age of Enlightenment

There is little consensus on the precise beginning of the Age of Enlightenment, though several historians and philosophers argue that it was marked by Descartes' 1637 philosophy of Cogito, ergo sum ("I think, therefore I am"), which shifted the epistemological basis from external authority to internal certainty.Martin Heidegger [1938] (2002) The Age of the World Picture quotation:{{blockquote|For up to Descartes ... a particular sub-iectum ... lies at the foundation of its own fixed qualities and changing circumstances. The superiority of a sub-iectum ... arises out of the claim of man to a ... self-supported, unshakeable foundation of truth, in the sense of certainty. Why and how does this claim acquire its decisive authority? The claim originates in that emancipation of man in which he frees himself from obligation to Christian revelational truth and Church doctrine to a legislating for himself that takes its stand upon itself.}}Ingraffia, Brian D. (1995) [https://books.google.com/books?id=LHjZYbOLG8cC&pg=PA126 Postmodern theory and biblical theology: vanquishing God's shadow] p. 126Norman K. Swazo (2002) [https://books.google.com/books?id=INP_cy6Mu7EC&pg=PA97 Crisis theory and world order: Heideggerian reflections] pp. 97–99 In France, many cited the publication of Newton's Principia Mathematica (1687),Shank, J. B. The Newton Wars and the Beginning of the French Enlightenment (2008), "Introduction"{{Page needed|date=July 2020}} which built upon the work of earlier scientists and formulated the laws of motion and universal gravitation.{{cite web |title=PHYS 200 – Lecture 3 – Newton's Laws of Motion – Open Yale Courses |url=http://oyc.yale.edu/physics/phys-200/lecture-3 |website=oyc.yale.edu}} French historians usually place the Siècle des Lumières ("Century of Enlightenments") between 1715 and 1789: from the beginning of the reign of Louis XV until the French Revolution.Anderson, M. S. Historians and eighteenth-century Europe, 1715–1789 (Oxford UP, 1979); Jean de Viguerie, Histoire et dictionnaire du temps des Lumières (1715–1789) (Paris: Robert Laffont, 1995). Most scholars use the last years of the century, often choosing the French Revolution or the beginning of the Napoleonic Wars (1804) as a convenient point in time with which to date the end of the Enlightenment.{{cite web |url=http://www.martinfrost.ws/htmlfiles/enlightenment_age.html |title=The age of Enlightenment |last=Frost |first=Martin |year=2008 |access-date=18 January 2008 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20071010041056/http://www.martinfrost.ws/htmlfiles/enlightenment_age.html |archive-date=10 October 2007}}

In recent years, scholars have expanded the time span and global perspective of the Enlightenment by examining: (1) how European intellectuals did not work alone and other people helped spread and adapt Enlightenment ideas, (2) how Enlightenment ideas were "a response to cross-border interaction and global integration," and (3) how the Enlightenment "continued throughout the nineteenth century and beyond." The Enlightenment "was not merely a history of diffusion" and "was the work of historical actors around the world... who invoked the term... for their own specific purposes."

In their 1947 book Dialectic of Enlightenment, Frankfurt School philosophers Max Horkheimer and Theodor W. Adorno, both wartime exiles from Nazi Germany, critiqued the supposed rational basis of the modern world:

{{blockquote|Enlightenment, understood in the widest sense as the advance of thought, has always aimed at liberating human beings from fear and installing them as masters. Yet the wholly enlightened earth radiates under the sign of disaster triumphant.{{cite book |last1=Zuidervaart |first1=Lambert |title=Social Philosophy after Adorno |date=2007 |publisher=Cambridge University Press |isbn=978-1-139-46453-6 |page=185 |doi=10.1017/CBO9780511618970.009 |chapter=Appendix: Adorno's Social Philosophy}}}}

Extending Horkheimer and Adorno's argument, intellectual historian Jason Josephson Storm argues that any idea of the Age of Enlightenment as a clearly defined period that is separate from the earlier Renaissance and later Romanticism or Counter-Enlightenment constitutes a myth. Storm points out that there are vastly different and mutually contradictory periodizations of the Enlightenment depending on nation, field of study, and school of thought; that the term and category of "Enlightenment" referring to the Scientific Revolution was actually applied after the fact; that the Enlightenment did not see an increase in disenchantment or the dominance of the mechanistic worldview; and that a blur in the early modern ideas of the humanities and natural sciences makes it hard to circumscribe a Scientific Revolution.{{cite book |last=Josephson-Storm |first=Jason |title=The Myth of Disenchantment: Magic, Modernity, and the Birth of the Human Sciences |location=Chicago |publisher=University of Chicago Press |year=2017 |pages=58–61 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=xZ5yDgAAQBAJ |isbn=978-0-226-40336-6}} Storm defends his categorization of the Enlightenment as "myth" by noting the regulative role ideas of a period of Enlightenment and disenchantment play in modern Western culture, such that belief in magic, spiritualism, and even religion appears somewhat taboo in intellectual strata.{{cite book |last=Josephson-Storm |first=Jason |title=The Myth of Disenchantment: Magic, Modernity, and the Birth of the Human Sciences |location=Chicago |publisher=University of Chicago Press |year=2017 |pages=61–62 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=xZ5yDgAAQBAJ |isbn=978-0-226-40336-6}}

In the 1970s, study of the Enlightenment expanded to include the ways Enlightenment ideas spread to European colonies and how they interacted with indigenous cultures and how the Enlightenment took place in formerly unstudied areas such as Italy, Greece, the Balkans, Poland, Hungary, and Russia.Outram, 6. See also, A. Owen Alridge (ed.), The Ibero-American Enlightenment (1971)., Franco Venturi, The End of the Old Regime in Europe 1768–1776: The First Crisis. Intellectuals such as Robert Darnton and Jürgen Habermas have focused on the social conditions of the Enlightenment. Habermas described the creation of the "bourgeois public sphere" in 18th-century Europe, containing the new venues and modes of communication allowing for rational exchange. Habermas said that the public sphere was bourgeois, egalitarian, rational, and independent from the state, making it the ideal venue for intellectuals to critically examine contemporary politics and society, away from the interference of established authority. While the public sphere is generally an integral component of the social study of the Enlightenment, other historians{{efn|e.g. Robert Darnton, Roger Chartier, Brian Cowan, Donna T. Andrew.}} have questioned whether the public sphere had these characteristics.

File:Josef II medal.jpg, commemorating his grant of religious liberty to Jews and Protestants in Hungary—another important reform of Joseph II was the abolition of serfdom.]]

In contrast to the intellectual historiographical approach of the Enlightenment, which examines the various currents or discourses of intellectual thought within the European context during the 17th and 18th centuries, the cultural (or social) approach examines the changes that occurred in European society and culture. This approach studies the process of changing sociabilities and cultural practices during the Enlightenment.

One of the primary elements of the culture of the Enlightenment was the rise of the public sphere, a "realm of communication marked by new arenas of debate, more open and accessible forms of urban public space and sociability, and an explosion of print culture," in the late 17th century and 18th century.James Van Horn Melton, The Rise of the Public in Enlightenment Europe (2001), p. 4. Elements of the public sphere included that it was egalitarian, that it discussed the domain of "common concern," and that argument was founded on reason.Jürgen Habermas, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere, (1989), pp. 36, 37. Habermas uses the term "common concern" to describe those areas of political/social knowledge and discussion that were previously the exclusive territory of the state and religious authorities, now open to critical examination by the public sphere. The values of this bourgeois public sphere included holding reason to be supreme, considering everything to be open to criticism (the public sphere is critical), and the opposition of secrecy of all sorts.Melton, 8.

