The Enlightenment, The French Revolution and Romanticism

Abstract

The Enlightenment, or Age of Reason, was a period of history in Western Europe. During the 1600s and 1700s, Enlightenment thinkers ushered in the modern age. Isaac Newton, René Descartes, Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, Baron de Montesquieu, and Voltaire were important thinkers of the time. With the exception of Hobbes, the Enlightenment thinkers emphasized intellectual freedom. Locke, Montesquieu, and Voltaire believed that government should guarantee the basic rights of citizens. Locke even believed that people had a right to overthrow any government that did not preserve the right to life, liberty, and property. Across the Atlantic Ocean in North America, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, Benjamin Franklin, and others embraced these revolutionary ideas. The American colonists’ Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution echo the ideas of Europe’s Enlightenment thinkers.