intellectual movement that was predominant in the Western world during

the 18th century. Strongly influenced by the rise of modern science

and by the aftermath of the long religious conflict that followed

the Reformation, the thinkers of the Enlightenment (called philosophes

in France) were committed to secular views based on reason or human

understanding only, which they hoped would provide a basis for

beneficial changes affecting every area of life and thought.

The more extreme and radical philosophes--Denis Diderot, Claude

Adrien Helvetius, Baron d'Holbach, the Marquis de Condorcet, and

Julien Offroy de La Mettrie (1709-51)--advocated a philosophical

rationalism deriving its methods from science and natural philosophy

that would replace religion as the means of knowing nature and destiny

of humanity; these men were materialists, pantheists, or atheists.

Other enlightened thinkers, such as Pierre Bayle, Voltaire, David

Hume, Jean Le Rond D'alembert, and Immanuel Kant, opposed fanaticism,

but were either agnostic or left room for some kind of religious

the contributors to the great Encyclopedie edited in Paris by Diderot

right to think freely and express one's views publicly without

the development of the modern social sciences.

Nationalism undercut its cosmopolitan values and assumptions about

finally by Jeremy Bentham, whose utilitarianism was the culmination of

Everywhere the Enlightenment produced restless men impatient for

methods of rational and empirical inquiry and had demonstrated the

Frederick II of Prussia, and Catherine II of Russia.

Some common words found in the essay are:
John Locke--who, Revolution Napoleonic, Enlightenment Enlightenment, Jeremy Bentham, Herder Enlightenment, South America, Russia Enlightened, La Mettrie, Richard Steele, Jesuit Candide, human nature, 19th century, 18th century, enlightened thinkers,
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