The Enlightenment, also known as the Age of Enlightenment or the Age of Reason, was an intellectual and philosophical movement that emerged primarily in Europe during the late 17th and 18th centuries. There is some variation in how historians date its beginning, but it is often linked to key works such as René Descartes' Discourse on the Method in 1637 and Isaac Newton's Principia Mathematica in 1687. European historians traditionally mark its beginning around the death of Louis XIV in 1715 and its end with the French Revolution in 1789. However, many scholars extend the period to the early 19th century, sometimes using the death of Immanuel Kant in 1804 or the start of the Napoleonic Wars around 1804-1815 as endpoints. Overall, the Enlightenment spanned roughly from the mid-17th century (around 1650) through to the late 18th century or early 19th century (c. 1800) and was characterized by a focus on reason, scientific inquiry, liberty, progress, tolerance, and questioning of traditional authority in religion and politics, laying much of the foundation for modern Western thought and political systems.
