The age of Enlightenment- a short not

It is the wide range topic. but it concluded here in shortly.The Enlightenment (also known as the. Age of Enlightenment;in French: le Siècle des Lumières, lit. 'the Century of Lights'; and in German: Aufklärung, 'Enlightenment') was an intellectual movement which dominated the world of ideas in Europe in the 18th century. The Enlightenment included a range of ideas centered on reason as the primary source of authority and legitimacy, and came to advance ideals such as liberty, progress, tolerance, fraternity,constitutional government, andseparation of church and state.In France, the central doctrines of les Lumières were individual liberty and religious tolerance in opposition to anabsolute monarchy and the fixed dogmas of the Roman Catholic Church.The Enlightenment was marked by an emphasis on thescientific method and reductionismalong with increased questioning ofreligious orthodoxy - an attitude captured by the phrase Sapere aude, "Dare to know".

French historians traditionally place the Enlightenment between 1715, the year that Louis XIV died, and 1789, the beginning of the French Revolution. Some recent historians begin the period in the 1620s, with the start of thescientific revolution. Les philosophes(French for 'the philosophers') of the period widely circulated their ideas through meetings at scientific academies, Masonic lodges, literary salons, coffee houses, and through printed books and pamphlets. The ideas of the Enlightenment undermined the authority of the monarchy and the Church, and paved the way for the political revolutions of the 18th and 19th centuries.A variety of 19th-century movements, including liberalism andneo-classicism, trace their intellectual heritage back to the Enlightenment.

The Age of Enlightenment was preceded by and closely associated with the scientific revolution. Earlier philosophers whose work influenced the Enlightenment included Francis Bacon, René Descartes, John Locke, and Baruch Spinoza. The major figures of the Enlightenment includedCesare Beccaria, Voltaire, Denis Diderot,Jean-Jacques Rousseau, David Hume,Adam Smith, and Immanuel Kant. Some European rulers, including Catherine II of Russia, Joseph II of Austria andFrederick II of Prussia, tried to apply Enlightenment thought on religious and political tolerance, which became known as enlightened absolutism.Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson visited Europe from America during this period and contributed actively to the scientific and political debate, and later incorporated the ideals of the Enlightenment into theDeclaration of Independence and theConstitution of the United States.

The most influential publication of the Enlightenment was the Encyclopédie(Encyclopaedia). Published between 1751 and 1772 in thirty-five volumes, it was compiled by Denis Diderot, Jean le Rond d'Alembert (until 1759), and a team of 150 scientists and philosophers and it helped spread the ideas of the Enlightenment across Europe and beyond.Other landmark publications were Voltaire's Dictionnaire philosophique (Philosophical Dictionary; 1764) and Letters on the English (1733); Rousseau's Discourse on Inequality(1754) and The Social Contract (1762); Adam Smith's The Wealth of Nations(1776); and Montesquieu's Spirit of the Laws (1748). The ideas of the Enlightenment played a major role in inspiring the French Revolution, which began in 1789. After the Revolution, the Enlightenment was followed by an opposing intellectual movement known as Romanticism.