Concept
French Enlightenment
Overview
The French Enlightenment (French: les Lumières françaises, lit. '"the French Lights"'), (1715-1789) [1] was the intellectual and cultural movement that flourished in 18th-century France, forming a central part of the Age of Enlightenment (historically known in French as les Lumières, lit. '"the Lights"'). The movement placed emphasis on reason and skepticism. Philosophers used these modes of thought and applied them to many aspects of human life, including politics, religion and social hierarchies.
The movement drew heavily on the ideas of English thinkers such as John Locke and Isaac Newton, while in turn profoundly shaping other national Enlightenments. It also played a major role in inspiring the French Revolution (1789–1799). According to Sharon A. Stanley, the French Enlightenment was distinctive for its "unrelenting assault on church leadership and theology." Many works critical of the monarchy or the Church were printed in the Dutch Republic, where more liberal press laws allowed them to be smuggled into the Kingdom of France.
Major French Enlightenment figures included Montesquieu, Voltaire and Denis Diderot. Although Jean-Jacques Rousseau was born in Geneva, he is often considered a central figure of the French Enlightenment because of his extensive work in France, his use of the French language, and his significant influence on French political and philosophical thought.
Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).
Possible passages
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Does Roger Bacon, in his best work, in which he treats of light and vision, express himself much more clearly than Aristotle when he says light is created by means of multiplying its luminous species, which action is called univocal and conformable to the agent? He also mentions another equivocal multiplication, by which light engenders heat and heat putrefaction. Roger Bacon likewise tells us that life may be…
Voltaire, A Philosophical Dictionary, Volume 02
States what French Enlightenment is; the author is tied to French Enlightenment in the knowledge graph.
to him, after his fall, an address, in which he is termed “a mighty Hercules, who had by his own hand greatly advanced those pillars in the learned world which by the rest of the world were supposed immovable.” Leibnitz ascribed to him the revival of true philosophy; Newton had studied him so closely that he adopted even his phraseology; Voltaire and D’Alembert have rendered him popular in France. The modern…
Francis Bacon, Bacon's Essays, and Wisdom of the Ancients
States what French Enlightenment is; the author is tied to French Enlightenment in the knowledge graph.
Thus, in the eighteenth century, when nearly all the instructed, and all those of the uninstructed who were led by them, were lost in admiration of what is called civilisation, and of the marvels of modern science, literature, and philosophy, and while greatly overrating the amount of unlikeness between the men of modern and those of ancient times, indulged the belief that the whole of the difference was in their…
John Stuart Mill, On Liberty
States what French Enlightenment is.
Philosophers who discussed French Enlightenment
Related ideas
- Encyclopédie
- French Revolution
- Geneva
- Emile, or On Education
- Isaac Newton
- Jean-Jacques Rousseau
- John Locke
- Paris
- Kingdom of France
- Age of Enlightenment
- Voltaire
- The Federalist Papers
- Jean Le Rond d'Alembert
- Dutch Republic
- Montesquieu
- Denis Diderot
- Salon (gathering)
- Discourse on Inequality
Place in the tradition
Part of Atheism.