Enlightenment values
Rationalist era ideals
Enlightenment values are the ideals that emerged from 18th-century European intellectual movements: reason over tradition, individual liberty, scientific inquiry, religious tolerance, and human rights.
The phrase often appears in debates about secularism, democracy, and progress: She defended Enlightenment values against rising nationalism.
Critics argue these values were applied selectively, excluding women and colonized peoples from their promises of universal rights.
- reasonBasis or justification
- age of reasonDevelopmental moral discernment milestone
- libertyAbsence of unjust constraint
- equalitySame status for all
- democracyRule by the people
skepticism · human rights · individual liberty · dignity · freedom of speech · marketplace of ideas · progress · humanism · constitutionalism · separation of powers · civil society · secularism · Voltaire · education · public sphere · empiricism · cosmopolitanism · autonomy
- Liberalismindividual liberty, individual rights, civil liberties, classical liberalism, free market
- ethicsmorality, deontology, dignity, sanctity of life, utilitarianism
- philosophyethics, logic, metaphysics, ontology, epistemology
- Jefferson EraThomas Jefferson, Democratic-Republicans, Louisiana Purchase, Monticello, Lewis and Clark
- Nordic thoughtKierkegaard, either/or, fear and trembling, leap of faith, authenticity
Enlightenment valuesreligious fundamentalism
Literal interpretation of scripture
blind faith · tradition · revelation · religious dogma · faith
Enlightenment valuesdivine right of kings
Monarchs rule by celestial mandate
theocracy · absolutism · authoritarianism · feudalism · despotism
enlightenment, enlighten, light, lighten, lighted, lighting, lights, lighter, lightest