What is enlightenment?

Question

In reference to the period of enlightenment - Galileo etc..

Answer 1

As a historical category, the term "Enlightenment" refers to a series of changes in European thought and letters. It is one of the few historical categories that was coined by the people who lived through the era (most historical categories, such as "Renaissance," "early modern," "Reformation," "Tokugawa Enlightenment," etc., are made up by historians after the fact). When the writers, philosophers and scientists of the eighteenth century referred to their activities as the "Enlightenment," they meant that they were breaking from the past and replacing the obscurity, darkness, and ignorance of European thought with the "light" of truth.

Although the Enlightenment is one of the few self-named historical categories, determining the beginning of the Enlightenment is a difficult affair, as we noted earlier in this module. Not only can we not easily find a beginning to the Enlightenment, we can't really identify an end point either. For we still more or less live in an Enlightenment world; while philosophers and cultural historians have dubbed the late nineteenth and all of the twentieth century as "post-Enlightenment," we still walk around with a world view largely based on Enlightenment thought.

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Answer 2

Most of the enlightenment was breaking away from the rigid ideas that had been taught for centuries. Most of this was for good, however, the ideas put out at the later half led to the french revelution and the blood bath that ensued. The french influnced the Russians which led to the Russian revelution and all the deaths including the Czar and his family, who by all accounts were perfectly decent people that suffered cruel deaths.