Talk:The Enlightenment

A contradiction

"The Enlightenment was an 18th-century movement in Western philosophy and intellectual life generally, especially in the sciences. Some classifications also include 17th-century philosophy, usually called the Age of Reason."

"The term can more narrowly refer to the intellectual movement of The Enlightenment,"

The first sentence says it was a movement "generally". Then the second line says that it was "more narrowly" the intellectual movement.

Which is it? It can't be both.... Hayford Peirce 23:25, 26 December 2007 (CST)

Spinoza

Lately I have been reading that Baruch Spinoza was one of the early "enlightners". I don't know enough about him or the enlightment to have a personal opinion. Is he worth mentioning?--Paul Wormer 09:30, 27 December 2007 (CST)

he died so early (1677) that he is considered one of the precursors. Richard Jensen 09:34, 27 December 2007 (CST)

title--drop "the"

I think CZ practice is to drop "the" from article titles and call this "Enlightenment? Any objections? Richard Jensen 03:00, 17 March 2008 (CDT)

I just went to move it and there is already an article on Enlightenment (The religious kind) So a disambig page is probably the answer. Denis Cavanagh 07:00, 23 March 2008 (CDT)

Yes. I'd put the article on the philosophical/religious concept at Enlightenment (philosophy) or some such, and this one at Enlightenment (historial period) or something, and leave Enlightenment as a redirect, probably to Englightenment (disambiguation). That way, we can just check Special:Whatlinkshere/Enlightenment every so often, and find all the articles which have linked to 'Enlightenment' without bothering to check to make sure they got the right one. Please do not give Enlightenment to either topic, or we will be unable to check easily for these erroneous links! (This is the concept in my proposed Disambiguation policy, which I desperately need to write up and submit as a formal Proposal - I'll try and get to this today.) J. Noel Chiappa 12:27, 23 March 2008 (CDT)

I looked closely at the titles of the books and scholars use "THE Enlightenment," so I withdraw my proposal to change the title. What we have works and I added a disambig line to the other article. A disambig page for two articles seems unnecessary.Richard Jensen 19:13, 23 March 2008 (CDT)

Yes, but... they also always call it "The Spanish-American War" (for example) but our article is at Spanish-American War. However, I'm not losing any sleep if the article stays at The Enlightenment for now! J. Noel Chiappa 21:00, 23 March 2008 (CDT)

Scope and Nature of 'Enlightenment'

There are some historians and philosophers who refer to this period as the "early modern" period rather than the Enlightenment. The extent and nature of this period is disputed as well. See The Enlightenment and Religion: The Myths of Modernity by S. J. Barnett for details on that second claim. He claims that the changes in authority and influence of both the church and government were bottom-up changes rather than top-down, that the philosophes claimed responsibility for something that they did not cause and that the changes were caused (in part) by the demands of persecuted religious groups for freedom and equal rights. He is not the only historian to claims some elements of this. See his work for further references. Matthew McKean 01:06, 27 April 2009 (UTC)