Age of Enlightenment
Rational thought's era
The Age of Enlightenment was an 18th-century intellectual movement emphasizing reason, individual liberty, and scientific inquiry over tradition and religious authority.
Thinkers like Voltaire, Locke, and Kant championed rational thought as the path to human progress.
The movement shaped modern democracy, secularism, and scientific method: Enlightenment ideals influenced the American and French revolutions.
- VoltaireFrench Enlightenment satirist
- EncyclopédieComprehensive Enlightenment-era French reference
- Age of ReasonEighteenth-century intellectual awakening
- Stone AgeEra of knapped tools
- Bronze AgeEarly metalworking civilization period
American Revolution · Founding Fathers · Renaissance · French Revolution · freethought · anticlericalism · Iron Age · Industrial Revolution · salon · rationalism · learned society · 1700s · deism · humanism · civil liberties · Benjamin Franklin · religious tolerance · Montesquieu
- Science Historyscientific revolution, natural philosophy, scientific method, scientific journals, Royal Society
- historical erasStone Age, Bronze Age, Iron Age, Middle Ages, Renaissance
- agesinfant, child, kid, teen, adult
Age of EnlightenmentDark Ages
Post-Roman European decline
obscurantism · irrationalism · scholasticism · fundamentalism · dogmatism
Age of EnlightenmentDark Ages
Post-Roman European decline
Middle Ages · Medieval period · Counter-Reformation · Postmodernism · Victorian era
Age of Enlightenmentdivine right of kings
Monarchs rule by celestial mandate
feudalism · theocracy · authoritarianism · totalitarianism · despotism
ageing, ageless, ageism, enlightenment, enlighten, enlightened, enlightening, light, lights