Age of Enlightenment
European cultural movement
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Key Takeaways
- Characterized by an emphasis on reason, empirical evidence, and the scientific method, the Enlightenment promoted ideals of individual liberty, religious tolerance, progress, and natural rights.
The Age of Enlightenment was a period in the history of Europe and Western civilization during which the Enlightenment, an intellectual and cultural movement, flourished, emerging in the late 17th century in Western Europe and reaching its peak in the 18th century, as its ideas spread more widely across Europe and into the European colonies, in the Americas and Oceania. Characterized by an emphasis on reason, empirical evidence, and the scientific method, the Enlightenment promoted ideals of individual liberty, religious tolerance, progress, and natural rights. Its thinkers advocated for constitutional government, the separation of church and state, and the application of rational principles to social and political reform.
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