File:Alexandre humboldt.jpg showed his disgust for slavery and often criticized the colonial policies—he always acted out of a deeply humanistic conviction, borne by the ideas of the Enlightenment.Nicolaas A. Rupke (2008). "[https://books.google.com/books?id=_fXXRzidVKMC Alexander Von Humboldt: A Metabiography]." University of Chicago Press. p. 138 {{ISBN|978-0-226-73149-0}}]]

The creation of the public sphere has been associated with two long-term historical trends: the rise of the modern nation state and the rise of capitalism. The modern nation state in its consolidation of public power created by counterpoint a private realm of society independent of the state, which allowed for the public sphere. Capitalism also increased society's autonomy and self-awareness, as well as an increasing need for the exchange of information. As the nascent public sphere expanded, it embraced a large variety of institutions, and the most commonly cited were coffee houses and cafés, salons and the literary public sphere, figuratively localized in the Republic of Letters.Melton, 4, 5. Habermas, 14–26. In France, the creation of the public sphere was helped by the aristocracy's move from the king's palace at Versailles to Paris in about 1720, since their rich spending stimulated the trade in luxuries and artistic creations, especially fine paintings.{{cite book |editor=Daniel Brewer |title=The Cambridge Companion to the French Enlightenment |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=mry1BAAAQBAJ&pg=PT91 |year=2014 |publisher=Cambridge UP |pages=91ff |isbn=978-1-316-19432-4}}

The context for the rise of the public sphere was the economic and social change commonly associated with the Industrial Revolution: "Economic expansion, increasing urbanization, rising population and improving communications in comparison to the stagnation of the previous century."Outram, Dorinda. The Enlightenment (2nd ed.). Cambridge University Press, 2005, p. 12. Rising efficiency in production techniques and communication lowered the prices of consumer goods and increased the amount and variety of goods available to consumers (including the literature essential to the public sphere). Meanwhile, the colonial experience (most European states had colonial empires in the 18th century) began to expose European society to extremely heterogeneous cultures, leading to the breaking down of "barriers between cultural systems, religious divides, gender differences and geographical areas."Outram 2005, p. 13.

The word "public" implies the highest level of inclusivity—the public sphere by definition should be open to all. However, this sphere was only public to relative degrees. Enlightenment thinkers frequently contrasted their conception of the "public" with that of the people: Condorcet contrasted "opinion" with populace, Marmontel "the opinion of men of letters" with "the opinion of the multitude" and d'Alembert the "truly enlightened public" with "the blind and noisy multitude."Chartier, 27. Additionally, most institutions of the public sphere excluded both women and the lower classes.Mona Ozouf, {{"'}}Public Opinion' at the End of the Old Regime" Cross-class influences occurred through noble and lower class participation in areas such as the coffeehouses and the Masonic lodges.

Because of the focus on reason over superstition, the Enlightenment cultivated the arts.David Beard and Kenneth Gloag, Musicology, The Key Concepts (New York: Routledge, 2005), 58. Emphasis on learning, art, and music became more widespread, especially with the growing middle class. Areas of study such as literature, philosophy, science, and the fine arts increasingly explored subject matter to which the general public, in addition to the previously more segregated professionals and patrons, could relate.J. Peter Burkholder, Donald J. Grout, and Claude V. Palisca, A History of Western Music, Seventh Edition, (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, Inc., 2006), 475.

File:George Frideric Handel by Balthasar Denner.jpg]]

As musicians depended more on public support, public concerts became increasingly popular and helped supplement performers' and composers' incomes. The concerts also helped them to reach a wider audience. Handel, for example, epitomized this with his highly public musical activities in London. He gained considerable fame there with performances of his operas and oratorios. The music of Haydn and Mozart, with their Viennese Classical styles, are usually regarded as being the most in line with the Enlightenment ideals.Beard and Gloag, Musicology, 59.

The desire to explore, record, and systematize knowledge had a meaningful impact on music publications. Rousseau's Dictionnaire de musique (published 1767 in Geneva and 1768 in Paris) was a leading text in the late 18th century. This widely available dictionary gave short definitions of words like genius and taste and was clearly influenced by the Enlightenment movement. Another text influenced by Enlightenment values was Charles Burney's A General History of Music: From the Earliest Ages to the Present Period (1776), which was a historical survey and an attempt to rationalize elements in music systematically over time.Beard and Gloag, Musicology, 60. Recently, musicologists have shown renewed interest in the ideas and consequences of the Enlightenment. For example, Rose Rosengard Subotnik's Deconstructive Variations (subtitled Music and Reason in Western Society) compares Mozart's Die Zauberflöte (1791) using the Enlightenment and Romantic perspectives and concludes that the work is "an ideal musical representation of the Enlightenment."

As the economy and the middle class expanded, there was an increasing number of amateur musicians. One manifestation of this involved women, who became more involved with music on a social level. Women were already engaged in professional roles as singers and increased their presence in the amateur performers' scene, especially with keyboard music.Burkholder, Grout, and Palisca, A History of Western Music, 475. Music publishers began to print music that amateurs could understand and play. The majority of the works that were published were for keyboard, voice and keyboard, and chamber ensemble. After these initial genres were popularized, from the mid-century on, amateur groups sang choral music, which then became a new trend for publishers to capitalize on. The increasing study of the fine arts, as well as access to amateur-friendly published works, led to more people becoming interested in reading and discussing music. Music magazines, reviews, and critical works which suited amateurs as well as connoisseurs began to surface.

The philosophes spent a great deal of energy disseminating their ideas among educated men and women in cosmopolitan cities. They used many venues, some of them quite new.

File:Pierre Bayle by Louis Ferdinand Elle.jpg]]

The term "Republic of Letters" was coined in 1664 by Pierre Bayle in his journal Nouvelles de la Republique des Lettres. Towards the end of the 18th century, the editor of Histoire de la République des Lettres en France, a literary survey, described the Republic of Letters as being: {{blockquote|In the midst of all the governments that decide the fate of men; in the bosom of so many states, the majority of them despotic ... there exists a certain realm which holds sway only over the mind ... that we honor with the name Republic, because it preserves a measure of independence, and because it is almost its essence to be free. It is the realm of talent and of thought.}}

The Republic of Letters was the sum of a number of Enlightenment ideals: an egalitarian realm governed by knowledge that could act across political boundaries and rival state power. It was a forum that supported "free public examination of questions regarding religion or legislation."Chartier, 26. Kant considered written communication essential to his conception of the public sphere; once everyone was a part of the "reading public," then society could be said to be enlightened.Chartier, 26, 26. Kant, "What is Enlightenment?" The people who participated in the Republic of Letters, such as Diderot and Voltaire, are frequently known today as important Enlightenment figures. Indeed, the men who wrote Diderot's Encyclopédie arguably formed a microcosm of the larger "republic."Outram, 23.

File:Gentleman's Magazine 1731.JPG, January 1731]]

Many women played an essential part in the French Enlightenment because of the role they played as salonnières in Parisian salons, as the contrast to the male philosophes. The salon was the principal social institution of the republicGoodman, 3. and "became the civil working spaces of the project of Enlightenment." Women, as salonnières, were "the legitimate governors of [the] potentially unruly discourse" that took place within.Dena Goodman, The Republic of Letters: A Cultural History of the French Enlightenment (1994), 53. While women were marginalized in the public culture of the Old Regime, the French Revolution destroyed the old cultural and economic restraints of patronage and corporatism (guilds), opening French society to female participation, particularly in the literary sphere.Carla Hesse, The Other Enlightenment: How French Women Became Modern (2001), 42.

