page_title: Age of Enlightenment
section_title: Significant people and publications
hierarchical_section_title: Age of Enlightenment / Significant people and publications
caption_attribution_description: Italiano: Esquisse d'un tableau historique des progres de l'esprit humain. Ouvrage posthume de Condorcet. - [Paris?]&#160;: [s.n.], 1795. - [2], 363 p.&#160;; 8º .
context_page_description: The Age of Enlightenment was an intellectual and philosophical movement that dominated the world of ideas in Europe during the 17th and 18th centuries.
  The Enlightenment emerged out of a European intellectual and scholarly movement known as Renaissance humanism and was also preceded by the Scientific Revolution and the work of Francis Bacon, among others. Some date the beginning of the Enlightenment to René Descartes' 1637 philosophy of Cogito, ergo sum, while others cite the publication of Isaac Newton's Principia Mathematica as the culmination of the Scientific Revolution and the beginning of the Enlightenment. French historians traditionally date its beginning to the death of Louis XIV of France in 1715 until the 1789 outbreak of the French Revolution. Most end it with the beginning of the 19th century.
  Philosophers and scientists of the period widely circulated their ideas through meetings at scientific academies, Masonic lodges, literary salons, coffeehouses and in printed books, journals, and pamphlets.
context_section_description: The Age of Enlightenment was preceded by and closely associated with the Scientific Revolution. Earlier philosophers whose work influenced the Enlightenment included Francis Bacon and René Descartes. Some of the major figures of the Enlightenment included Cesare Beccaria, Denis Diderot, David Hume, Immanuel Kant, Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, John Locke, Montesquieu, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Adam Smith, Baruch Spinoza, and Voltaire.
  One particularly influential Enlightenment publication was the Encyclopédie (Encyclopedia). Published between 1751 and 1772 in thirty-five volumes, it was compiled by Denis Diderot, Jean le Rond d'Alembert, and a team of 150 other intellectuals. The Encyclopédie helped in spreading the ideas of the Enlightenment across Europe and beyond. Other landmark publications of the Enlightenment included Voltaire's Letters on the English (1733) and Dictionnaire philosophique (Philosophical Dictionary; 1764); Hume's A Treatise of Human Nature (1740); Montesquieu's The Spirit of the Laws (1748); Rousseau's Discourse on Inequality (1754) and The Social Contract (1762); Adam Smith's The Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759) and The Wealth of Nations (1776); and Kant's Critique of Pure Reason (1781).
  Enlightenment thought was deeply influential in the political realm. European rulers such as Catherine II of Russia, Joseph II of Austria and Frederick II of Prussia tried to apply Enlightenment thought on religious and political tolerance, which became known as enlightened absolutism. Many of the main political and intellectual figures behind the American Revolution associated themselves closely with the Enlightenment: Benjamin Franklin visited Europe repeatedly and contributed actively to the scientific and political debates there and brought the newest ideas back to Philadelphia; Thomas Jefferson closely followed European ideas and later incorporated some of the ideals of the Enlightenment into the Declaration of Independence; and James Madison incorporated these ideals into the United States Constitution during its framing in 1787. The ideas of the Enlightenment also played a major role in inspiring the French Revolution, which began in 1789.
caption: The most famous work by Nicholas de Condorcet, Esquisse d'un tableau historique des progres de l'esprit humain, 1795.[8] With the publication of this book, the development of the Age of Enlightenment is considered generally ended.[9]
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