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The Age of Enlightenment (; ) was an eighteenth century movement in European and American Philosophy , or the longer period including the Age Of Reason . The term can more narrowly refer to the intellectual movement of ''The Enlightenment'', which advocated Reason as the primary basis of authority. Developing in France , Britain and Germany , its sphere of influence also included Austria , Italy , the Netherlands , Poland , Russia , Scandinavia , Spain and, in fact, the whole of Europe . Many of the United States' Founding Fathers were also heavily influenced by Enlightenment-era ideas, particularly in the religious sphere ( Deism ) and, in parallel with Classical Liberalism , in the political sphere (which had a major influence on its Bill Of Rights , in parallel with the Declaration Of The Rights Of Man And The Citizen ). The era is generally agreed to have ended around the year 1800 and the beginning of the Napoleonic Wars (1804–15). HISTORY The Enlightenment is often closely linked with the Scientific Revolution , for both movements emphasized Reason , Science , and Rationality , while the former also sought their application in comprehension of divine or natural law. Inspired by the revolution of knowledge commenced by Galileo and Newton , and in a climate of increasing disaffection with repressive rule, Enlightenment thinkers believed that systematic thinking might be applied to all areas of human activity, carried into the Government al sphere in their explorations of the Individual , Society and the State . Its leaders believed they could lead their states to Progress after a long period of Tradition , Irrationality , Superstition , and Tyranny which they imputed to the Middle Ages . The movement helped create the intellectual framework for the American and French Revolution s, Poland 's Constitution Of May 3, 1791 , the Latin American Independence Movement , the Greek national independence movement and the later Balkan independence movements against the Ottoman Empire , and led to the rise of Classical Liberalism , Democracy , and Capitalism . The Enlightenment is matched with the high Baroque and classical eras in Music , and the Neo-classical period in the arts. It receives modern attention as a central model for many movements in the modern period. Another important movement in 18th century philosophy, closely related to it, focused on belief and piety. Some of its proponents, such as George Berkeley , attempted to demonstrate rationally the existence of a supreme being. Piety and belief in this period were integral to the exploration of Natural Philosophy and Ethics , in addition to Political theories of the age. However, prominent Enlightenment philosophers such as Thomas Paine , Voltaire , Jean-Jacques Rousseau , and David Hume questioned and attacked the existing institutions of both Church and State . The 19th century also saw a continued rise of Empiricist ideas and their application to Political Economy , Government and sciences such as Physics , Chemistry and Biology . The boundaries of the Enlightenment cover much of the seventeenth 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 acceptable to think of them joined as one long period. Europe had been ravaged by religious wars; when peace in the political situation had been restored, after the Peace Of Westphalia and the English Civil War , an intellectual upheaval overturned the accepted belief that mysticism and revelation are the primary sources of knowledge and wisdom—which was blamed for fomenting political instability. Instead (according to those that split the two periods), the Age of Reason sought to establish axiomatic philosophy and Absolutism as foundations for knowledge and stability. Epistemology , in the writings of Michel De Montaigne and René Descartes , was based on extreme skepticism and inquiry into the nature of "knowledge." The goal of a philosophy based on self-evident axioms reached its height with Baruch (Benedictus De) Spinoza 's '' Ethics '', which expounded a Pantheistic view of the universe where God and Nature were one. This idea then became central to the Enlightenment from Newton through to Jefferson. The ideas of , which combined mathematics of Axiom atic proof with mechanics of physical observation, a coherent system of verifiable predictions, which set the tone for what followed Newton's '' Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica '' in the century after. The Age of Enlightenment is also prominent in the history of Judaism, perhaps because of its conjunction with increased social acceptance of Jews in some western European states, especially those who were not orthodox or who converted to the officially sanctioned version of Christianity. CONFLICTS As with theology, philosophy became a source of partisan debate, with different schools attempting to develop rationales for their viewpoints. Philosophers such as Spinoza searched for a Metaphysics of ethics, which influenced Pietism and the Transcendental philosophy of philosophers such as Immanuel Kant . Religion was linked to another concept which inspired a great amount of Enlightenment thought, namely the rise of the Nation-state . In the medieval and Renaissance periods, the state was restricted by the need to work through a host of intermediaries. This system existed because of poor communication, where localism thrived in return for loyalty to some central organization. Following improvements in transportation, organization, navigation and finally the influx of gold and silver from trade and conquest, however, the state assumed more authority and power. Intellectuals responded with a series of theories on the purpose and limit of state power. Throughout The Enlightenment, Absolutism was therefore cemented. A string of philosophers (amongst them John Locke ) reacted by advocating limitations on legitimate state power, influencing both Voltaire and Jean-Jacques Rousseau . The influence of these Enlightenment ideas extended to organizations