In France, the established men of letters (gens de lettres) had fused with the elites (les grands) of French society by the mid-18th century. This led to the creation of an oppositional literary sphere, Grub Street, the domain of a "multitude of versifiers and would-be authors."Crébillon fils, quoted from Darnton, The Literary Underground, 17. These men came to London to become authors only to discover that the literary market could not support large numbers of writers, who in any case were very poorly remunerated by the publishing-bookselling guilds.Darnton, The Literary Underground, 19, 20.

The writers of Grub Street, the Grub Street Hacks, were left feeling bitter about the relative success of the men of lettersDarnton, "The Literary Underground," 21, 23. and found an outlet for their literature which was typified by the libelle. Written mostly in the form of pamphlets, the libelles "slandered the court, the Church, the aristocracy, the academies, the salons, everything elevated and respectable, including the monarchy itself."Darnton, The Literary Underground, 29 Le Gazetier cuirassé by Charles Théveneau de Morande was a prototype of the genre. It was Grub Street literature that was most read by the public during the Enlightenment.Outram, 22. According to Darnton, more importantly the Grub Street hacks inherited the "revolutionary spirit" once displayed by the philosophes and paved the way for the French Revolution by desacralizing figures of political, moral, and religious authority in France.Darnton, The Literary Underground, 35–40.

File:1477-1799 ESTC titles per decade, statistics.png data 1477–1799 by decade given with a regional differentiation]]

The increased consumption of reading materials of all sorts was one of the key features of the "social" Enlightenment. Developments in the Industrial Revolution allowed consumer goods to be produced in greater quantities at lower prices, encouraging the spread of books, pamphlets, newspapers, and journals – "media of the transmission of ideas and attitudes." Commercial development likewise increased the demand for information, along with rising populations and increased urbanisation.Outram, 17, 20. However, demand for reading material extended outside of the realm of the commercial and outside the realm of the upper and middle classes, as evidenced by the bibliothèque bleue. Literacy rates are difficult to gauge, but in France the rates doubled over the course of the 18th century.Darnton, "The Literary Underground," 16. Reflecting the decreasing influence of religion, the number of books about science and art published in Paris doubled from 1720 to 1780, while the number of books about religion dropped to just one-tenth of the total.{{sfn|Petitfils|2005|pages=99–105}}

Reading underwent serious changes in the 18th century. In particular, Rolf Engelsing has argued for the existence of a reading revolution. Until 1750, reading was done intensively: people tended to own a small number of books and read them repeatedly, often to small audience. After 1750, people began to read "extensively," finding as many books as they could, increasingly reading them alone.from Outram, 19. See Rolf Engelsing, "Die Perioden der Lesergeschichte in der Neuzeit. Das statische Ausmass und die soziokulturelle Bedeutung der Lektüre," Archiv für Geschichte des Buchwesens, 10 (1969), cols. 944–1002 and Der Bürger als Leser: Lesergeschichte in Deutschland, 1500–1800 (Stuttgart, 1974). This is supported by increasing literacy rates, particularly among women.{{cite encyclopedia |url=https://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/482597/history-of-publishing/28681/Developments-in-the-18th-century |title=history of publishing :: Developments in the 18th century |encyclopedia=Encyclopædia Britannica |date=5 October 2023}}

The vast majority of the reading public could not afford to own a private library, and while most of the state-run "universal libraries" set up in the 17th and 18th centuries were open to the public, they were not the only sources of reading material. On one end of the spectrum was the bibliothèque bleue, a collection of cheaply produced books published in Troyes, France. Intended for a largely rural and semi-literate audience these books included almanacs, retellings of medieval romances and condensed versions of popular novels, among other things. While some historians have argued against the Enlightenment's penetration into the lower classes, the bibliothèque bleue represents at least a desire to participate in Enlightenment sociability.Outram, 27–29 Moving up the classes, a variety of institutions offered readers access to material without needing to buy anything. Libraries that lent out their material for a small price started to appear, and occasionally bookstores would offer a small lending library to their patrons. Coffee houses commonly offered books, journals, and sometimes even popular novels to their customers. Tatler and The Spectator, two influential periodicals sold from 1709 to 1714, were closely associated with coffee house culture in London, being both read and produced in various establishments in the city.Erin Mackie, The Commerce of Everyday Life: Selections from The Tatler and The Spectator (Boston: Bedford/St. Martin's, 1998), 16. This is an example of the triple or even quadruple function of the coffee house: reading material was often obtained, read, discussed, and even produced on the premises.See Mackie, Darnton, An Early Information Society

File:Denis Diderot 111.PNG is best known as the editor of the Encyclopédie.]]

It is difficult to determine what people actually read during the Enlightenment. For example, examining the catalogs of private libraries gives an image skewed in favor of the classes wealthy enough to afford libraries and also ignores censored works unlikely to be publicly acknowledged. For this reason, a study of publishing would be much more fruitful for discerning reading habits.In particular, see Chapter 6, "Reading, Writing and Publishing" Across continental Europe, but in France especially, booksellers and publishers had to negotiate censorship laws of varying strictness. For example, the Encyclopédie narrowly escaped seizure and had to be saved by Malesherbes, the man in charge of the French censor. Indeed, many publishing companies were conveniently located outside France so as to avoid overzealous French censors. They would smuggle their merchandise across the border, where it would then be transported to clandestine booksellers or small-time peddlers.See Darnton, The Literary Underground, 184. The records of clandestine booksellers may give a better representation of what literate Frenchmen might have truly read, since their clandestine nature provided a less restrictive product choice.Darnton, The Literary Underground, 135–47. In one case, political books were the most popular category, primarily libels and pamphlets. Readers were more interested in sensationalist stories about criminals and political corruption than they were in political theory itself. The second most popular category, "general works" (those books "that did not have a dominant motif and that contained something to offend almost everyone in authority"), demonstrated a high demand for generally low-brow subversive literature. However, these works never became part of literary canon and are largely forgotten today as a result.

A healthy, legal publishing industry existed throughout Europe, although established publishers and book sellers occasionally ran afoul of the law. For example, the Encyclopédie, condemned by both the King and Clement XII, nevertheless found its way into print with the help of the aforementioned Malesherbes and creative use of French censorship law.Darnton, The Business of Enlightenment, 12, 13. For a more detailed description of French censorship laws, see Darnton, The Literary Underground However, many works were sold without running into any legal trouble at all. Borrowing records from libraries in England, Germany, and North America indicate that more than 70% of books borrowed were novels. Less than 1% of the books were of a religious nature, indicating the general trend of declining religiosity.Outram, 21.

File:Buffon 1707-1788.jpg is best remembered for his {{lang|fr|Histoire naturelle}}, a 44 volume encyclopedia describing everything known about the natural world.]]

