Enlightenment

Intellectual and cultural movement of the bourgeoisie and the masses that arose in many parts of Europe one after another in the 17th and 18th centuries against the feudal-despotic system and religious obscurantism. It was the second movement of emancipation of the mind in Western society after the Renaissance.

Enlightenment first took place in England, and later developed to France, Germany and Russia, with a ripple effect in the Netherlands and Belgium. France was the center of the Enlightenment and can said to be the model for the enlightenment movements in various countries. Enlightenment is also usually summarized as a movement of emancipation of the mind of the progressive ideologists of the French bourgeoisie against the feudal system and religious theology before the French Revolution in the 18th century. The French term “siècle des lumières” originally means “the age of lights”. “Enlightenment” means the emancipation of man from his immature state, his emancipation from superstition or prejudices. The spearhead of the Enlightenment movement was directed at the “dark Middle Ages”. The concept of the Age of Enlightenment was used to indicate an age when darkness is expelled by the light.

The Enlightenment movement involved religion, philosophy, politics, economics, science, history, literature, art and other aspects. The Enlightenment movement advocated human rights against divine right, democracy against despotism and science against ignorance. An important aspect of the Enlightenment movement was the vigorous rise of science. Descartes and Bacon laid the methodological foundations for the development of science by putting forth the use of reason, experience and science as a method for acquiring knowledge. Voltaire (1694–1778), Montesquieu (1689–1755) and the Encyclopédistes led by Diderot (1713–1784) developed knowledge and science to a new height. Knowledge and science enlightened people’s wisdom, changed the state of ignorance, denied the traditional prejudices, broke with old customs and habits and paved the way for the development of capitalism. Another important aspect of the Enlightenment was the emancipation of the mind. The thinkers of the Enlightenment movement advocated deism and atheism and opposed God and religious superstition; they upheld materialism and criticized the medieval scholasticism; they advocated free market economy and resisted the fetters of the feudal bureaucratic apparatus; they denied the divine right of kings with the theory of social contract; they refuted the privileges of estate in the Middle Ages with humanism, principle of reason, liberty and equality, and other ideas, sweeping away the intellectual obstacles to the development of capitalism and paving the way for the establishment of the capitalist system of free competition in thoughts, politics and theory.

The Enlightenment movement had a broad and deep influence as one of the great movements of emancipation of the mind in human history. It was in fact a radical movement of political innovation.