What were the most important ideas of the Enlightenment? It was thought during the Enlightenment that human reasoning could discover truths about the world, religion, and politics and could be used to improve the lives of humankind.

The Enlightenment produced numerous books, essays, inventions, scientific discoveries, laws, wars and revolutions. The American and French Revolutions were directly inspired by Enlightenment ideals and respectively marked the peak of its influence and the beginning of its decline.

In turn, the Enlightenment ideals of liberty, equality, and justice helped to create the conditions for the American Revolution and the subsequent Constitution. The American Revolution and the domestic instability that followed prompted a call for a new type of government with a constitution to guarantee liberty.

For centuries, the Catholic Church had characterized human beings as naturally sinful and in need of forgiveness through religion. Enlightenment philosophy was in direct opposition to this because of their positive emphasis on the importance of the individual.

Thinkers of the Enlightenment tended to regard the Catholic Church as the epitome of all that was wrong in society. The Enlightenment was deeply hostile to the exercise of power on the basis of authority, which it saw as highly irrational, and led to the widespread dissemination of ignorance and superstition.

Enlightenment is profoundly satisfying and transformative, but the mind remains in many respects unchanged. “You’re still neurotic, and you still hate your mother, or you want to get laid, or whatever the thing is. It’s the same stuff; it doesn’t shift that.

Buddhists believe a person can become enlightened by following the Middle Way; the Middle Way is not too extreme in either way of living, neither an extremely luxurious life of ease and enjoyment nor an extremely harsh life on living on the minimum of the most basic necessities.

Under the Bodhi Tree At Bodh Gaya, in the modern Indian state of Bihar, Siddhartha Gautama sat beneath a sacred fig (Ficus religiosa) and began to meditate. According to some traditions, he realized enlightenment in one night. Others say three days and three nights; while others say 45 days.

He is said to have lived for 80 years. His family name was Gautama (in Sanskrit) or Gotama (in Pali), and his given name was Siddhartha (Sanskrit: “he who achieves his aim”) or Siddhattha (in Pali).

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