The Promise of Enlightenment

1750–1789

The following documents represent some of the many voices of the Enlightenment, an intellectual and cultural movement during the eighteenth century that captured the minds of middle- and upper-class people across Europe and in British North America. As self-proclaimed “philosophes,” writers of the Enlightenment were united by their belief that reason was the key to humanity’s advancement as the basis of truth, liberty, and justice. Thus for them, ideas were not abstract concepts confined to the printed page; rather, they were powerful tools for exposing society’s ills and offering solutions. Philosophes cultivated and disseminated their ideals through letters, published works, and personal exchanges, often coming into conflict with church and state authorities in the process. Yet, by midcentury, people as diverse as the king of Prussia and a French artisan began to echo the Enlightenment principle that progress depended on destroying all barriers to reason, including religious intolerance and outmoded economic and judicial practices.