English writers of the period speak of “enlightening”
and “enlightened peoples,” also of the “historical age”;
in French L'âge de lumière, l'âge philosophique, siècle
des lumières, siècle de la bienfaisance, siècle de
l'humanité; in German Aufklärung and Zeitalter der
Kritik; in Italian Illuminismo. Enlightenment denotes
a historical period in the same sense as the terms
Reformation, Renaissance, and Baroque. It is broadly
co-extensive with the eighteenth century, beginning
with the Glorious Revolution of 1688, the writings of
Locke and Bayle, and ending with either the Declara-
tion of Independence of 1776 or the French Revolution
of 1789 or the defeat of postrevolutionary France in
1815 and the romantic reaction. Some historians,
following Troeltsch, regard the eighteenth century
(rather than the sixteenth) as the beginning of modern
history. In this view, the individualism and toleration
of the Renaissance and Reformation, the cosmopoli-
tanism following the opening up of the New World
and the East as well as the scientific advances of the
seventeenth century were merely programmatic and
did not lead to significant social, cultural, and political
changes until the eighteenth century. Naturally there
is no monolithic spirit of the age to be discerned;
traditional ideas persisted, while the tendencies of
romanticism made their appearance and left a strong
imprint. The Enlightenment then represents a move-
ment within the period to which it lent its name and
to which it imparted its lasting significance. Its aspira-
tions and anxieties, its debates and methods are still
with us in their original form; though its values have
been belittled by subsequent reaction, they appear
increasingly meaningful to the survivors of the catas-
trophes of recent history. The Enlightenment from the
outset has been a European movement. Unlike earlier
periods, which affected particular aspects of life or
certain classes of the population, it witnessed and
heralded sweeping social change. It did not become
effective at the same rate in the various countries of
Europe.
It originated in England both as regards structural
change and the reform of intellectual and moral ideas.
While it was a reality in the English-speaking world,
it remained a program and sometimes a utopia in other
parts of Europe. The Enlightenment was a self-
conscious and highly articulate movement, presenting
common basic conceptions, a common methodological
approach, and reform proposals based on commonly
held values. Its thought is basically a social philosophy,
starting from social premisses, concerned with social
ends, and viewing even religion and art in social terms.
(This article is devoted to a delineation of the basic
tenets of this philosophy; it does not offer a circum-
stantial account of the course of the Enlightenment
in different countries, nor does it deal in detail with
the fields of art, religion, and natural science.) The
Enlightenment reached its climax in the mid-
eighteenth century in Paris and Scotland; in both these
centers coordinated fellowships of thinkers and men
of the world developed the body of thought which is
peculiar to the Enlightenment. The ideas and quota-
tions in this article are therefore derived from the
writings of the philosophes responsible for Diderot's
and D'Alembert's Encyclopédie of 1751 and of the
Scottish thinkers from Francis Hutcheson and David
Hume onwards, including their English followers
Edward Gibbon and Jeremy Bentham. The thought of
the Italian and German Enlightenment, though distin-
guished by outstanding contributors, was derivative,
starting from English and French models and merging
them with the respective national traditions. In Italy
Cesare Beccaria and Pietro and Alessandro Verri
followed in the footsteps of Steele and Addison's Spec-
tator and Tatler, of Montesquieu, Hume, and the
Encyclopédie. In Germany the Enlightenment, though
never dominant, was largely influenced by the Univer-
sity of Göttingen founded by George II of England
in 1734, whose historians and students (including Justus
Möser and Freiherr vom Stein) echoed the thought of
David Hume, William Robertson, Adam Ferguson,
Gibbon, and Adam Smith; Johann Christoph Gottsched
started by translating the Spectator, the young Lessing
translated Francis Hutcheson and Diderot; Kant set
out, after Leibniz, from Hume and Rousseau,
Mendelssohn from Locke and Shaftesbury; Winckel-
mann was steeped in English thought, and so was
Herder in addition to his debt to the French life sci-
ences.
