The Enlightenment in Broad Perspectives
Abstract
Various civilizations define the term Enlightenment differently because they understand it from the view point of their cultural, historical, psychological and moral values. However, the 17th and 18th century Eurocentric intellectual universe was employed to broaden, without thinking of its risks to the larger human community, the new ways of reasoning and scientific criticism that were rationally applied to critique doctrines, traditional and dogmatic lifestyles of the “ancient” socio-cultural and political institutions. The leading intellectual thinkers and philosophers of the Enlightenment were resolute change agents of whom Descartes, Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau, Bacon and Smith, to name only a few, were classic. These men were giants who bravely walked in darkness in order to establish a legacy that became the light of the world that majestically institutionalized it for its salvation.