the Enlightenment

noun

: a movement of the 18th century that stressed the belief that science and logic give people more knowledge and understanding than tradition and religion

Examples of the Enlightenment in a Sentence

Recent Examples on the Web

The pictures ranged from the Renaissance to the Enlightenment. —Ian Malone, Vogue, 21 Sep. 2023

During the Enlightenment, from the 1600s to the 1700s, religious institutions began losing power. —Armin Langer, The Conversation, 29 Aug. 2023

As Dostoyevsky saw it, the state should serve as the guardian of the country’s special path and revive the system of universal Christian morality that had preceded the Enlightenment—values that reigned before Europeans became obsessed with ideas of progress, freedom, and individual rights. —Andrei Kolesnikov, Foreign Affairs, 22 Aug. 2023

Detractors on both the left and the right tend to sketch the same caricature of the prototypical liberal: a chipper rationalist who is scornfully secular, naively sanguine about humanity’s prospects for self-improvement and devoted to the philosophy of the Enlightenment. —Becca Rothfeld, Washington Post, 11 Aug. 2023

But rather the Enlightenment approach—incentivizing the smartest members of civilization to keep an eye on each other, on our behalf. —WIRED, 6 July 2023

Saker received the Enlightenment Award from the Ohio Psychiatric Physicians Foundation for her coverage of youth suicide following the January 2017 death of 8-year-old Gabriel Taye. —Erin Couch, The Enquirer, 22 June 2023

Her husband’s indecision on key issues, new democratic ideals linked to the Enlightenment, inequitable taxation, poor harvests and countless other factors contributed to the crisis, which started with the convening of the Estates General, an assembly of France’s three social classes, in May 1789. —Meilan Solly, Smithsonian Magazine, 17 Mar. 2023

The Resurgence of Intellectual Life From the End of Antiquity to the Dawn of the Enlightenment, by Charles Freeman. —New York Times, 22 Feb. 2023

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