What was the Age of Enlightenment?

Answer 1

The Enlightenment, also known as the Age of Reason, was an era in the 17th and 18th centuries associated with the birth of modern liberalism and its ensuing impact on the American, French, and Haitian Revolutions. Picking up from the Renaissance's commitment to humanism and non-religious ideals, the Enlightenment epoch deemphasized the supremacy of Christian influence over public and private institutions in Western society in favor of political liberty, fraternity, empiricism, and freedom of conscience. Significant philosophers of this period, known in the French Enlightenment as philosophes, helped typify and embody the Enlightenment, exemplified by Immanuel Kant's 1784 essay, What Is Enlightenment? These public intellectuals include René Descartes, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Michel de Montaigne, Voltaire, Baruch Spinoza, John Locke, and David Hume. Enlightenment philosophies often center around logic, reason, intellectual capacity, personal liberty, and freedom of expression.

Answer 2

The Age of Enlightenment was a period of time from 17th and 18th centuries that brought forth new ideas and changed how we think of religion, politcs, and government today. Also known as the Age of Reason, this time period is credited with influencing revolutions around the world, such as the American and French Revolutions.

Some notable figures from this time period were John Locke, Robespierre, Montesquieu. They believed in natural rights or rights that you are born with. Locke most famously believed everyone has the rights to Life, Liberty, and Property, the wording of which is very similar in the American Declaration of Independence.

During this time, the idea of religion also changed. Many people started shifting from religion (primarily Christianity) running everything in life, to being a more personal individual aspect of life.