History glossary
Enlightenment
an eighteenth-century intellectual movement emphasizing reason, reform, science, and criticism of inherited authority.
- Category
- Intellectual movement
- Region
- Europe and Atlantic world
- Date range
- eighteenth century
What it means
The Enlightenment built on the Scientific Revolution and encouraged debate about government, rights, religion, education, economy, and progress. Enlightenment ideas influenced revolutions, reform movements, and modern political thought.
Related terms
Stories using this term
Nazi Germany
From Weimar collapse to WWII, Nazi Germany imposed totalitarian rule, expansion, and genocide.
The American Revolution and Early Republic
From colonial tensions to independence, this traces the birth and early struggles of the United States of America.
The Scientific Revolution
The Scientific Revolution transformed how humans understand the world, replacing tradition with observation, experimentation and mathematical laws that still shape modern science.
The Rise of Adolf Hitler
From the ashes of World War I to the Night of the Long Knives, this story traces the political rise of Adolf Hitler and the collapse of the Weimar Republic.
The French Revolution
From royal debt and social inequality to republic, terror, and Napoleon, the French Revolution dismantled the old order and produced the political ideas of citizenship, rights, and nationalism that defined the modern world.
