The Enlightenment
The 17th–18th century intellectual movement — centered in France, Britain, and Scotland — that put reason, science, religious tolerance, and individual rights at the center of European thought.
Origin
Roughly bracketed by the publication of Newton's Principia (1687) and the French Revolution (1789). Key figures: Locke, Voltaire, Rousseau, Hume, Adam Smith, Kant, Diderot. The Encyclopédie (1751–1772) tried to compile all human knowledge in a single 35-volume work. Kant's 1784 essay defined it: 'Enlightenment is man's emergence from his self-imposed immaturity… Sapere aude! — dare to know.' The American and French Revolutions are the direct political children. The 'Scottish Enlightenment' (Hume, Smith) was an unusually productive parallel branch. The Enlightenment's universalist confidence is now also the subject of significant critique — postmodernist, postcolonial, religious.
Modern usage
Standard reference for any 'we must use reason against superstition' argument — Steven Pinker's Enlightenment Now (2018) is the canonical recent defense. 'Counter-Enlightenment' is the rough label for romantic, nationalist, and religious reactions against it. The phrase 'Age of Reason' is the older synonym.
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