The Enlightenment

Eighteenth-Century Europe saw remarkable cultural changes characterized by a loss of faith in traditional religious and political sources of authority and a turn toward democracy, human rights, and Science.

The upheavals of the Enlightenment led directly to the French Revolution and United States Revolutionary War.

Some of the most important figures of the Enlightenment are:

• Denis Diderot
• David Hume
• Thomas Jefferson
• John Locke
• Montesquieu
• Isaac Newton
• Voltaire

Good discussion on the Enlightenment is also included on the Wikipedia page French materialism.

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