Enlightenment

Definitions

1. A 17th- and 18th-century European intellectual movement emphasizing rationalism. The period during which it flourished is called the Age of Enlightenment or Age of Reason.
2. An act of enlightening, or the state of being enlightened or instructed.
   uncountable, usually
3. The peak of that 17th- and 18th-century period during the latter two-thirds of the 18th century.
4. A concept in spirituality, philosophy and psychology related to achieving clarity of perception, reason and knowledge.
   uncountable, usually

Equivalents

Examples

“But the man who has attained enlightenment sees that the apparent reality is mere illusion, or, as was said a couple of thousand years later, that there is nothing good nor bad but thinking makes it so.”

“Thus Django becomes the carrier of the “public use⟳ of one's reason⟳”—the Kantian road to enlightenment given to him by the German “Forty-Eighter” dentist–turned-bounty hunter Dr. “King” Schultz, and represents the fictive, allohistorical beginning of the battle against slavery and racism in the United States.”

“1997, Chris Horrocks, Introducing Foucault, page 36 (Totem Books, Icon Books; →ISBN He first presented a complementary thesis on the Enlightenment philosopher Immanuel Kant (1724–1804), in which he used the term “archaeology” for the first time, and which indicated the period of history to which he was constantly to return⟳. The Enlightenment: the intellectual, philosophical, cultural and scientific spirit of the 18th century. A belief in reason⟳, progress⟳, man’s “maturity” and a general rejection of tradition, religion and authority.”

“What is enlightenment? In a 1784 essay with that question⟳ as its title, Immanuel Kant answered that it consists of “humankind’s emergence from its self-incurred immaturity,” its “lazy and cowardly” submission to the “dogmas and formulas” of religious or political authority.¹ Enlightenment’s motto, he proclaimed, is “Dare to understand⟳!” and its foundational demand⟳ is freedom of thought and speech. […] What is the Enlightenment?⁴ There is no official answer⟳, because the era named by Kant’s essay was never demarcated by opening and closing ceremonies like⟳ the Olympics, nor are its tenets stipulated in an oath or creed. The Enlightenment is conventionally placed in the last⟳ two-thirds of the 18th century, though it flowed out of the Scientific Revolution and the Age of Reason⟳ in the 17th century and spilled into the heyday of classical liberalism of the first half of the 19th.”

CEFR level