, since they appealed to different authorities, they contributed to the breakdown of the community of thought. Received authority, whether of Ptolemy in the sciences or of the church in matters of the spirit, was to be subject to the probings of unfettered minds.
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Enlightenment. The Enlightenment, also known as the Age of Reason, was a period from the late 17th century through the 18th century, in which scientific ideas flourished throughout Western Europe, England, and the colonies in America. Throughout the Enlightenment, writers created poetry, plays, satire, essays, and more.
Nov 13, 2019 · The eighteenth century was the great Age of Enlightenment, but also Romanticism. The Augustan or neoclassical poetry of Alexander Pope and others eventually gave way to the Romantic meditations of Wordsworth and Coleridge. Below, we introduce ten of the greatest and most emblematic poems of the eighteenth century.
Dec 16, 2009 · Enlightenment was a movement of politics, philosophy, science and communications in Europe during the 19th century. ... It was an age of enlightened despots like Frederick the Great, ...
- Missy Sullivan
- 3 min
The Enlightenment, also known as the Age of Reason, was a philosophical movement in Europe during the 17th and 18th centuries. At its core was a belief in the use and celebration of reason, the power by which humans understand the universe and improve their own condition. The goals of rational humanity were considered to be knowledge, freedom ...
A beginner's guide to the Age of Enlightenment. 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.
