history

• The Enlightenment was an educated society of Europe of the mid-18th century, also known as the Age of Reason
• The Enlightenment


  • Turning from faith to reason
  • Turning from dogmatism to scientific research
  • Turning from fanaticism to tolerance
• The Enlightenment


  A set of ideas and political attitudes whose features are turning from faith to reason, from dogmatism to scientific research, from fanaticism to tolerance
• The scholars believed in the power of the human reason, in progress, and in scientific knowledge which would enhance the world and remedy it
• The Bible ceased to be the only authority in affairs of knowledge and morality
• The meaning of a human existence did not already lay in the salvation, but in progress and better living conditions for man on the Earth
• The Enlightenment's cradle was in France, but several predecessors could be found among scientists and philosophers of England
• A path to the Enlightenment was being paved by the generation of critical and sceptical thinkers who rejected the old feudal system as well as ecclesiastical dogmas
• They were sure that the world could be explained rationally and consequently changed
• Most of them were Deists, who respected the existence of God as the Creator, but without his taking part in it after the creation
• The minority of them inclined to materialism, which understood the world and man as a result of the mechanical forces of Nature
• The scholars assumed that it was possible to know the forces which had created man and were influencing his behaviour afterwards, and find out the key to a rational and just social organisation
• Searching for a better political system which would substitute feudal privileges and absolutism had a crucial significance
• The most contributive political theory was worked out by Charles Louis de Montesquieu, where natural human rights would be reliably secured against despotism
• Montesquieu's political theory


  Division of power into three branches - legislative, executive, and judicial, each of them independent and with a right to control the others
• This theory, supported by a promising development in England, became the inspiration for following political thinkers - revolutionaries - in the American continent and France itself
• The Encyclopaedia was a result of a co-operation of the wisest brains of then France, and was very unorthodox with many forward-thinking ideas for the time
• The Encyclopaedia sought to bring together all knowledge of the times and condense this information for all to use
• Clerical circles and many influential people, even Madame Pompadour, protested and supported the work
• Physiocracy


  Economic theory which found agriculture the decisive source of wealth and not trade like mercantilists did
• According to Physiocracy, agriculture was a sole productive sphere of society, therefore it should be subsidised by a state
• Physiocratists' teaching was generalised and systematised by the most significant economist of the modern era, Adam Smith, in "The Wealth of Nations"
• Adam Smith found man's work the only source of wealth, refused state intervention in enterprise, and recommended the division of wealth based on the free market, which was the predecessor of modern Liberalism
• The Age of Reason had a vast influence on the development of natural sciences, including mathematics, physics, chemistry, and various inventions
• Although absolutism did not abolish the system of inequality, some monarchs began to perceive the world from the enlightened point of view, and sought to ensure convenient conditions for all people of their country
• Ignorance was considered the gravest obstacle to the appropriate human life, so enlightened monarchs supported education and made elementary schools available, though the highest education still remained restricted for noble and rich clerical and bourgeois families
• An accompaniment to raising education of middle and higher classes was an increased interest in reading, including novels, edifying writing, religious literature, newspapers and magazines
• In countries where censorship was sooner or later abolished, such as England, the Netherlands, France and Denmark, media contributed to the formation of public opinion, which became an important principle of arising civil society
• The threat of misuse and manipulation of public opinion was bigger, but public opinion became an important principle of arising civil society