Enlightenment in Eighteenth Century

Enlightenment in Eighteenth Century

Introduction

Enlightenment is a name given by historians to an intellectual movement that prevailed in the western world during the 18th century. Strongly influenced by the rise of modern science and the legacy of the long religious conflict that followed the Reformation, the thinkers of the Enlightenment (called philosophes in France) are committed to secular views based on reason or human understanding, which is expected to provide a useful basis for changes that affect all areas of life and thought.

In the eighteenth century in Europe is often referred to as the Enlightenment. The ideas of the Enlightenment paved the way for the rapid "progress" in the next century. In various branches of art, new ideas developed by interacting with each other, and the formation of cultural and artistic heritage of Europe. It was at this time, and especially during the reign of Peter the Great, Russia began to participate in the secular art world the West. The existence of various artistic past, as Europe and the traditional evaluation of a different approach to art, Russian artists need time to adapt to become acclimated to the Enlightenment styles and techniques. A brief description of significant movements of the time, especially the neo-classical, will give presentation on the background against which eighteenth-century Russian art to be seen.

The most extreme and radical philosophers who have argued for a philosophical rationalism deriving its methods from science and natural philosophy to replace religion as a means of ascertaining the nature and destiny of humanity, these men were materialistic pantheist or atheist. All the philosophers themselves as continuing the work of the great pioneers of 18th century Francis Bacon, Galileo, Descartes, Leibnitz, Isaac Newton and John Locke, who had developed fruitful methods of rational and empirical research has ...