Meaning of Age of Reason | Babel Free

Definitions

1. Seven years of age, at which age a person is morally liable for the sins that they commit.
   uncountable, usually
2. Alternative letter-case form of Age of Reason
   alt-of
3. Synonym of Age of Enlightenment
4. Age at which a person is able to distinguish right from wrong and make their own decisions.
   broadly, uncountable, usually

Equivalents

Examples

“Book 1: Reason⟳ alone teaches us to know⟳ good and bad. . . . Before the age of reason⟳ we do good and bad without knowing it, and there is no morality in our actions. . . . A child wants to upset⟳ everything he sees; he smashes, breaks everything he can reach⟳. Book 4: We hold⟳ that no child who dies before the age of reason⟳ will be deprived of eternal happiness. . . . The whole difference I see⟳ here between you and me is that you claim⟳ that children have⟳ this capacity [i.e., to recognize the divinity] at seven, and I do not even accord it to them at fifteen.”

“On September tenth — the morning of my seventh birthday — I came downstairs to the kitchen, where my mother was washing the dishes and my father was… reading the paper or something, and I sort-of presented myself to them in the doorway, and they said “Hey! Happy birthday!” And I said “I’m seven.” And my father smiled and said “Well, you know⟳ what that means, don’t you?” And I said “Yeah… that I’m gonna have⟳ a party and a cake and get⟳ a lot of presents (?)” And my dad said “Well, yes, but more importantly, being seven means that you’ve reached the age of reason⟳, and you’re now capable of committing any and all sins against God and man.””

“Since the Church has traditionally understood the age of reason⟳ to be seven years old, your daughter would not be too young to receive⟳ confirmation at age eight.”

“In Mozart, The Dramatist, Brigid Brophy argues that Mozart's music is epitomal of the age of reason⟳. Tightly constructed, elaborately designed, it is complete⟳ unto itself. Like⟳ the graphic balance in a Beardsley print⟳, or the perfectly weighted epigram of Oscar Wilde, the triumph is in the perfect union of form⟳ and content: the transcendence of the artifice, the sublimeness of the created object.”

“It suited some thinkers in the eighteenth-century Age of Reason⟳ to look⟳ down on the Middle Ages as a primitive and backward time when men believed that the world was flat.”

CEFR level