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 …

Only $2.99/month. The new intellectual movement that stressed reason and thought and the power of the individual to solve problems. Enlightenment.

Enlightenment. The willingness of people to hand over their rights to a ruler in exchange for law and order in society was called the. social contract. The English philosopher who believed that all people are born free and equal, with the rights to life, liberty and property was. -he proposed that a gov.

The Enlightenment, a philosophical movement that dominated in Europe during the 18th century, was centered around the idea that reason is the primary source of authority and legitimacy, and advocated such ideals as liberty, progress, tolerance, fraternity, constitutional government, and separation of church and state.

Thinkers of the challenged the divine right of kings and argued for liberty and rights. Salons (discussed parties), high literacy rates and cheap printing helped spread new ideas across Europe. These theories inspired a variety of new ideas in art, music, gender, economics, and government.

Enlightenment ideas influenced society and culture as a new generation of philosophes had new ideas about liberty and the condition of women, which were spread through an increasingly literate society.

Salons were social gatherings where people of great intellect met to discuss ideas. Salons were important because salons helped spread Enlightenment which was reflected in new forms of the arts.

You would not get your hair done at these salons—during the Enlightenment in France, salons were a place where civilians of all social classes could gather and discuss ideas. They served as ground zero for the ideas present in the Declaration of Independence and—eventually—the French Revolution!

Salons helped facilitate the breaking down of social barriers which made the development of the enlightenment salon possible. In the 18th century, under the guidance of Madame Geoffrin, Mlle de Lespinasse, and Madame Necker, the salon was transformed into an institution of Enlightenment.

A main purpose of the salons of Paris for the salonnières during the Enlightenment was to “satisfy the self-determined educational needs of the women who started them” (Goodman, 42). For the salonnières, the salon was a socially acceptable substitute for the formal education denied to them.

The heart of the eighteenth century Enlightenment is the loosely organized activity of prominent French thinkers of the mid-decades of the eighteenth century, the so-called “philosophes”(e.g., Voltaire, D’Alembert, Diderot, Montesquieu).

The French salon, a product of The Enlightenment in the early 18th century, was a key institution in which women played a central role. Salons provided a place for women and men to congregate for intellectual discourse. This led to reduced marginalization of women in Paris.

The Enlightenment was a late 17th- and 18th-century intellectual movement emphasizing reason, individualism, skepticism, and science. Enlightenment thinking helped give rise to deism, which is the belief that God exists, but does not interact supernaturally with the universe.