1. According to this document, what were some topics that were discussed by people during the Enlightenment? 2. Do you think these topics were discussed commonly before the Enlightenment? Why or why not?

Amy Elizabeth Robinson

The Enlightenment was a period in history named not for its battles, but for its ideas. Still, the intellectual and cultural changes it introduced certainly contributed to many political revolutions around the world.

Between the late seventeenth and late eighteenth centuries, there was a period of rapid intellectual change that came to be known as the Enlightenment. Thinkers, writers, artists, political leaders, and also new groups of "ordinary" people drove this major cultural and intellectual movement. They believed they were finally shining the "light" of reason on the natural and human worlds. In 1784, German philosopher Immanuel Kant wrote that an "enlightened" understanding should start with the command: "Dare to know!"

The Enlightenment shook the foundations of European intellectual life, but that wasn't all. It also had social, economic, and political consequences across the globe. To understand the role of the Enlightenment in world history, we need to look both at its ideas and their social setting. These were not sudden, light-bulb-above-your head ideas. They emerged from ongoing discussions among a variety of people. Enlightenment thinkers, writers, and artists—often called philosophes—were particularly active in Europe and European settler colonies. However, they were connected to growing networks that criss-crossed the globe. Novels, newspapers, and travel literature spread new ideas, and a sense of connection with others. Goods, information, and people moved more swiftly across the oceans. This growing connectedness, combined with a daring openness to change, made Enlightenment ideas the fuel that would power many revolutions.

What was so enlightening about the Enlightenment?

The Enlightenment started as a scientific and intellectual movement. But it was soon a political movement, with economic and cultural significance as well. Historians always have trouble describing it, but of course they still try. Eric Hobsbawm describes Enlightenment thinking as "not that of a system but of an attitude and a passion." Margaret Jacob says it was "a new cultural style of open-mindedness, investigation, and satire." Dorinda Outram talks more about eighteenth-century social context, and the rise of a "public sphere." Not all Enlightenment thinkers agreed about everything, but they were devoted to lively study, critique, and conversation. They met at public lectures, salons, coffeehouses, and new lending libraries, where they could cast "light" on questions that had lurked in darkness for centuries.

Explanation:

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