Age of Reason
Rationality's eighteenth century
The Age of Reason refers to the Enlightenment, an 18th-century intellectual movement emphasizing reason, science, and individual rights over tradition and religious authority.
The phrase also describes the age at which a child is considered capable of moral reasoning—traditionally around seven in Catholic doctrine.
She's reached the age of reason and can decide for herself.
- VoltaireFrench Enlightenment satirist
- deismNon-intervening creator belief
- EncyclopédieComprehensive Enlightenment-era French reference
- rationalismReason as knowledge source
- scientific methodStructured process for investigation
Montesquieu · Rousseau · natural rights · skepticism · Thomas Paine · empiricism · American Revolution · freethought · free inquiry · secularism · anti-clericalism · public sphere · religious tolerance · Immanuel Kant · humanism · Paine · civil liberties · John Locke
- 1700sMozart, Voltaire, colonial period, French Revolution, William III
- erasera, epoch, age, bronze age, period
- historical erasStone Age, Bronze Age, Iron Age, Renaissance, Victorian era
- Cultural MovementsRenaissance, Baroque, Romanticism, Harlem Renaissance, modernism
- enlightenmentVoltaire, Rousseau, Locke, Kant, Montesquieu
- Enlightenment TextsCandide, Common Sense, Emile, Federalist Papers, Confessions
Age of ReasonDark Ages
Post-Roman European decline
Romanticism · obscurantism · fundamentalism · anti-intellectualism · irrationalism
reason, aged, ages, ageless, ageing, ageism, ageist, Enlightenment