What is the relationship between Enlightenment and Revolution?

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Historians place the Enlightenment in Europe (with a strong emphasis on France) during the late 17th and the 18th centuries, or, more comprehensively, between the Glorious Revolution in 1688 and the French Revolution of 1789. It represents a phase in the intellectual history of Europe and also programs of reform, inspired by a belief in the possibility of a better world, that outlined specific targets for criticism and programs of action.

It was thought during the Enlightenment that human reasoning could discover truths about the world, religion, and politics and could be used to improve the lives of humankind. Skepticism about received wisdom was another important idea; everything was to be subjected to testing and rational analysis. Religious tolerance and the idea that individuals should be free from coercion in their personal lives and consciences were also Enlightenment ideas.

Enlightenment, French siècle des Lumières (literally “century of the Enlightened”), German Aufklärung, a European intellectual movement of the 17th and 18th centuries in which ideas concerning God, reason, nature, and humanity were synthesized into a worldview that gained wide assent in the West and that instigated revolutionary developments in art, philosophy, and politics. Central to Enlightenment thought were the use and celebration of reason, the power by which humans understand the universe and improve their own condition. The goals of rational humanity were considered to be knowledge, freedom, and happiness.

A brief treatment of the Enlightenment follows. For full treatment, see Europe, history of: The Enlightenment.

The powers and uses of reason had first been explored by the philosophers of ancient Greece. The Romans adopted and preserved much of Greek culture, notably including the ideas of a rational natural order and natural law. Amid the turmoil of empire, however, a new concern arose for personal salvation, and the way was paved for the triumph of the Christian religion. Christian thinkers gradually found uses for their Greco-Roman heritage. The system of thought known as Scholasticism, culminating in the work of Thomas Aquinas, resurrected reason as a tool of understanding. In Thomas’s presentation, Aristotle provided the method for obtaining that truth which was ascertainable by reason alone; since Christian revelation contained a higher truth, Thomas placed the natural law evident to reason subordinate to, but not in conflict with, eternal law and divine law.

The intellectual and political edifice of Christianity, seemingly impregnable in the Middle Ages, fell in turn to the assaults made on it by humanism, the Renaissance, and the Protestant Reformation. Humanism bred the experimental science of Francis Bacon, Nicolaus Copernicus, and Galileo and the mathematical investigations of René Descartes, Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, and Isaac Newton. The Renaissance rediscovered much of Classical culture and revived the notion of humans as creative beings, and the Reformation, more directly but in the long run no less effectively, challenged the monolithic authority of the Roman Catholic Church. For Martin Luther, as for Bacon or Descartes, the way to truth lay in the application of human reason. Both the Renaissance and the Reformation were less movements for intellectual liberty than changes of authority, but, since they appealed to different authorities, they contributed to the breakdown of the community of thought. Received authority, whether of Ptolemy in the sciences or of the church in matters of the spirit, was to be subject to the probings of unfettered minds.

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The successful application of reason to any question depended on its correct application—on the development of a methodology of reasoning that would serve as its own guarantee of validity. Such a methodology was most spectacularly achieved in the sciences and mathematics, where the logics of induction and deduction made possible the creation of a sweeping new cosmology. The formative influence for the Enlightenment was not so much content as method. The great geniuses of the 17th century confirmed and amplified the concept of a world of calculable regularity, but, more importantly, they seemingly proved that rigorous mathematical reasoning offered the means, independent of God’s revelation, of establishing truth. The success of Newton, in particular, in capturing in a few mathematical equations the laws that govern the motions of the planets, gave great impetus to a growing faith in the human capacity to attain knowledge. At the same time, the idea of the universe as a mechanism governed by a few simple—and discoverable—laws had a subversive effect on the concepts of a personal God and individual salvation that were central to Christianity.

Opposition to Absolute Monarchy: Intellectuals such as Jean-Jacques Rousseau and John Locke introduced the idea that no ruler should have unlimited power. Both argued that leaders derived their authority not from God but from the people. And Locke claimed that if the people opposed their leader, they had the right to replace their government with one that respected their rights.

Notably, few Enlightenment thinkers called for democracy as people understand the term today. Many intellectuals such as Voltaire believed that monarchy was the best way to advance social, political, and economic goals. However, the idea that citizens could hold their leaders accountable was revolutionary.

Separation of Powers: The Baron de Montesquieu argued that power should not be concentrated in just one person. Instead, he called for a balanced distribution of power between executive, legislative, and judicial authorities.

Enlightenment thinkers similarly called for a separation of church and state—the idea that government should not interfere in religious affairs, and vice versa. Writers such as Voltaire were highly critical of religion’s outsize influence in European policymaking, which had contributed to generations of conflict on the continent.

Liberty and Individual Rights: John Locke introduced the idea that all men possess natural rights to life, liberty, and property. Those rights, he argued, were inalienable, meaning they could not be taken away or constrained by law.

