The Enlightenment News Update
Keeping Students Informed...
What Was the Enlightenment?
Also known as the "Age of Reason," the Enlightenment was a philosophical movement that took place mostly in Europe (but also later in North America) in the late 1600s/early 1700s. The Enlightenment thinkers believed that they were improving human intellect and culture after the "dark" Middle Ages. The Enlightenment was characterized by the rise of concepts like reason, liberty and the Scientific Method. Enlightenment philosophers were skeptical of religion (especially the powerful Catholic Church) as well as monarchies and hereditary aristocracy. English Enlightenment thinkers were particularly influential in the American and French Revolutions and their subsequent constitutions.
Enlightenment thinkers like Voltaire, John Locke, Thomas Hobbes, David Hume, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Adam Smith, Immanuel Kant, Isaac Newton and Thomas Jefferson emphasized the Scientific Method, "secularization of learning," religious tolerance, universal education, individual liberty, reason, progress and separation of church and state.
John Locke
English philosopher and physician, developed theory of the "tabula rasa" and empiricism
Baron de Montesquieu
Believed in separation of church and state; French philosopher
Voltaire
French philosopher, believed in separation of church and state,
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The Scientific Revolution and the Enlightenment Compared
The Values of the Enlightenment (AP European History)