Age of Enlightenment
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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The Enlightenment was an 18th century counterculture which opposed religious superstition and advocated rational thinking. It culminated in the American and French revolutions, as well as the Industrial Revolution. [May 2006]
The motto of enlightenment is therefore: "Sapere aude! Have courage to use your own intelligence!" --Immanuel Kant
- Media, as we know it, first emerged at the beginning of the eighteenth century. Papers, journals, broadsheets, all became widely available in the new created public space of the coffeehouse. [...] The popular market for art and literature liberated writers and artists from the need for court patronage. No longer having to please their sponsors, they could experiment, and speak out as brashly as they wished. --Ken Goffman via Counterculture Through the Ages, p. 162
The Enlightenment was followed by Romanticism, which was a reaction against the rationalization of nature by the Enlightenment.
Contents |
Contemporary art movements
baroque - rococo - neoclassicism
Key people
Denis Diderot - Immanuel Kant - Jean-Jacques Rousseau - Marquis de Sade - Spinoza - Voltaire
Era
1650s - 1660s - 1670s - 1680s - 1690s - 1700s - 1710s - 1720s - 1730s - 1740s - 1750s - 1760s - 1770s - 1780s - 1790s
Related:
anti-clericalism - capitalism (rise of) - clandestine and anonymous publishing - libertine - materialism - radical politics - reason (main trope) - French Revolution - Industrial Revolution (rise of) - print culture (result of)
Compare
counter-enlightenment
Historians and texts Dialectic of Enlightenment (1944) - Horkheimer and Adorno - Robert Darnton - John Mullan - Peter Gay
The French Encyclopédie was a quintessential summary of thought and belief of the Enlightenment. It tried to destroy superstitions and provide access to human knowledge. In ancien régime France it caused a storm of controversy, however. This was mostly due to its religious tolerance (though this should not be exaggerated; the article on "Atheism" defended the state's right to persecute and to execute atheists). The encyclopedia praised Protestant thinkers and challenged Catholic dogma. The entire work was banned; but because it had many highly placed supporters, work continued and each volume was delivered clandestinely to subscribers. [Apr 2006]
Wikipedia
The Age of Enlightenment refers to the eighteenth century in European and American philosophy, or the longer period including the Age of Reason. It can more narrowly refer to the historical intellectual movement The Enlightenment, which advocated Reason as the primary basis of authority. As a movement it occurred solely in Germany, France, Britain, and Spain, but its influence spread beyond. Many of the Founding Fathers of the United States were also heavily influenced by Enlightenment-era ideas, particularly in the religious sphere (Deism) and, in parallel to the French Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen, in the governmental sphere with the United States Bill of Rights.
The Enlightenment is often closely linked with the Scientific Revolution, for both movements emphasized reason, science, and rationality, while the former also sought their application in comprehension of divine or natural law. Inspired by the revolution of knowledge commenced by Galileo and Newton, and in a climate of increasing disaffection with repressive rule, Enlightenment thinkers believed that systematic thinking might be applied to all areas of human activity, carried into the governmental sphere in their explorations of the individual, society and the state. Its leaders believed they could lead their states to progress after a long period of tradition, irrationality, superstition, and tyranny which they imputed to the Middle Ages, while many were religious. The movement helped create the intellectual framework for the American and French Revolutions, the Latin American independence movement, and the Polish Constitution of May 3; and led to the rise of classical liberalism, democracy, and capitalism.
The Enlightenment is matched with the high baroque and classical eras in music, and the neo-classical period in the arts; it receives modern attention as being one of the central models for many movements in the modern period. [1] [Apr 2007]
