Age of Enlightenment
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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The Age of Enlightenment (Template:Lang-fr, Template:Lang-de) refers to the eighteenth century in European and American philosophy, or the longer period including the Age of Reason. It can more narrowly refer to the historical intellectual movement The Enlightenment, which advocated Reason as the primary basis of authority. As a movement it occurred solely in Germany, France, Britain, and Spain, but its influence spread beyond. Many of the Founding Fathers of the United States were also heavily influenced by Enlightenment-era ideas, particularly in the religious sphere (Deism) and, in parallel to the French Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen, in the governmental sphere with the United States Bill of Rights.
The Enlightenment is often closely linked with the Scientific Revolution, for both movements emphasized reason, science, and rationality, while the former also sought their application in comprehension of divine or natural law. Inspired by the revolution of knowledge commenced by Galileo and Newton, and in a climate of increasing disaffection with repressive rule, Enlightenment thinkers believed that systematic thinking might be applied to all areas of human activity, carried into the governmental sphere in their explorations of the individual, society and the state. Its leaders believed they could lead their states to progress after a long period of tradition, irrationality, superstition, and tyranny which they imputed to the Middle Ages, while many were religious. The movement helped create the intellectual framework for the American and French Revolutions, the Latin American independence movement, and the Polish Constitution of May 3; and led to the rise of classical liberalism, democracy, and capitalism.
The Enlightenment is matched with the high baroque and classical eras in music, and the neo-classical period in the arts; it receives modern attention as being one of the central models for many movements in the modern period.
