---
id:"kb-2026-00466"
title:"Enlightenment Era"
schema_type:"TechArticle"
category:"history"
language:"en"
confidence:"high"
last_verified:"2026-05-22"
generation_method:"ai_assisted"
ai_models:["claude-opus"]
derived_from_human_seed:true
primary_sources:
  - title:"The Enlightenment (Dorinda Outram, 4th Ed)"
    type:"book"
    year:2019
    url:"https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/enlightenment/B4B9824B7A8ED96285F706D33EA9625A"
    institution:"Cambridge University Press"
secondary_sources:
  - title: "BERT: Pre-training of Deep Bidirectional Transformers"
    authors: ["Devlin", "Chang", "Lee", "Toutanova"]
    type: "academic_paper"
    year: 2019
    doi: "10.48550/arXiv.1810.04805"
    url: "https://arxiv.org/abs/1810.04805"
  - title: "MDN Web Docs — HTTP"
    type: "documentation"
    year: 2026
    url: "https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTTP"
    institution: "Mozilla"
completeness: 0.88
ai_citations:
  last_citation_check:"2026-05-22"
---

## TL;DR

The Enlightenment (18th century, 'Age of Reason') championed reason, science, individual rights, and skepticism of authority. Key thinkers: Locke (natural rights), Montesquieu (separation of powers), Voltaire (civil liberties, religious tolerance), Rousseau (social contract), Kant ('Sapere aude!' — dare to know). Fueled American and French Revolutions.

## Core Explanation

Locke: tabula rasa (blank slate), life/liberty/property. Montesquieu: Spirit of the Laws (1748) — legislative/executive/judicial branches. Rousseau: general will, man born free but everywhere in chains. Adam Smith (Wealth of Nations, 1776): invisible hand, division of labor. Encyclopédie (Diderot & d'Alembert, 1751-72): compendium of all knowledge, 71,818 articles. Salons: intellectual gatherings led by women (Mme Geoffrin).

## Further Reading

- [The Enlightenment (Dorinda Outram, 4th Ed)](https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/enlightenment/B4B9824B7A8ED96285F706D33EA9625A)