How to Use the Enlightenment in a Sentence

the Enlightenment

noun
  • The pictures ranged from the Renaissance to the Enlightenment.
    Ian Malone, Vogue, 21 Sep. 2023
  • But the Enlightenment, by way of John Locke, made illustrations more acceptable in the classroom.
    JSTOR Daily, 24 June 2024
  • Not just as an investment, but with a bit of idealism: To continue the tradition of the Enlightenment.
    Marcel Fürstenau, Sun Sentinel, 1 Aug. 2024
  • Not only were they tied to the Enlightenment, in that they were said to provide equal opportunities to their initiates, but their elections embodied the ideals of the era.
    Sam Walters, Discover Magazine, 13 June 2024
  • In Ukraine, two of the greatest movements in Jewish history took place: the Enlightenment and Hasidism, both movements that were reflected in their music.
    Naman Ramachandran, Variety, 17 Feb. 2023
  • But rather the Enlightenment approach—incentivizing the smartest members of civilization to keep an eye on each other, on our behalf.
    WIRED, 6 July 2023
  • German Jews, who were emancipated at the tail end of the Enlightenment period and throughout the Romantic era, took to Bildung almost as a new faith, or the natural development of the old one.
    John Ganz, Harper's Magazine, 22 May 2024
  • But most shared one common feature: a rejection of the fundamental principles of the Enlightenment.
    Ervand Abrahamian, Foreign Affairs, 18 Apr. 2016
  • Whereas Eliot knows enough about the Enlightenment’s major and minor figures, for instance, to deftly parody the bumbling uncle who has read them but shallowly.
    Daniel Foster, National Review, 30 Nov. 2023
  • That shift was conceived and realized with the Enlightenment and then the Industrial Revolution.
    Martin Wolf, Foreign Affairs, 1 July 2015
  • As the Enlightenment philosopher Immanuel Kant foresaw in the late eighteenth century, the result has been a seemingly perpetual peace heretofore unknown to Europe.
    John Maynard Keynes, Foreign Affairs, 6 Sep. 2022
  • Romantic literature isn’t all love stories; the cohort rejected the cold reason and empiricism of the Enlightenment in favor of the irrational, the supernatural, the emotional, and the deeply subjective.
    Judy Berman, TIME, 1 July 2024
  • There is an old assumption that belief in magic faded away in the Enlightenment, shepherding a new age dominated by rational decision-making and scientific progress.
    Tabitha Stanmore, TIME, 24 May 2024
  • It was established by eighteenth-century polymaths as an expression of the Enlightenment conviction that universal truths might be arrived at through intellectual inquiry and scientific reason.
    Rebecca Mead, The New Yorker, 6 May 2024
  • Classical learning involves chronologically studying literature, philosophy, history and science from the ancient Greeks and Romans through the Enlightenment period.
    Luke Fountain, Charlotte Observer, 22 June 2024

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'the Enlightenment.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

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