The Enlightenment
100 years of Reason and Progress made easy
The Enlightenment, the Age of Reason, the Century of Philosophy. Take your pick from any of these semi-snobbish string of words. They all refer largely to the late 17th/18th century, from approximately 1685–1815.
There are no precise dates that one can emphatically deem to be ‘the Enlightenment’. Historical events like WW1 or the Peloponnesian War generally have well-defined beginnings and resolutions because they are actual, physical episodes that have reverberations in their corresponding day and age.
The Enlightenment is a different sort of fish. It is a vague, retrospective labeling of an amorphous philosophical/intellectual movement that had been brewing for over a century.
It is also devoid of the chains of geography — though hubs of inspiration undoubtedly existed (French, German, Scottish), the Enlightenment transcended borders within Europe.
But more than just abstract philosophy, we will come to see that Enlightenment ideals changed the course of history.
Its political ideas sparked the French Revolution and inspired the American Constitution, its economics bore the free market, its reason gave birth to human rights, and its pursuit of equality still chase us today.
