Enlightenment meaning

The Enlightenment, also known as the Age of Reason, was an intellectual and cultural movement in the eighteenth century that emphasized reason over superstition and science over blind faith. Using the power of the press, Enlightenment thinkers like John Locke, Isaac Newton, and Voltaire questioned accepted knowledge and spread new ideas about openness, investigation, and religious tolerance throughout Europe and the Americas. Many consider the Enlightenment a major turning point in Western civilization, an age of light replacing an age of darkness. The Freemasons were members of a fraternal society that advocated Enlightenment principles of inquiry and tolerance. Freemasonry originated in London coffeehouses in the early 18th century, and Masonic lodges—local units—soon spread throughout Europe and the British colonies. One prominent Freemason, Benjamin Franklin, stands as the embodiment of the Enlightenment in British America. Born in Boston in 1706 to a large Puritan family, Franklin loved to read, although he found little beyond religious publications in his father’s house. In 1718 he was apprenticed to his brother to work in a print shop, where he learned how to be a good writer by copying the style he found in the Spectator, which his brother printed. At the age of 17, the independent-minded Franklin ran away, eventually ending up in Quaker Philadelphia. There he began publishing the Pennsylvania Gazette in the late 1720s. In 1732 he started his annual publication Poo...

• appreciation for something • apprehend • apprehensible • apprehension • astutely • bear • colour • figure • keenness • keep someone up • know a hawk from a handsaw idiom • know the score idiom • know/see where someone is coming from idiom • scale • tumble to something • tune in • uncomprehending • uncomprehendingly • understanding • voice recognition • ancien régime • buccaneer • bustle • Carolean • Caroline • conquistador • Industrial Revolution • Jacobean • Marian • masque • privateer • reformation • regency • renaissance • restoration • the First Fleet • the Wild West • Victorian • Victoriana • Whig (Definition of enlightenment from the Cambridge Advanced Learner's Dictionary & Thesaurus © Cambridge University Press)

Recent Examples on the Web Her husband’s indecision on key issues, new democratic ideals linked to the Enlightenment, inequitable taxation, poor harvests and countless other factors contributed to the crisis, which started with the convening of the Estates General, an assembly of France’s three social classes, in May 1789. — Meilan Solly, Smithsonian Magazine, 17 Mar. 2023 The Resurgence of Intellectual Life From the End of Antiquity to the Dawn of the Enlightenment, by Charles Freeman. — New York Times, 22 Feb. 2023 In Ukraine, two of the greatest movements in Jewish history took place: the Enlightenment and Hasidism, both movements that were reflected in their music. — Naman Ramachandran, Variety, 17 Feb. 2023 These examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'the Enlightenment.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors.

Contents • 1 Basic understanding • 2 Private and public use of reasoning • 3 Kant and religion • 4 Kant and Frederick the Great • 5 Kant and orientation in thinking • 6 Kant and historical development • 7 Foucault and "What is Enlightenment?" • 8 See also • 9 References • 10 Further reading • 11 External links Basic understanding Kant answers the question in the first sentence of the essay: "Enlightenment is man's emergence from his self-incurred immaturity (Unmündigkeit)." He argues that the immaturity is self-inflicted not from a lack of understanding, but from the lack of courage to use one's reason, intellect, and wisdom without the guidance of another. Kant argued that using one's reason is considered dangerous by most men and all women. In the sense used here, the German word "Unmündigkeit" does not mean having attained Kant understands the majority of people to be content to follow the guiding institutions of society, such as the Church and the Monarchy, and unable to throw off the yoke of their immaturity due to a lack of resolution to be autonomous. It is difficult for individuals to work their way out of this immature, cowardly life because we are so uncomfortable with the idea of thinking for ourselves. Kant says that even if we did throw off the spoon-fed dogma and formulas we have absorbed, we would still be stuck, because we have never "cultivated our minds". The key to throwing off these chains of mental immaturity is reason. There is hope that the entire pu...

/ɛnˈlaɪtɛnmɛnt/ Other forms: enlightenments Enlightenment is education or awareness that brings change, such as your enlightenment about nutrition that leads you to throw out every last bit of your family's junk food. In Hinduism and Buddhism, enlightenment is also sometimes called "awakening" — after all, the name "Buddha" means "the awakened one." Not all enlightenments are spiritual: your enlightenment about environmental issues, for example, can awaken you to new ways of conserving resources like water and electricity. The Enlightenment started in the 1700s, a historical era defined by a focus on reason and science.

Contents • 1 Important intellectuals • 2 Topics • 2.1 Philosophy • 2.2 Science • 2.3 Sociology, economics, and law • 2.4 Politics • 2.4.1 Theories of government • 2.4.2 Enlightened absolutism • 2.4.3 American Revolution and French Revolution • 2.5 Religion • 2.5.1 Separation of church and state • 3 National variations • 3.1 Great Britain • 3.1.1 England • 3.1.2 Scotland • 3.1.3 Anglo-American colonies • 3.2 German states • 3.3 Habsburg monarchy • 3.4 Italy • 3.5 Spain and Spanish America • 3.6 Haiti • 3.7 Portugal and Brazil • 3.8 Russia • 3.9 Poland and Lithuania • 3.10 China • 3.11 Japan • 3.12 Korea • 3.13 India • 3.14 Egypt • 3.15 Ottoman Empire • 4 Historiography • 4.1 Definition • 4.2 Time span • 4.3 Modern study • 5 Society and culture • 5.1 Implications in the arts • 6 Dissemination of ideas • 6.1 Republic of Letters • 6.2 Book industry • 6.3 Natural history • 6.4 Scientific and literary journals • 6.5 Encyclopedias and dictionaries • 6.6 Popularization of science • 6.7 Schools and universities • 6.8 Learned academies • 6.9 Salons • 6.10 Coffeehouses • 6.11 Debating societies • 6.12 Masonic lodges • 6.13 Art • 7 See also • 8 Notes • 9 References • 9.1 Citations • 9.2 Sources • 10 Further reading • 10.1 Reference and surveys • 10.2 Specialty studies • 10.3 Primary sources • 11 External links Esquisse d'un tableau historique des progres de l'esprit humain, 1795. The Age of Enlightenment was preceded by and closely associated with the One particularly influential Enli...