Spanish Enlightenment Literature - The Enlightenment in Europe

The Enlightenment in Europe

In the last decades of the 17th century, the Old Regime, based on the predominance of the ecclesiastical, military and aristocratic classes, entered into crisis in Europe. In this century, Europe critically reviewed the established order. The reason and the critic prevailed, and the experimental method and the studies founded on the reason are impelled.

The anxiety for knowledge became general. The court meetings left place to the bourgeois saloons, the coffees or the cultural institutions. A necessity was felt to travel by reasons of study or pleasure, to know other languages, to make sport to keep the body fit or to improve the conditions of life of the citizens.

In this new attitude, the illustrated person is a philanthropist that p worries about the others, and proposes and undertakes reforms in the aspects related to the mandigos and the society. They defended the religious tolerance, the skepticism was put into practice and it was even reached to attack the religions. In opposition to the absolute monarchies, Montesquieu defended the bases of the modern democracy and the separation of the legislative, executive and judicial powers. The illustrated people wanted to enjoy freedom and to choose their own governors. All that inspired the motto of the French Revolution: Freedom, Equality, Brotherhood.

The illustrated theories had their origin in England, although they reached the summit in France, where they were gathered in the Encyclopédie (Encyclopedie, or reasoned dictionary of the sciences, the arts and the offices, 1751–1772), published by Jean Le Rond d'Alembert and Denis Diderot. In this work they gathered all the existing knowledge of their time, by alphabetical order.