The Enlightenment was marked by an emphasis on the scientific method and reductionism along with increased questioning of religious orthodoxy. The core ideas advocated by modern democracies, including the civil society, human and civil rights, and separation of powers, are the product of the Enlightenment.
Furthermore, the sciences and academic disciplines including social sciences and the humanities as we know them today, based on empirical methods, are also rooted in the Age of Enlightenment. All these developments, which followed and partly overlapped with the European exploration and colonization of the Americas and the intensification of the European presence in Asia and Africa, make the Enlightenment a starting point of what some historians define as the European Moment in World History: the long period of often tragic European domination over the rest of the world.
There is little consensus on the precise beginning of the Age of Enlightenment, with the beginning of the 18th century or the middle of the 17th century often considered starting points. French historians usually place the period between and , from the beginning of the reign of Louis XV until the French Revolution.
Some historians and philosophers have argued that the beginning of the Enlightenment is when Descartes shifted the epistemological basis from external authority to internal certainty by his cogito ergo sum As to its end, most scholars use the last years of the century, often choosing the French Revolution of or the beginning of the Napoleonic Wars —15 to date the end of the Enlightenment.
The Enlightenment took hold in most European countries, often with a specific local emphasis. For example, in France it became associated with anti-government and anti-Church radicalism, while in Germany it reached deep into the middle classes and took a spiritualistic and nationalistic tone without threatening governments or established churches. Government responses varied widely. In France, the government was hostile and Enlightenment thinkers fought against its censorship, sometimes being imprisoned or hounded into exile.
The Scottish Enlightenment, with its mostly liberal Calvinist and Newtonian focus, played a major role in the further development of the transatlantic Enlightenment. In Russia, the government began to actively encourage the proliferation of arts and sciences in the midth century. This era produced the first Russian university, library, theater, public museum, and independent press. Several Americans, especially Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson, played a major role in bringing Enlightenment ideas to the New World and in influencing British and French thinkers.
The cultural exchange during the Age of Enlightenment ran in both directions across the Atlantic. Enlightenment stressed the idea of natural rights and equality for all citizens. The ideas of the Enlightenment flowed from Europe to the North American continent and sparked a revolution that made enlightened thought all the more popular back across the Atlantic.
The French who had direct contact with the Americans were able to successfully implement Enlightenment ideas into a new political system. Much like the American document, the French declaration included Enlightenment principles, such as equal rights and popular sovereignty. The French people saw that a revolt could be successful—even against a major military power—and that lasting change was possible. Many experts argue that this gave them the motivation to rebel.
The newly-formed government of the United States also became a model for French reformers. The Enlightenment also bred religious controversy. Plenty of its advocates, many of whom were themselves Christian, often dismissed the new revivalist religion of the Great Awakening as emotionally excessive.
Evangelical Protestants, on the other hand, often viewed rationalism, religious tolerance, and other enlightenment ideals as dangerous to piety and national solidarity in the budding republic.
Historians have usually cast this controversy in terms of a conflict between those who favored rational religion and those who opposed it by defending an emotional religion of the heart.
But the Enlightenment was so pervasive in the colonies that few Americans remained wholly untouched by its spirit. Both the emotionalism of revivalist religion and the reasoned ideals associated with the Enlightenment played important roles in the American Revolution. Subscribe for fascinating stories connecting the past to the present. The English philosopher and political theorist John Locke laid much of the groundwork for the Enlightenment and made central contributions to the development of liberalism.
Trained in medicine, he was a key advocate of the empirical approaches of the Scientific The Great Awakening was a religious revival that impacted the English colonies in America during the s and s.
The movement came at a time when the idea of secular rationalism was being emphasized, and passion for religion had grown stale. Christian leaders often traveled Galileo Galilei is considered the father of modern science and made major contributions to the fields of physics, astronomy, cosmology, mathematics and philosophy. Galileo invented an improved telescope that let him observe and describe the moons of Jupiter, the Eleanor of Aquitaine was one of the most powerful and influential figures of the Middle Ages.
Inheriting a vast estate at the age of 15 made her the most sought-after bride of her generation.
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