The Enlightenment and Voltaire

The Enlightenment, or "Age of Reason," refers to the intellectual movement that flourished across Europe, especially France, Britain, and the German lands, roughly from the late seventeenth century through the end of the eighteenth. Building on the earlier Scientific Revolution of Galileo, Descartes, and Newton, and on the empiricist epistemology of John Locke, Enlightenment thinkers shared a broad conviction that reason, critical inquiry, and empirical observation, rather than inherited tradition, revealed authority, or superstition, were the proper foundations for knowledge, morality, and political legitimacy. Its most concise motto was formulated by Immanuel Kant in his 1784 essay "An Answer to the Question: What is Enlightenment?", where he defined Enlightenment as humanity's emergence from its "self-incurred immaturity" and adopted the Horatian phrase "Sapere Aude" — "Dare to know" — as its rallying cry, urging individuals to use their own understanding without the guidance of another.