seeking to affect state and social development and ultimately had a profound effect on the actions of politically active individuals worldwide. Within the period of the Enlightenment, the question of what was the proper relationship of the citizen to the state continued to be explored. The idea that Society Is A Contract between individual and some larger entity, whether society or state, was developed philosophically by a series of thinkers, including Rousseau , Montesquieu and Jefferson . Other thinkers, heralding Romanticism , advocated the idea that nationality had a basis beyond mere preference. Philosophers such as Johann Gottfried Von Herder expounded the idea that Language had a decisive influence on cognition and thought, and that the meaning of a particular book or text was open to deeper exploration based on deeper connections, an idea now called Hermeneutics . The two concepts—of the contractual nature between the state and the citizen, and the reality of the nation beyond that contract—had a decisive influence in the development of Liberalism , Democracy and constitutional government which followed. At the same time, the integration of , the discovery of the first planet since antiquity, Uranus by William Herschel , and the calculation of the mass of the Sun using Newton's theory of universal gravitation. These series of discoveries had a momentous effect on both pragmatic commerce and philosophy. The excitement engendered by creating a new and orderly vision of the world, as well as the need for a philosophy of science which could encompass the new discoveries, greatly influenced both religious and secular ideas. If Newton could order the cosmos with natural philosophy, so, many argued, could political philosophy order the body politic. Within the Enlightenment, two main theories contended to be the basis of that ordering: , though an absolutist in government, drew on this argument in '' Leviathan ''. Once the concept of natural law was invoked, however, it took on a life of its own. If natural law could be used to bolster the position of the monarchy, it could also be used to assert the rights of subjects of that monarch. If there were natural laws, then there were Natural Rights associated with them, just as there are rights under man-made laws. What both theories had in common was the need for an orderly and comprehensible function of government. The "Enlightened Despotism" of, for example, Catherine The Great of Russia and Frederick The Great of Prussia , was not based on mystical appeals to authority, but on the pragmatic invocation of state power as necessary in order to hold back the anarchy of warfare and rebellion. Regularization and standardization were seen as good things because they allowed the state to reach its power outwards over the entirety of its domain and because they liberated people from being entangled in endless local custom. Additionally, they expanded the sphere of economic and social activity. Thus rationalization, standardization and the search for fundamental unities occupied much of the Enlightenment and its arguments over proper methodology and nature of understanding. The culminating efforts of the Enlightenment include, amongst other things, the economics of Adam Smith , the physical chemistry of Antoine Lavoisier , the idea of evolution pursued by Johann Wolfgang Goethe and the declaration by Jefferson of inalienable rights. Development in the philosophy of the Enlightenment was also the basis for overthrowing the idea of a completely rational and comprehensible universe, and led, in turn, to the metaphysics of Hegel and Romanticism . INFLUENCE The Enlightenment occupies a central role in the justification for the movement known as Modernism . The neo-classicizing trend in modernism came to see itself as a period of rationality which overturned established traditions, analogously to the Encyclopaediasts and other Enlightenment philosophers. A variety of 20th century movements, including Liberalism and Neo-classicism , traced their intellectual heritage back to the Enlightenment, and away from the purported emotionalism of the 19th century. Geometric order, rigor and reductionism were seen as Enlightenment virtues. The modern movement points to Reductionism and Rationality as crucial aspects of Enlightenment thinking, of which it is the heir, as opposed to irrationality and emotionalism. In this view, the Enlightenment represents the basis for modern ideas of Liberalism against Superstition and Intolerance . Influential philosophers who have held this view include Jürgen Habermas and Isaiah Berlin . This view asserts that the Enlightenment was the point when Europe broke through what historian Peter Gay calls "the sacred circle," whose dogma had circumscribed thinking. The Enlightenment is held to be the source of critical ideas, such as the centrality of Freedom , Democracy and Reason as primary values of society. This view argues that the establishment of a contractual basis of rights would lead to the Market Mechanism and Capitalism , the Scientific Method , religious Tolerance , and the organization of states into self-governing republics through democratic means. In this view, the tendency of the '' Philosophes '' in particular to apply rationality to every problem is considered the essential change. From this point on, thinkers and writers were held to be free to pursue the truth in whatever form, without the threat of sanction for violating established ideas. With the end of the ) tending towards totalitarianism. Yet other leading intellectuals, such as Noam Chomsky , see a natural evolution, using the term loosely, from early Enlightenment thinking to other forms of social analysis, specifically from The Enlightenment to Liberalism , Anarchism and Socialism . The relationship between these different schools of thought, Chomsky and others point out , can be seen in the works of Von Humboldt , Kropotkin , Bakunin and Marx , among others. IMPORTANT FIGURES
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