Key takeaways
- Wikipedia describes the Enlightenment as a period of intellectual and cultural flourishing that emerged in the late 17th century in Western and Central Europe and peaked in the 18th.
- Its start is variously dated to Descartes' Discourse on the Method (1637), Newton's Principia (1687) or the death of Louis XIV (1715); its end to 1789 or as late as Kant's death in 1804.
- Kant's 1784 essay defined enlightenment as humankind's release from its self-incurred immaturity, and is the source of the motto sapere aude, 'dare to know'.
- The Encyclopédie, published between 1751 and 1772 in 35 volumes, was compiled by Diderot, d'Alembert and a team of 150 others.
- The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy states that the rights of women and of non-white people are generally overlooked in the period, with Wollstonecraft's 1792 Vindication a noteworthy exception.
The Enlightenment was, in Wikipedia's words, a period of intellectual and cultural flourishing in Europe that emerged in the late seventeenth century in Western and Central Europe and peaked in the eighteenth, spreading into Europe's colonies in the Americas and Oceania. It emphasised reason, empirical evidence and the scientific method, and promoted individual liberty, religious tolerance, progress and natural rights. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (SEP) adds a caution that frames this whole guide: for Enlightenment thinkers themselves, enlightenment was "not an historical period, but a process".
Five possible start and end dates
Wikipedia lists several proposed boundaries. Starts: Descartes' Discourse on the Method in 1637; Newton's Principia Mathematica in 1687; or, as European historians traditionally had it, the death of Louis XIV in 1715. Ends: the outbreak of the French Revolution in 1789, or the start of the nineteenth century, with Kant's death in 1804 the latest proposed year.
| Boundaries | Span |
|---|---|
| 1715 to 1789 (traditional) | 74 years |
| 1687 to 1804 | 117 years |
| 1637 to 1804 | 167 years |
The widest version is more than twice the traditional one. The SEP takes the broad view, treating the scientific revolution of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries as the Enlightenment's primary origin, and says the movement "has no definite end", though the Terror of the 1790s and the rise of Romanticism serve as a convenient marker. Science's role in that story is followed in scientists who changed the record.
"Dare to know": Kant's definition
In 1784 Immanuel Kant answered a public question, What is Enlightenment? The SEP quotes his definition: humankind's release from its self-incurred immaturity, where "immaturity is the inability to use one's own understanding without the guidance of another." Wikipedia notes that the same essay contains the motto sapere aude, "dare to know".
The SEP describes this as a conviction shared among thinkers of widely divergent doctrines: thinking for oneself, and relying on one's own intellectual capacities to decide what to believe and how to act. It pairs that confidence with "suspicion or hostility" toward other carriers of authority — tradition, the church, inherited rank.
Salons, coffeehouses and 35 volumes
Ideas travelled through new institutions. Wikipedia lists scientific academies, literary salons, coffeehouses, Masonic lodges and an expanding print culture of books, journals and pamphlets. The single most famous product was the Encyclopédie, published between 1751 and 1772 — 21 years — in 35 volumes, compiled by Denis Diderot, Jean le Rond d'Alembert and a team of 150 others.
The SEP calls the heart of the eighteenth-century Enlightenment the loosely organised activity of French philosophes such as Voltaire, d'Alembert, Diderot and Montesquieu, but stresses other centres: a Scottish Enlightenment (Francis Hutcheson, Adam Smith, David Hume, Thomas Reid) and a German Aufklärung (Christian Wolff, Moses Mendelssohn, G. E. Lessing, Kant). Wikipedia adds a Dutch Enlightenment it dates from 1640, and Americans such as Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson.
Moderate and radical currents
The Enlightenment was not one programme. Wikipedia summarises the historian Jonathan Israel's argument for two lines of thought: a moderate variety following Descartes, Locke and Wolff, which sought accommodation with traditional power and faith and tended to be deistic; and a Radical Enlightenment inspired by Spinoza, advocating democracy, freedom of expression and the eradication of religious authority. Both were opposed by what Isaiah Berlin later called the "Counter-Enlightenment".
Religion was a central concern. Wikipedia describes Enlightenment religious commentary as a response to the preceding century of religious conflict, "especially the Thirty Years' War", with scholars seeking to curb the political power of organised religion and prevent another age of intolerant religious war. That background is in the Thirty Years' War.
Consent, rights and three revolutions
Politics is where the Enlightenment is best remembered. Wikipedia credits Thomas Hobbes's Leviathan (1651) with opening the social contract debate, and records Locke's argument that government's authority is limited and requires the consent of the governed, and his triad of "Life, Liberty, and Property". The SEP credits the period with the basic model of government by consent, lists of individual rights, religious toleration as a virtue, and checks and balances, and names three revolutions: the English (1688), the American (1775–83) and the French (1789–99). For the French case, see the French Revolution's causes and phases.
The SEP is equally direct about the problem. Reason, it argues, "shows its power more convincingly in criticizing authorities than in establishing them", and it notes that the French Revolution's slide into the Terror is perceived by many as proving "the emptiness and hypocrisy of Enlightenment reason".
Universal rights for some: race, women and slavery
The sharpest limit is who the "rights of man" covered. The SEP states that "the rights of women and of non-white people are generally overlooked in the period", that thinkers who did address them "tend to spout unreasoned prejudice", and that Enlightenment writings "are rife with rank ethno- and Eurocentrism". It names Mary Wollstonecraft's Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792) as a noteworthy exception.
Wikipedia shows the same tension in practice. Locke argued that one person cannot enslave another — then allowed an exception for a lawful captive taken in war. Wikipedia calls the intentional non-inclusion of Enlightenment philosophies on slavery a common theme among most countries that took their Enlightenment ideas from Europe, and European nations and the United States refused to support Saint-Domingue's anti-colonial struggle after 1791. Yet Wikipedia also notes that Toussaint Louverture had read Raynal's critique of colonialism, and calls the Haitian Revolution an example of Enlightenment ideas as part of "complex transcultural flows". That story is told in the Haitian Revolution explained.
Placing the philosophes on a timeline
World History Timeline Sim — built by us at Reign Creative — lets you browse events by era or category, so the Encyclopédie, Kant's essay and the revolutions can sit side by side. Time Travel Mode's consequence chains are, in the listing's words, simulations, not what happened. The app is presented as a companion to coursework, not a replacement for it, so it belongs next to a reading of Kant, Locke or the SEP rather than in place of one. It is free, supported by ads, with optional in-app purchases; similar titles appear under education and brain apps.
Good to know
Frequently asked questions
When did the Enlightenment start and end?
What does sapere aude mean?
What was the Encyclopédie?
Did Enlightenment thinkers oppose slavery?
Sources
- Age of Enlightenment (opens in a new tab)Wikipedia — accessed
- Enlightenment (opens in a new tab)Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy — accessed
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