A genre that greatly rose in importance was that of scientific literature. Natural history in particular became increasingly popular among the upper classes. Works of natural history include René-Antoine Ferchault de Réaumur's Histoire naturelle des insectes and Jacques Gautier d'Agoty's La Myologie complète, ou description de tous les muscles du corps humain (1746). Outside Ancien Régime France, natural history was an important part of medicine and industry, encompassing the fields of botany, zoology, meteorology, hydrology, and mineralogy. Students in Enlightenment universities and academies were taught these subjects to prepare them for careers as diverse as medicine and theology. As shown by Matthew Daniel Eddy, natural history in this context was a very middle class pursuit and operated as a fertile trading zone for the interdisciplinary exchange of diverse scientific ideas.{{cite book |last=Eddy |first=Matthew Daniel |title=The Language of Mineralogy: John Walker, Chemistry and the Edinburgh Medical School, 1750–1800 |year=2008 |publisher=Ashgate |location=Aldershot |url=https://www.academia.edu/1112014}}

The target audience of natural history was French upper class, evidenced more by the specific discourse of the genre than by the generally high prices of its works. Naturalists catered to upper class desire for erudition: many texts had an explicit instructive purpose. However, natural history was often a political affair. As Emma Spary writes, the classifications used by naturalists "slipped between the natural world and the social ... to establish not only the expertise of the naturalists over the natural, but also the dominance of the natural over the social."Emma Spary, "The 'Nature' of Enlightenment" in The Sciences in Enlightened Europe, William Clark, Jan Golinski, and Steven Schaffer, eds. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999), 281–82. The idea of taste (le goût) was a social indicator: to truly be able to categorize nature, one had to have the proper taste, an ability of discretion shared by all members of the upper class. In this way, natural history spread many of the scientific developments of the time but also provided a new source of legitimacy for the dominant class.Spary, 289–93. From this basis, naturalists could then develop their own social ideals based on their scientific works.See Thomas Laqueur, Making sex: body and gender from the Greeks to Freud (1990).

File:1665 journal des scavans title.jpg}} was the earliest academic journal published in Europe.]]

The first scientific and literary journals were established during the Enlightenment. The first journal, the Parisian {{Lang|fr|Journal des sçavans}}, appeared in 1665. However, it was not until 1682 that periodicals began to be more widely produced. French and Latin were the dominant languages of publication, but there was also a steady demand for material in German and Dutch. There was generally low demand for English publications on the continent, which was echoed by England's similar lack of desire for French works. Languages commanding less of an international market—such as Danish, Spanish, and Portuguese—found journal success more difficult, and a more international language was used instead. French slowly took over Latin's status as the lingua franca of learned circles. This in turn gave precedence to the publishing industry in Holland, where the vast majority of these French language periodicals were produced.{{sfn|Israel|2001|pp=143–44}}

Jonathan Israel called the journals the most influential cultural innovation of European intellectual culture.{{sfn|Israel|2001|pp=142}} They shifted the attention of the "cultivated public" away from established authorities to novelty and innovation, and instead promoted the Enlightened ideals of toleration and intellectual objectivity. Being a source of knowledge derived from science and reason, they were an implicit critique of existing notions of universal truth monopolized by monarchies, parliaments, and religious authorities. They also advanced Christian Enlightenment that upheld "the legitimacy of God-ordained authority"—the Bible—in which there had to be agreement between the biblical and natural theories.{{sfn|Israel|2001|pp=150–51}}

File:Encyclopedie de D'Alembert et Diderot - Premiere Page - ENC 1-NA5.jpg, published between 1751 and 1766]]

Although the existence of dictionaries and encyclopedias spanned into ancient times, the texts changed from defining words in a long running list to far more detailed discussions of those words in 18th-century encyclopedic dictionaries.Headrick, (2000), p. 144. The works were part of an Enlightenment movement to systematize knowledge and provide education to a wider audience than the elite. As the 18th century progressed, the content of encyclopedias also changed according to readers' tastes. Volumes tended to focus more strongly on secular affairs, particularly science and technology, rather than matters of theology.

Along with secular matters, readers also favoured an alphabetical ordering scheme over cumbersome works arranged along thematic lines.Headrick, (2000), p. 172. Commenting on alphabetization, the historian Charles Porset has said that "as the zero degree of taxonomy, alphabetical order authorizes all reading strategies; in this respect it could be considered an emblem of the Enlightenment." For Porset, the avoidance of thematic and hierarchical systems thus allows free interpretation of the works and becomes an example of egalitarianism.Porter, (2003), pp. 249–250. Encyclopedias and dictionaries also became more popular during the Age of Enlightenment as the number of educated consumers who could afford such texts began to multiply. In the latter half of the 18th century, the number of dictionaries and encyclopedias published by decade increased from 63 between 1760 and 1769 to approximately 148 in the decade proceeding the French Revolution.Headrick, (2000), p. 168. Along with growth in numbers, dictionaries and encyclopedias also grew in length, often having multiple print runs that sometimes included in supplemented editions.

The first technical dictionary was drafted by John Harris and entitled Lexicon Technicum: Or, An Universal English Dictionary of Arts and Sciences. Harris' book avoids theological and biographical entries and instead concentrates on science and technology. Published in 1704, the Lexicon Technicum was the first book to be written in English that took a methodical approach to describing mathematics and commercial arithmetic along with the physical sciences and navigation. Other technical dictionaries followed Harris' model, including Ephraim Chambers' Cyclopaedia (1728), which included five editions and is a substantially larger work than Harris'. The folio edition of the work even included foldout engravings. The Cyclopaedia emphasized Newtonian theories, Lockean philosophy and contained thorough examinations of technologies, such as engraving, brewing, and dyeing.

File:ENC SYSTEME FIGURE.jpeg," the structure that the Encyclopédie organised knowledge into – it had three main branches: memory, reason, and imagination.]] In Germany, practical reference works intended for the uneducated majority became popular in the 18th century. The Marperger Curieuses Natur-, Kunst-, Berg-, Gewerk- und Handlungs-Lexicon (1712) explained terms that usefully described the trades and scientific and commercial education. Jablonksi Allgemeines Lexicon (1721) was better known than the Handlungs-Lexicon and underscored technical subjects rather than scientific theory. For example, over five columns of text were dedicated to wine while geometry and logic were allocated only twenty-two and seventeen lines, respectively. The first edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica (1771) was modelled along the same lines as the German lexicons.Headrick, (2000), pp. 150–152.

However, the prime example of reference works that systematized scientific knowledge in the Age of Enlightenment were universal encyclopedias rather than technical dictionaries. It was the goal of universal encyclopedias to record all human knowledge in a comprehensive reference work.Headrick, (2000), p. 153. The most well-known of these works is Diderot and d'Alembert's Encyclopédie, ou dictionnaire raisonné des sciences, des arts et des métiers. The work, which began publication in 1751, was composed of 35 volumes and over 71,000 separate entries. A great number of the entries were dedicated to describing the sciences and crafts in detail and provided intellectuals across Europe with a high-quality survey of human knowledge. In d'Alembert's Preliminary Discourse to the Encyclopedia of Diderot, the work's goal to record the extent of human knowledge in the arts and sciences is outlined:

{{blockquote|As an Encyclopédie, it is to set forth as well as possible the order and connection of the parts of human knowledge. As a Reasoned Dictionary of the Sciences, Arts, and Trades, it is to contain the general principles that form the basis of each science and each art, liberal or mechanical, and the most essential facts that make up the body and substance of each.d'Alembert, p. 4.}}

The massive work was arranged according to a "tree of knowledge." The tree reflected the marked division between the arts and sciences, which was largely a result of the rise of empiricism. Both areas of knowledge were united by philosophy, or the trunk of the tree of knowledge. The Enlightenment's desacrilization of religion was pronounced in the tree's design, particularly where theology accounted for a peripheral branch, with black magic as a close neighbour.Darnton, (1979), p. 7. As the Encyclopédie gained popularity, it was published in quarto and octavo editions after 1777. The quarto and octavo editions were much less expensive than previous editions, making the Encyclopédie more accessible to the non-elite. Robert Darnton estimates that there were approximately 25,000 copies of the Encyclopédie in circulation throughout France and Europe before the French Revolution.Darnton, (1979), p. 37. The extensive yet affordable encyclopedia came to represent the transmission of Enlightenment and scientific education to an expanding audience.Darnton, (1979), p. 6.

