The Enlightenment (Age of Reason)
- Date
- c. 1685–1815
- Category
- Culture, arts & philosophy
- Region
- Europe
- Era
- Early Modern
- Significance
The Enlightenment, also called the Age of Reason, was a European intellectual and cultural movement spanning roughly the late 17th to early 19th centuries, conventionally bracketed between the Glorious Revolution of 1688 and the French Revolution of 1789.
It elevated human reason, empirical observation, and the scientific method as the primary authorities for understanding nature, society, and government, challenging the entrenched dogmas of established churches and absolute monarchies. Centred in France, Britain, Scotland, and the German states, it produced thinkers such as John Locke, Voltaire, Montesquieu, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, David Hume, Adam Smith, Denis Diderot, and Immanuel Kant, whose works advanced ideals of liberty, religious toleration, natural rights, separation of powers, and progress. Landmark texts including Locke's Two Treatises of Government, Montesquieu's The Spirit of the Laws, Rousseau's The Social Contract, and Smith's The Wealth of Nations reshaped political and economic thought. Enlightenment ideas directly inspired the American and French Revolutions and laid the intellectual foundations of modern liberalism, constitutional democracy, secular governance, and human rights.
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Empires active in c. 1685–1815
- Portuguese Empire1415 CE – 1999 CE
- Spanish Empire1492 CE – 1976 CE
- British Empire1583 CE – 1997 CE
- Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth1569 CE – 1795 CE
- French Colonial Empire (First)1534 CE – 1814 CE
- Dutch Empire1581 CE – 1975 CE
Related culture, arts & philosophy events
- Locke's Two Treatises and Essay: social contract and empiricism1689 (published; dated 1690)
- Voltaire's Lettres philosophiques popularises English liberty1733 (English) / 1734 (French)
- Diderot and d'Alembert's Encyclopédie1751–1772 (first 17 text vols. + plates)
- Rousseau's The Social Contract and ÉmileApril–May 1762
- Thomas Paine's Common Sense popularises the case for independence10 January 1776
- Kant's Critique of Pure Reason and 'What Is Enlightenment?'1781 (Critique) / 1784 (essay)
Further reading
The wider story
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