启蒙运动(Enlightenment)

17和18世纪欧洲的一次思想运动，它把上帝、理性、自然、人类等各种概念综合为一种世界观，得到广泛赞同，由此引起艺术、哲学及政治等方面的各种革命性的发展变化。启蒙运动的思想重点是对理性的运用和赞扬。对启蒙运动的思想家来说，一般承认的权威，无论是在科学或宗教方面，都要置於独立自由的心智的深入探查之下。在科学和数学方面，逻辑归纳法和演绎法的应用，使一种崭新的宇宙论点产生成为可能。为寻求合於理性的宗教而促使自然神论的产生；还有更为激进的理性运用的结果，如︰怀疑论、无神论和唯物论（materialism）。启蒙运动产生了心理学和伦理学上第一批非宗教化现代理论，由洛克、霍布斯（Thomas Hobbes）等人提出，这些观点导致各种激进的政治学说的产生。洛克、边沁、卢梭、孟德斯鸠（Montesquieu）、伏尔泰和杰佛逊都对独断专行的国家体制作过顺乎潮流的批判，并根据天赋人权和政治民主构拟出一种更高级的社会组织形式。启蒙运动所留下来最有价值的遗产是︰人类历史是一部人类普遍进步的纪录这样一种信念。

English version：

Enlightenment

European intellectual movement of the 17th-18th century in which ideas concerning God, reason, nature, and man were blended into a worldview that inspired revolutionary developments in art, philosophy, and politics. Central to Enlightenment thought were the use and celebration of reason. For Enlightenment thinkers, received authority, whether in science or religion, was to be subject to the investigation of unfettered minds. In the sciences and mathematics, the logics of induction and deduction made possible the creation of a sweeping new cosmology. The search for a rational religion led to Deism; the more radical products of the application of reason to religion were skepticism, atheism, and materialism. The Enlightenment produced modern secularized theories of psychology and ethics by men such as John Locke and Thomas Hobbes, and it also gave rise to radical political theories. Locke, Jeremy Bentham, J.-J. Rousseau, Montesquieu, Voltaire, and Thomas Jefferson all contributed to an evolving critique of the authoritarian state and to sketching the outline of a higher form of social organization based on natural rights. One of the Enlightenment's enduring legacies is the belief that human history is a record of general progress.