Calls for individual rights contributed to increased religious tolerance in Europe as various governments began providing religious minorities greater freedom to worship.

Equality: Pre-Enlightenment Europe was highly unequal, with powerful individuals known as the nobility possessing exclusive rights to own land, avoid taxes, and hold privileged jobs, while the poorest members of society struggled to survive. The Enlightenment challenged this arrangement, as thinkers like Locke argued that all men were created equal and that no one should be born into more power than another.

However, many intellectuals believed that such equality only applied to white men. Rousseau saw groups such as women, ethnic minorities, and enslaved people as inherently inferior to white men. Nevertheless, marginalized groups often used those same Enlightenment arguments to advance their own cases for equality. English thinkers such as Mary Astell and Mary Wollstonecraft wrote extensively in support of women’s access to the same rights and opportunities as men.

Free-Market Capitalism: Scottish economist Adam Smith railed against the era’s prevailing economic policies such as mercantilism, in which each country sought to produce as much as possible domestically and import as little as possible from abroad. Through careful observation and research, Smith came to introduce groundbreaking economic theories—including supply and demand, free-market capitalism, comparative advantage, and minimal regulations—arguing that countries become richer when they make what they are best at producing and import what they are not. Those ideas continue to form the backbone of international trade.

Where did the Enlightenment inspire revolution?

As Enlightenment texts spread across the Atlantic, their ideas inspired revolutions.

Political and intellectual leaders in Britain’s thirteen American colonies used Enlightenment values to justify their declaration of independence in 1776. Following the American Revolution, those Enlightenment principles—including liberty, equality, and individual rights—became enshrined in the U.S. Constitution, even though many rights were initially reserved mostly for landowning white men. It would take nearly a century for the United States to abolish the institution of slavery and several decades longer to extend the right to vote to women.

News of the United States’ Enlightenment-inspired revolution ricocheted around the world. In 1788, Thomas Jefferson—then the U.S. minister to France—wrote to George Washington, noting that France “has been awaked by our revolution, they feel their strength, they are enlightened, their lights are spreading, and they will not retrograde.” Indeed, the following year France experienced its own revolution, which ultimately toppled the country’s monarchy.

In 1791, the inhabitants of France’s most profitable colony—Haiti, then known as Saint-Domingue—began demanding their own right to liberty and equality. Enslaved Haitians outnumbered slaveholders ten to one on the island. After a thirteen-year war, the Haitians defeated the French and established the first Black-led republic. European powers, however, did not immediately recognize Haiti as an independent country and instead forced Haiti to pay reparations to France over more than a hundred years.

In the early 1800s, Enlightenment-educated leaders such as Simón Bolívar led movements for independence in Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, and Venezuela. However, while revolutionaries pledged to eliminate the colonial era’s racial and social hierarchies, independence rarely brought about equality. Instead, leaders frequently perpetuated the same unequal, undemocratic systems that benefited the landowning elite.

Across Latin America—as in the United States, France, and Haiti—Enlightenment values began the march toward fairer and more equitable societies, but it would take generations for many countries to begin fully realizing those ideals.

Where do we see Enlightenment values today?

More than three centuries after John Locke wrote about the relationship between people and their government, the core tenets of his writing and those of his Enlightenment contemporaries continue to shape society. Many of the world’s strongest democracies, for example, actively support liberty, equality, and individual rights through their laws and norms.

But just as leaders did not universally accept Enlightenment ideas in Locke’s time, the same holds true today.

Many societies—above all, authoritarian countries—actively reject some or most of the Enlightenment’s founding principles. Governments in countries such as China, Egypt, Iran, North Korea, Russia, and Saudi Arabia quash civil liberties, oppose free and fair elections, reject perceived checks to their power, and—in certain instances—ignore separation of church and state.

Enlightenment ideas have even come under attack in democratic countries such as Brazil, Hungary, the Philippines, and Turkey. Leaders there have attempted to increase their power by undermining political freedoms and civil liberties in a trend known as democratic backsliding. As a result, the world has become less free and less democratic every year between 2005 and 2019.

The United States, as well, has long struggled to embrace all tenets of the Enlightenment. Inequality and systemic racism remain significant challenges, and sharp disparities persist in access to housing, wealth, education, and health care. Further, many in the United States dismiss facts and scientific inquiry; former President Donald J. Trump, for example, repeatedly sidelined top scientific experts while endorsing unproven COVID-19 medical treatments. And on January 6, 2021, the country’s free and fair elections came under direct assault when armed rioters—many with white supremacist ties—stormed the U.S. Capitol seeking to overturn the results of the presidential race.

Although trials for witchcraft are no longer a normal part of life around the world, many countries still have a long way to go before fully embodying the founding principles of the Enlightenment.