One of the most important developments that the Enlightenment era brought to the discipline of science was its popularization. An increasingly literate population seeking knowledge and education in both the arts and the sciences drove the expansion of print culture and the dissemination of scientific learning. The new literate population was precipitated by a high rise in the availability of food; this enabled many people to rise out of poverty, and instead of paying more for food, they had money for education.Jacob, (1988), p. 191; Melton, (2001), pp. 82–83 Popularization was generally part of an overarching Enlightenment ideal that endeavoured "to make information available to the greatest number of people."Headrick, (2000), p. 15 As public interest in natural philosophy grew during the 18th century, public lecture courses and the publication of popular texts opened up new roads to money and fame for amateurs and scientists who remained on the periphery of universities and academies.Headrick, (2000), p. 19. More formal works included explanations of scientific theories for individuals lacking the educational background to comprehend the original scientific text. Newton's celebrated Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica was published in Latin and remained inaccessible to readers without education in the classics until Enlightenment writers began to translate and analyze the text in the vernacular.

File:Fontenelle.jpg]]

The first significant work that expressed scientific theory and knowledge expressly for the laity, in the vernacular and with the entertainment of readers in mind, was Bernard de Fontenelle's Conversations on the Plurality of Worlds (1686). The book was produced specifically for women with an interest in scientific writing and inspired a variety of similar works.Phillips, (1991), pp. 85, 90 These popular works were written in a discursive style, which was laid out much more clearly for the reader than the complicated articles, treatises, and books published by the academies and scientists. Charles Leadbetter's Astronomy (1727) was advertised as "a Work entirely New" that would include "short and easie {{sic}} Rules and Astronomical Tables."Phillips, (1991), p. 90.

The first French introduction to Newtonianism and the Principia was Eléments de la philosophie de Newton, published by Voltaire in 1738.Porter, (2003), p. 300. Émilie du Châtelet's translation of the Principia, published after her death in 1756, also helped to spread Newton's theories beyond scientific academies and the university.Porter, (2003), p. 101. Writing for a growing female audience, Francesco Algarotti published Il Newtonianism per le dame, which was a tremendously popular work and was translated from Italian into English by Elizabeth Carter. A similar introduction to Newtonianism for women was produced by Henry Pemberton. His A View of Sir Isaac Newton's Philosophy was published by subscription. Extant records of subscribers show that women from a wide range of social standings purchased the book, indicating the growing number of scientifically inclined female readers among the middling class.Phillips, (1991), p. 92. During the Enlightenment, women also began producing popular scientific works. Sarah Trimmer wrote a successful natural history textbook for children titled The Easy Introduction to the Knowledge of Nature (1782), which was published for many years in eleven editions.Phillips, (1991), p. 107.

{{Main|Education in the Age of Enlightenment}}

Most work on the Enlightenment emphasizes the ideals discussed by intellectuals, rather than the actual state of education at the time. Leading educational theorists like England's John Locke and Switzerland's Jean Jacques Rousseau both emphasized the importance of shaping young minds early. By the late Enlightenment, there was a rising demand for a more universal approach to education, particularly after the American Revolution and the French Revolution.

The predominant educational psychology from the 1750s onward, especially in northern European countries, was associationism: the notion that the mind associates or dissociates ideas through repeated routines. In addition to being conducive to Enlightenment ideologies of liberty, self-determination, and personal responsibility, it offered a practical theory of the mind that allowed teachers to transform longstanding forms of print and manuscript culture into effective graphic tools of learning for the lower and middle orders of society.{{cite journal |last=Eddy |first=Matthew Daniel |title=The Shape of Knowledge: Children and the Visual Culture of Literacy and Numeracy |journal=Science in Context |year=2013 |volume=26 |issue=2 |pages=215–245 |url=https://www.academia.edu/1817033 |doi=10.1017/s0269889713000045 |s2cid=147123263}} Children were taught to memorize facts through oral and graphic methods that originated during the Renaissance.{{cite book |last=Hotson |first=Howard |title=Commonplace Learning: Ramism and Its German Ramifications 1543–1630 |year=2007 |publisher=Oxford University Press |location=Oxford}}

Many of the leading universities associated with Enlightenment progressive principles were located in northern Europe, with the most renowned being the universities of Leiden, Göttingen, Halle, Montpellier, Uppsala, and Edinburgh. These universities, especially Edinburgh, produced professors whose ideas had a significant impact on Britain's North American colonies and later the American Republic. Within the natural sciences, Edinburgh's medical school also led the way in chemistry, anatomy, and pharmacology. In other parts of Europe, the universities and schools of France and most of Europe were bastions of traditionalism and were not hospitable to the Enlightenment. In France, the major exception was the medical university at Montpellier.Elizabeth Williams, A Cultural History of Medical Vitalism in Enlightenment Montpellier (2003) p. 50

File:Sébastien Leclerc I, Louis XIV Visiting the Royal Academy of Sciences, 1671.jpg visiting the {{lang|fr|Académie des sciences}} in 1671: "It is widely accepted that 'modern science' arose in the Europe of the 17th century, introducing a new understanding of the natural world"—Peter BarrettPeter Barrett (2004), [https://books.google.com/books?id=fwxViwX6KuMC&pg=PA14 Science and Theology Since Copernicus: The Search for Understanding], p. 14, Continuum International Publishing Group, {{ISBN|978-0-567-08969-4}}]] File:Zoom lunette ardente.jpg conducting an experiment related to combustion generated by amplified sun light]]

The history of Academies in France during the Enlightenment begins with the Academy of Science, founded in 1666 in Paris. It was closely tied to the French state, acting as an extension of a government seriously lacking in scientists. It helped promote and organize new disciplines and it trained new scientists. It also contributed to the enhancement of scientists' social status, considering them to be the "most useful of all citizens." Academies demonstrate the rising interest in science along with its increasing secularization, as evidenced by the small number of clerics who were members (13%).Daniel Roche, France in the Enlightenment, (1998), 420. The presence of the French academies in the public sphere cannot be attributed to their membership, as although the majority of their members were bourgeois, the exclusive institution was only open to elite Parisian scholars. They perceived themselves as "interpreters of the sciences for the people." For example, it was with this in mind that academicians took it upon themselves to disprove the popular pseudo-science of mesmerism.Roche, 515–16.

