5511–5549 AM · 1751 CE — 1789 CE · world history
The Enlightenment
Reason, tolerance and the rights of man become the century's key words.
Diderot and d'Alembert publish the Encyclopédie, an attempt to gather all human knowledge and explain it without appeal to authority. Voltaire attacks intolerance, Montesquieu describes the separation of powers, Rousseau the social contract, Kant urges the courage to use one's own reason. Revolutions follow on both sides of the Atlantic.
Sources
Documents of the period
- the writings of the philosophes and Diderot’s Encyclopédie — Diderot and d’Alembert’s Encyclopédie; Voltaire, Montesquieu, Rousseau; Kant, What Is Enlightenment
Scholarship
- studies in European history — the salons, the correspondence, and the passage of ideas towards revolutions on both sides of the Atlantic
Basis: documents and evidence.
People and places
Moses Mendelssohn · Chatam Sofer · Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch · Baruch Spinoza