when was the enlightenment

The Enlightenment was not a single year, but a broad period that ran roughly from the late 1600s through the 1700s, with many historians bracketing it between about 1688 and the French Revolution in 1789.

Quick Scoop: When was the Enlightenment?

• Most historians place the Enlightenment in Europe in the late 17th and 18th centuries.

• A common rough range is c. 1650–1800 , with the movement emerging after the Scientific Revolution and peaking in the 1700s.

• Some scholars narrow it to about 1715–1789 , from the death of Louis XIV to the start of the French Revolution.

So if you’re looking for a quick, exam-style answer to “when was the Enlightenment?” you can safely say: late 17th to 18th century, roughly 1650–1800, peaking in the 1700s.

Why the dates aren’t exact

• Different historians choose different “start” moments, such as Descartes’s Discourse on Method (1637) or Newton’s Principia (1687).

• Common “endpoints” include the French Revolution (1789) or the early 1800s , when new romantic and industrial-era ideas took over.

In short, the Enlightenment is best thought of as a long intellectual wave across the 1600s–1700s rather than a neatly boxed set of years.

Information gathered from public forums or data available on the internet and portrayed here.