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In the period known as The Enlightenment, Eighteenth-century Europe saw remarkable cultural changes characterized by a loss of faith in traditional religious and political sources of authority and a turn toward democracy, human rights, and science.
In his famous 1784 essay "What Is Enlightenment?", Immanuel Kant defined it as "man's emergence from his self-incurred immaturity" ("der Ausgang des Menschen aus seiner selbstverschuldeten Unmündigkeit").
The upheavals of the Enlightenment led directly to the American Revolutionary War as well as the French Revolution and significantly influenced the Industrial Revolution.
The Enlightenment was also marked by the rise of capitalism and the wide availability of printed materials.
Important figures of the Enlightenment era include:
- Denis Diderot
- David Hume
- Thomas Jefferson
- Gotthold Lessing
- John Locke
- Montesquieu
- Isaac Newton
- Voltaire
See also French materialism, Protestant Reformation.