The Enlightenment

During the 18th century there was a new intellectual movement that grew in France and spread all across Europe and some American areas, it was the so-called  Enlightenment.
The main ideas of the Enlightenment were:

• Faith in human reason. Reason is essential and cannot be an ally of all the traditional principles based on mere faith.
• Progress must be achieved through education, scientific advances whose final target is human happiness. This was a criticism of the Ancien Régime (Old Regime), since it was a major threat against happiness and progress.
• The enlightened thinkers attacked social inequality and religious intolerance. Hence, they promoted a fair social order where equality and liberty are key elements. Nonetheless they did not agree about what the best social solution was.
• New moral values based on reason, science, and culture should be developed.
• Rulers had achieve their subjects’ happiness.
• Critical thinking. To have an independent point of view creates free and educated people.
• Learning and teaching are essential since the new knowledge gives freedom and creates an enlightened society.
• Traditional religious beliefs were strongly criticised and a new type of natural religion developed: deism. Its main principle was based on the fact that God created the Universe and that  it works according to scientific laws.

The Enlightenment just affected intellectual elites and its thinkers were a minority. There were several means by which it grew:

• Salons. They were meetings in private where intellectuals gathered in order to exchange social and cultural ideas.
• Media. New newspapers, magazines or printed pamphlets became essential means to spread the ideas of Enlightenment to other places.
• The Encyclopaedia. It was a compendium of the knowledge of that time