Aufklärung

Aufklärung, also known as the Enlightenment, was a European intellectual and cultural movement roughly spanning the 17th to the 19th centuries, with its peak in the 18th century. It emphasized reason, science, and inquiry as primary sources of knowledge and guides for human progress, and it sought to reform society by challenging superstition, dogma, and absolute authority, especially that of the church and the state.

Proponents argued that human beings could improve themselves and society through rational inquiry, education, and tolerant, secular governance. They promoted empirical observation, the scientific method, and critical skepticism toward inherited tradition. They valued freedom of thought, speech, and the press, and they supported religious toleration and separation of church and state.

Key figures include Voltaire, Diderot, and Rousseau in France; Immanuel Kant in Germany; David Hume in Britain. Their ideas spanned political philosophy, ethics, religion, science, and education. The period also saw the Encyclopédie edited by Diderot and d'Alembert, the emergence of salons and coffeehouses as centers of discussion, and the spread of literacy and public debate.

Impact: The Aufklärung influenced constitutional and legal reforms, secular education, and scientific advancement. It played a significant role in shaping modern concepts of individual rights, the social contract, and governmental legitimacy. It helped inspire the American and French Revolutions and laid groundwork for liberal and republican thought, though its critics argued that it could be ethnocentric and dismissive of tradition and religion.

In later periods, it faced critique from Romanticism and feminist perspectives, which challenged its rationalism and universality. Today, the term denotes a historical movement of ideas that promoted reason, tolerance, and progress as foundations of modern society.