Colonial Sense: Society-Lifestyle: Signs of the Times: 18th Century Society: The Enlightenment

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The Enlightenment was a movement of thought and belief concerned with the interrelated ideas of God, reason, nature, and man that claimed wide assent among the intellectuals in 17th and 18th century Europe. It attacked the fundamental beliefs and practices of European society. Although the Enlightenment was diverse in emphasis and interests, those who followed its tenets were convinced that right reason could discover useful knowledge, aspiring to the conquest of mans happiness through freedom. It would affect science, religion and social thinking of society.

Enlightened science contributed to society by the destruction of the wide domain of medieval errors in method. A by-product of this was experimental reasoning, used to solve all of man's problems.

In religion, it would cause such division and strife that the effects of debate still felt even today. For during this period there would arise Deism and Materialism. The notion of the essential goodness of man, Humanitarianism, and Atheism. There would arise a conflict between reason and passion.

Web Sites

Here are a few Web sites to visit and learn about the Enlightenment. The Age of Enlightenment web site contains resources on everything pertaining to this movement. The resources are categorized as history and art. Each of these categories is broken down in further categories.

The Bourbons and the Enlightenment web site is a one page article describing the effects of the Enlightenment in Spain. Another Enlightened ruler was Catherine the Great. Here you can learn about her contributions to this movement. To learn about the Divine right of kings, you could go to Medieval Life & The Hundred Years War Web site.

The Encyclopédie site is the searchable database of this important form of knowledge. This page is historical information on the 18th century encyclopedia. "The impact of the Encyclopédie was enormous, not only in its original edition, but also in multiple reprintings in smaller formats and in later adaptations. It was hailed, and also persecuted, as the sum of modern knowledge, as the a monument to the progress of reason in the eighteenth century." (Quote from the Web site.)

In the field of science, you can learn about the man who developed the laws of motion, Isaac Newton. In addition, in the field of science, there were improvements in machines. At the Neo-Tech Web site, you can find out about the early industrial revolution and the mechanical improvements of the Eighteenth century.

Enlightenment in Art is best represented at the French National Museum Web site. This page is a historical background on the Enlightenment with links to art works of the period.

So you can see there is a large variety of topics, related to the Enlightenment. This is only a sample of what is out there on the subject of the Enlightenment.

Source: Research & text by Rick Brainard. Please visit his 18th Century History blog
sources: Encyclopedia Britannica, vol.18 pp.654-657, 1990 ed.; Notes from college course on European history