Definition
The Enlightenment was a broad intellectual movement that flourished in Europe and its colonies during the 17th and 18th centuries. Its central conviction was that human reason, applied carefully and systematically, could improve society, government, and the human condition.
Enlightenment thinkers — among them John Locke, Montesquieu, Voltaire, and Rousseau — questioned inherited authority. They asked not what tradition demanded, but what reason and evidence could justify.
Why it matters
How it works
The Enlightenment spread through books, pamphlets, newspapers, salons, and coffeehouses — a growing public sphere where ideas could be debated openly. Cheap printing carried these arguments to a literate middle class hungry for them.
The movement worked by turning a critical method on every institution. If a law, a privilege, or a form of government could not be justified by reason, Enlightenment writers argued it should be reformed or abolished. That habit of questioning made the Enlightenment a powerful solvent of the old order.