The strongest contribution of the French Academies to the public sphere comes from the concours académiques (roughly translated as "academic contests") they sponsored throughout France. These academic contests were perhaps the most public of any institution during the Enlightenment.Caradonna JL. Annales, "Prendre part au siècle des Lumières: Le concours académique et la culture intellectuelle au XVIIIe siècle" The practice of contests dated back to the Middle Ages and was revived in the mid-17th century. The subject matter had previously been generally religious and/or monarchical, featuring essays, poetry, and painting. However, by roughly 1725 this subject matter had radically expanded and diversified, including "royal propaganda, philosophical battles, and critical ruminations on the social and political institutions of the Old Regime." Topics of public controversy were also discussed such as the theories of Newton and Descartes, the slave trade, women's education, and justice in France.Jeremy L. Caradonna, "Prendre part au siècle des Lumières: Le concours académique et la culture intellectuelle au XVIIIe siècle," Annales. Histoire, Sciences sociales, vol. 64 (mai-juin 2009), n. 3, 633–62. More importantly, the contests were open to all, and the enforced anonymity of each submission guaranteed that neither gender nor social rank would determine the judging. Indeed, although the "vast majority" of participants belonged to the wealthier strata of society ("the liberal arts, the clergy, the judiciary and the medical profession"), there were some cases of the popular classes submitting essays and even winning.Caradonna, 634–36. Similarly, a significant number of women participated—and won—the competitions. Of a total of 2,300 prize competitions offered in France, women won 49—perhaps a small number by modern standards but very significant in an age in which most women did not have any academic training. Indeed, the majority of the winning entries were for poetry competitions, a genre commonly stressed in women's education.Caradonna, 653–54.

In England, the Royal Society of London played a significant role in the public sphere and the spread of Enlightenment ideas. It was founded by a group of independent scientists and given a royal charter in 1662.{{cite web |url=https://royalsociety.org/about-us/history/royal-charters/ |title=Royal Charters |work=royalsociety.org}} The society played a large role in spreading Robert Boyle's experimental philosophy around Europe and acted as a clearinghouse for intellectual correspondence and exchange.Steven Shapin, A Social History of Truth: Civility and Science in Seventeenth-Century England, Chicago; London: University of Chicago Press, 1994. Boyle was "a founder of the experimental world in which scientists now live and operate" and his method based knowledge on experimentation, which had to be witnessed to provide proper empirical legitimacy. This is where the Royal Society came into play: witnessing had to be a "collective act" and the Royal Society's assembly rooms were ideal locations for relatively public demonstrations.Steven Shapin and Simon Schaffer, Leviathan and the Air-Pump: Hobbes, Boyle, and the Experimental Life (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1985), 5, 56, 57. This same desire for multiple witnesses led to attempts at replication in other locations and a complex iconography and literary technology developed to provide visual and written proof of experimentation. See pp. 59–65. However, not just any witness was considered to be credible: "Oxford professors were accounted more reliable witnesses than Oxfordshire peasants." Two factors were taken into account: a witness's knowledge in the area and a witness's "moral constitution." In other words, only civil society were considered for Boyle's public.Shapin and Schaffer, 58, 59.

{{Main|Historiography of the salon}}

Salons were places where philosophes were reunited and discussed old, actual, or new ideas. This led to salons being the birthplace of intellectual and enlightened ideas.

{{Main|English coffeehouses in the 17th and 18th centuries}}

Coffeehouses were especially important to the spread of knowledge during the Enlightenment because they created a unique environment in which people from many different walks of life gathered and shared ideas. They were frequently criticized by nobles who feared the possibility of an environment in which class and its accompanying titles and privileges were disregarded. Such an environment was especially intimidating to monarchs who derived much of their power from the disparity between classes of people. If the different classes joined together under the influence of Enlightenment thinking, they might recognize the all-encompassing oppression and abuses of their monarchs and because of the numbers of their members might be able to successfully revolt. Monarchs also resented the idea of their subjects convening as one to discuss political matters, especially matters of foreign affairs. Rulers thought political affairs were their business only, a result of their divine right to rule.{{cite journal |title=Coffeehouse Civility, 1660–1714: An Aspect of Post-Courtly Culture in England |first=Lawrence E. |journal=Huntington Library Quarterly |last=Klein |date=1 January 1996 |volume=59 |issue=1 |pages=31–51 |doi=10.2307/3817904 |jstor=3817904}}

Coffeeshops became homes away from home for many who sought to engage in discourse with their neighbors and discuss intriguing and thought-provoking matters, from philosophy to politics. Coffeehouses were essential to the Enlightenment, for they were centers of free-thinking and self-discovery. Although many coffeehouse patrons were scholars, many were not. Coffeehouses attracted a diverse set of people, including the educated wealthy and bourgeois as well as the lower classes. Patrons, being doctors, lawyers, merchants, represented almost all classes, so the coffeeshop environment sparked fear in those who wanted to preserve class distinction. One of the most popular critiques of the coffeehouse said that it "allowed promiscuous association among people from different rungs of the social ladder, from the artisan to the aristocrat" and was therefore compared to Noah's Ark, receiving all types of animals, clean and unclean.Klein, 35. This unique culture served as a catalyst for journalism, when Joseph Addison and Richard Steele recognized its potential as an audience. Together, Steele and Addison published The Spectator (1711), a daily publication which aimed, through fictional narrator Mr. Spectator, to both entertain and provoke discussion on serious philosophical matters.

The first English coffeehouse opened in Oxford in 1650. Brian Cowan said that Oxford coffeehouses developed into "penny universities," offering a locus of learning that was less formal than at structured institutions. These penny universities occupied a significant position in Oxford academic life, as they were frequented by those consequently referred to as the virtuosi, who conducted their research on some of the premises. According to Cowan, "the coffeehouse was a place for like-minded scholars to congregate, to read, as well as learn from and to debate with each other, but was emphatically not a university institution, and the discourse there was of a far different order than any university tutorial."Cowan, 90, 91.

The Café Procope was established in Paris in 1686, and by the 1720s there were around 400 cafés in the city. The Café Procope in particular became a center of Enlightenment, welcoming such celebrities as Voltaire and Rousseau. The Café Procope was where Diderot and D'Alembert decided to create the Encyclopédie.Colin Jones, Paris: Biography of a City (New York: Viking, 2004), 188, 189. The cafés were one of the various "nerve centers" for bruits publics, public noise or rumour. These bruits were allegedly a much better source of information than were the actual newspapers available at the time.{{cite journal |first=Robert |last=Darnton |title=An Early Information Society: News and the Media in Eighteenth-Century Paris |journal=The American Historical Review |year=2000 |volume=105#1 |issue=1 |pages=1–35 |jstor=2652433 |doi=10.2307/2652433}}

{{Main|London Debating Societies}}

The debating societies are an example of the public sphere during the Enlightenment.Donna T. Andrew, "Popular Culture and Public Debate: London 1780," This Historical Journal, Vol. 39, No. 2. (June 1996), pp. 405–423. Their origins include:

• Clubs of fifty or more men who, at the beginning of the 18th century, met in pubs to discuss religious issues and affairs of state.
• Mooting clubs, set up by law students to practice rhetoric.
• Spouting clubs, established to help actors train for theatrical roles.
• John Henley's Oratory, which mixed outrageous sermons with even more absurd questions, like "Whether Scotland be anywhere in the world?"Andrew, 406. Andrew gives the name as "William Henley," which must be a lapse of writing.

In the late 1770s, popular debating societies began to move into more "genteel" rooms, a change which helped establish a new standard of sociability.Andrew, 408. The backdrop to these developments was "an explosion of interest in the theory and practice of public elocution." The debating societies were commercial enterprises that responded to this demand, sometimes very successfully. Some societies welcomed from 800 to 1,200 spectators per night.Andrew, 406–08, 411.

