What was the Enlightenment of the French Revolution?

The Enlightenment, which took place from the early 18th century to the French Revolution in 1789, covered a wide range, including disciplines in various fields of knowledge, such as natural science, philosophy, ethics, politics, economics, history, literature, education, etc. It promoted the rise of capitalism and socialism and had far-reaching significance in world history.

"Enlightenment" means "light" in French. The reason why it was named the Enlightenment was that according to the advanced scholars at that time, they thought that people had been suffering from darkness for a long time and had not seen the real light, so they should use the light of reason to drive away the darkness around people and make people see the light. Therefore, by writing some books that strongly criticize absolutism and religious ignorance, they have aroused the minds of the broad masses of peasants and instilled ideas of freedom, equality and democracy into people's hearts.

The Enlightenment took place in Europe in the 17th and 18th centuries. It originated in Britain, and then spread from Britain to France, Germany and Russia, the Netherlands and Belgium. Among all these countries where the Enlightenment took place, France was the most important. The Enlightenment in France was not only huge, but also extremely inflammatory and combative, with far-reaching influence, and gradually became the center of the Enlightenment. The reason why the French Enlightenment developed in full swing was largely because it produced a group of great thinkers such as Voltaire. Voltaire's thoughts not only had a great influence on France at that time, but also on the whole world. Even later generations said that the 18th century was Voltaire's century, which shows that Voltaire had a great influence on the Enlightenment. Because of this, it is not surprising that France became the center of the Enlightenment.

Literally speaking, the Enlightenment is a movement to promote universal culture and education. But if we look at it from a more in-depth perspective, it is not simply a literary movement, but a movement to publicize the bourgeois political and ideological system. It directly laid the ideological foundation for the French Revolution in 1789 and was the continuation and development of the bourgeois anti-feudal struggle during the Renaissance. Enlightenment thinkers put forward a set of philosophical theories, political programs and social reform programs through careful consideration, demanding the establishment of a society based on "rationality". They used freedom of belief to resist religious oppression, atheism to destroy Catholic authority and religious idols, and "everyone is equal before the law" to oppose the hierarchical privilege of nobles. Through this series of arguments, they finally came to the conclusion that the feudal system was unreasonable, paving the way for the establishment of bourgeois political power. The Enlightenment played an important role in calling on the broad masses of people to unite against the feudal system and church power at that time, and also made ideological preparations and publicity for the bourgeois revolution in the future. Therefore, the Enlightenment was a progressive movement and a meaningful movement.