The debating societies discussed an extremely wide range of topics. Before the Enlightenment, most intellectual debates revolved around "confessional"—that is, Catholic, Lutheran, Reformed (Calvinist) or Anglican issues, debated primarily to establish which bloc of faith ought to have the "monopoly of truth and a God-given title to authority."{{Sfn|Israel|2001|p=4}} After Enlightenment, everything that previously had been rooted in tradition was questioned, and often replaced by new concepts. After the second half of the 17th century and during the 18th century, a "general process of rationalization and secularization set in" and confessional disputes were reduced to a secondary status in favor of the "escalating contest between faith and incredulity."{{Sfn|Israel|2001|p=4}}

In addition to debates on religion, societies discussed issues such as politics and the role of women. However, the critical subject matter of these debates did not necessarily translate into opposition to the government; the results of the debate quite frequently upheld the status quo.Andrew, 412–15. From a historical standpoint, one of the most important features of the debating society was their openness to the public, as women attended and even participated in almost every debating society, which were likewise open to all classes providing they could pay the entrance fee. Once inside, spectators were able to participate in a largely egalitarian form of sociability that helped spread Enlightenment ideas.Andrew, 422.

File:Freimaurer Initiation.jpg

Historians have debated the extent to which the secret network of Freemasonry was a main factor in the Enlightenment.{{cite book |author1-last=Crow |author1-first=Matthew |author2-last=Jacob |author2-first=Margaret |author2-link=Margaret Jacob |year=2014 |chapter=Freemasonry and the Enlightenment |editor1-last=Bodgan |editor1-first=Henrik |editor2-last=Snoek |editor2-first=Jan A. M. |title=Handbook of Freemasonry |location=Leiden |publisher=Brill Publishers |series=Brill Handbooks on Contemporary Religion |volume=8 |doi=10.1163/9789004273122_008 |pages=100–116 |isbn=978-90-04-21833-8 |issn=1874-6691}} Leaders of the Enlightenment included Freemasons such as Diderot, Montesquieu, Voltaire, Lessing, Pope,Maynard Mack, Alexander Pope: A Life, Yale University Press, 1985 p. 437–440. Pope, a Catholic, was a Freemason in 1730, eight years before membership was prohibited by the Catholic Church (1738). Pope's name is on the membership list of the Goat Tavern Lodge (p. 439). Pope's name appears on a 1723 list and a 1730 list. Horace Walpole, Sir Robert Walpole, Mozart, Goethe, Frederick the Great, Benjamin Franklin{{cite book |first={{nowrap|J. A.}} Leo |last=Lemay |title=The Life of Benjamin Franklin, Volume 2: Printer and Publisher, 1730–1747 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=KOhKqgMD10cC&pg=PA83 |year=2013 |publisher=University of Pennsylvania Press |pages=83–92 |isbn=978-0-8122-0929-7}} and George Washington.{{cite journal |last1=Bullock |first1=Steven C. |year=1996 |title=Initiating the Enlightenment?: Recent Scholarship on European Freemasonry |journal=Eighteenth-Century Life |volume=20 |issue=1 |page=81}} Norman Davies said Freemasonry was a powerful force on behalf of liberalism in Europe from about 1700 to the twentieth century. It expanded during the Enlightenment, reaching practically every country in Europe. It was especially attractive to powerful aristocrats and politicians as well as intellectuals, artists, and political activists.Norman Davies, Europe: A History (1996) pp. 634–635

During the Enlightenment, Freemasons comprised an international network of like-minded men, often meeting in secret in ritualistic programs at their lodges. They promoted the ideals of the Enlightenment and helped diffuse these values across Britain, France, and other places. Freemasonry as a systematic creed with its own myths, values, and rituals originated in Scotland {{circa|1600}} and spread to England and then across the Continent in the 18th century. They fostered new codes of conduct—including a communal understanding of liberty and equality inherited from guild sociability—"liberty, fraternity, and equality."Margaret C. Jacob's seminal work on Enlightenment freemasonry, Margaret C. Jacob, Living the Enlightenment: Free masonry and Politics in Eighteenth-Century Europe (Oxford University Press, 1991) p. 49. Scottish soldiers and Jacobite Scots brought to the Continent ideals of fraternity, which reflected not the local system of Scottish customs, but the institutions and ideals originating in the English Revolution against royal absolutism.Margaret C. Jacob, "Polite worlds of Enlightenment," in Martin Fitzpatrick and Peter Jones, eds. The Enlightenment World (Routledge, 2004) pp. 272–287. Freemasonry was particularly prevalent in France—by 1789, there were perhaps as many as 100,000 French Masons, making Freemasonry the most popular of all Enlightenment associations.Roche, 436. The Freemasons displayed a passion for secrecy and created new degrees and ceremonies. Similar societies, partially imitating Freemasonry, emerged in France, Germany, Sweden, and Russia. One example was the Illuminati, founded in Bavaria in 1776, which was copied after the Freemasons, but was never part of the movement. The name itself translates to "enlightened," chosen to reflect their original intent to promote the values of the movement. The Illuminati was an overtly political group, which most Masonic lodges decidedly were not.Fitzpatrick and Jones, eds. The Enlightenment World p. 281

Masonic lodges created a private model for public affairs. They "reconstituted the polity and established a constitutional form of self-government, complete with constitutions and laws, elections, and representatives." In other words, the micro-society set up within the lodges constituted a normative model for society as a whole. This was especially true on the continent: when the first lodges began to appear in the 1730s, their embodiment of British values was often seen as threatening by state authorities. For example, the Parisian lodge that met in the mid 1720s was composed of English Jacobite exiles.Jacob, pp. 20, 73, 89. Furthermore, freemasons across Europe explicitly linked themselves to the Enlightenment as a whole. For example, in French lodges the line "As the means to be enlightened I search for the enlightened" was a part of their initiation rites. British lodges assigned themselves the duty to "initiate the unenlightened." This did not necessarily link lodges to the irreligious, but neither did this exclude them from the occasional heresy. In fact, many lodges praised the Grand Architect, the masonic terminology for the deistic divine being who created a scientifically ordered universe.Jacob, 145–47.

German historian Reinhart Koselleck claimed: "On the Continent there were two social structures that left a decisive imprint on the Age of Enlightenment: the Republic of Letters and the Masonic lodges."Reinhart Koselleck, Critique and Crisis, p. 62, (The MIT Press, 1988) Scottish professor Thomas Munck argues that "although the Masons did promote international and cross-social contacts which were essentially non-religious and broadly in agreement with enlightened values, they can hardly be described as a major radical or reformist network in their own right."Thomas Munck, 1994, p. 70. Many of the Masons values seemed to greatly appeal to Enlightenment values and thinkers. Diderot discusses the link between Freemason ideals and the enlightenment in D'Alembert's Dream, exploring masonry as a way of spreading enlightenment beliefs.{{cite web |url=https://www.stmarys-ca.edu/sites/default/files/attachments/files/Dalemberts_Dream.pdf |last=Diderot |first=Denis |title=D'Alembert's Dream |year=1769 |access-date=17 November 2014 |archive-date=29 November 2014 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20141129024943/https://www.stmarys-ca.edu/sites/default/files/attachments/files/Dalemberts_Dream.pdf |url-status=dead}} Historian Margaret Jacob stresses the importance of the Masons in indirectly inspiring enlightened political thought.Margaret C. Jacob, Living the Enlightenment: Freemasonry and politics in eighteenth-century Europe (Oxford University Press, 1991.) On the negative side, Daniel Roche contests claims that Masonry promoted egalitarianism and he argues the lodges only attracted men of similar social backgrounds.Roche, 437. The presence of noble women in the French "lodges of adoption" that formed in the 1780s was largely due to the close ties shared between these lodges and aristocratic society.Jacob, 139. See also Janet M. Burke, "Freemasonry, Friendship and Noblewomen: The Role of the Secret Society in Bringing Enlightenment Thought to Pre-Revolutionary Women Elites," History of European Ideas 10 no. 3 (1989): 283–94.

The major opponent of Freemasonry was the Catholic Church so in countries with a large Catholic element, such as France, Italy, Spain, and Mexico, much of the ferocity of the political battles involve the confrontation between what Davies calls the reactionary Church and enlightened Freemasonry.Davies, Europe: A History (1996) pp. 634–635Richard Weisberger et al., eds., Freemasonry on both sides of the Atlantic: essays concerning the craft in the British Isles, Europe, the United States, and Mexico (2002) Even in France, Masons did not act as a group.Robert R. Palmer, The Age of the Democratic Revolution: The Struggle (1970) p. 53 American historians, while noting that Benjamin Franklin and George Washington were indeed active Masons, have downplayed the importance of Freemasonry in causing the American Revolution because the Masonic order was non-political and included both Patriots and their enemy the Loyalists.Neil L. York, "Freemasons and the American Revolution," The Historian Volume: 55. Issue: 2. 1993, pp. 315+.

The art produced during the Enlightenment focused on a search for morality that was absent from the art in previous eras.{{Citation needed|date=May 2022}} At the same time, the Classical art of Greece and Rome became interesting to people again, since archaeological teams discovered Pompeii and Herculaneum.{{cite book |last1=Janson |first1=H. W. |last2=Janson |first2=Anthony |title=A Basic History of Art |url=https://archive.org/details/basichistoryofar0006jans |url-access=registration |year=2003 |publisher=Harry N. Abrams, Inc. |location=New York |pages=[https://archive.org/details/basichistoryofar0006jans/page/458 458–474]}} People took inspiration from it and revived classical art into neo-classical art. This can especially be seen in early American art and architecture, which featured arches, goddesses, and other classical architectural designs.{{clarify|this may be true of American art, but I find the idea slightly startling given that rococo going on in France and Italy, that this is would be *especially* true od American art. If I have the timeline wrong or something feel free to remove the tag; if nor please a somewhat better summary here|date=October 2023}}

• Atlantic Revolutions
• Dark Enlightenment
• Early modern philosophy
• European and American voyages of scientific exploration
• Haskalah, Jewish Enlightenment
• Illuminism
• Midlands Enlightenment
• Modern Greek Enlightenment
• Nahda, Arab Enlightenment
• Renaissance philosophy
• Witch trials in the early modern period

{{NoteFoot}}

{{notelist}}

{{Reflist}}

{{refbegin}}

• Andrew, Donna T. "Popular Culture and Public Debate: London 1780." The Historical Journal, Vol. 39, No. 2. (June 1996), pp. 405–423. [https://www.jstor.org/stable/2640187 in JSTOR]
• Burns, William. Science in the Enlightenment: An Encyclopædia (2003)
• Cowan, Brian, The Social Life of Coffee: The Emergence of the British Coffeehouse. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2005
• Darnton, Robert. The Literary Underground of the Old Regime. (1982).
• {{cite book |last=Haakonssen |first=Knud |title=The Cambridge History of Eighteenth-Century Philosophy |date=2008 |publisher=Cambridge University Press}}
• {{cite book |last=Israel |first=Jonathan I. |title=Radical Enlightenment; Philosophy and the Making of Modernity 1650–1750 |year=2001 |publisher=Oxford University Press}}
• {{cite book |last=Israel |first=Jonathan I. |title=Enlightenment Contested |year=2006 |publisher=Oxford University Press}}
• {{cite book |last=Israel |first=Jonathan I. |title=A Revolution of the Mind: Radical Enlightenment and the Intellectual Origins of Modern Democracy |year=2010 |publisher=Princeton}}
• {{cite book |last=Israel |first=Jonathan I. |title=Democratic Enlightenment: Philosophy, Revolution, and Human Rights 1750–1790 |year=2011 |publisher=Oxford University Press}}
• Melton, James Van Horn. The Rise of the Public in Enlightenment Europe. (2001).
• {{cite book |last=Petitfils |first=Jean-Christian |title=Louis XVI |year=2005 |publisher=Perrin |isbn=978-2-7441-9130-5}}
• Robertson, Ritchie. The Enlightenment: The Pursuit of Happiness, 1680–1790. London: Allen Lane, 2020; New York: HarperCollins, 2021
• {{cite book |last=Porter |first=Roy |title=The Enlightenment |edition=2nd |year=2001 |publisher=Macmillan Education UK |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=z6C9zlVo7cAC |isbn=978-0-333-94505-6}}
• Roche, Daniel. France in the Enlightenment. (1998).

{{refend}}

{{Refbegin}}

• Becker, Carl L. The Heavenly City of the Eighteenth-Century Philosophers. (1932), a famous short classic
• Chisick, Harvey. Historical Dictionary of the Enlightenment (2005)
• Delon, Michel. Encyclopædia of the Enlightenment (2001) 1480 pp.
• Dupré, Louis. The Enlightenment and the Intellectual Foundations of Modern Culture (2004)
• Gay, Peter. The Enlightenment: The Rise of Modern Paganism (1966, 2nd ed. 1995), 592 pp. [https://www.amazon.com/dp/0393313026 excerpt and text search vol 1].
• Gay, Peter. The Enlightenment: The Science of Freedom (1969, 2nd ed. 1995), a highly influential study [https://www.amazon.com/dp/0393313662 excerpt and text search vol 2];
• Greensides F., Hyland P., Gomez O. (ed.). The Enlightenment (2002)
• {{cite book |last=Ferrone |first=Vincenzo |title=The Enlightenment: History of an Idea |year=2017 |publisher=Princeton University Press}}
• Fitzpatrick, Martin et al., eds. The Enlightenment World (2004). 714 pp. 39 essays by scholars
• Hampson, Norman. The Enlightenment (1981) [https://archive.org/details/enlightenment00hamp online]
• Hazard, Paul. European Thought in the 18th Century: From Montesquieu to Lessing (1965)
• Hesmyr, Atle. From Enlightenment to Romanticism in 18th Century Europe (2018)
• Himmelfarb, Gertrude. The Roads to Modernity: The British, French, and American Enlightenments (2004) [https://www.amazon.com/Roads-Modernity-British-American-Enlightenments/dp/1400077222/ excerpt and text search]
• Jacob, Margaret. Enlightenment: A Brief History with Documents 2000
• Kors, Alan Charles. Encyclopædia of the Enlightenment (4 vol. 1990; 2nd ed. 2003), 1984 pp. [https://www.amazon.com/dp/0195104307 excerpt and text search]
• Lehner, Ulrich L. The Catholic Enlightenment (2016)
• Lehner, Ulrich L. Women, Catholicism and Enlightenment (2017)
• Munck, Thomas. Enlightenment: A Comparative Social History, 1721–1794 (1994)
• Outram, Dorinda. The Enlightenment (1995) 157 pp. [https://www.amazon.com/dp/0521425344 excerpt and text search]; also [https://archive.org/details/enlightenment00outr online]
• Outram, Dorinda. Panorama of the Enlightenment (2006), emphasis on Germany; heavily illustrated
• {{cite book |last=Pinker |first=Steven |title=Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress |year=2018 |publisher=Penguin Books}}
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• [https://web.archive.org/web/20220521004426/https://exchange.umma.umich.edu/resources/23625 Collection: Art of the Enlightenment Era] from the University of Michigan Museum of Art

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