During the 17th and 18th centuries, Europeans applied the methods of the new science—such as empiricism, mathematics, and skepticism—to human a airs. During the Enlightenment, intellectuals such as Rousseau, Voltaire, and Diderot aimed to replace faith in divine revelation with faith in human reason and classical values. In economics and politics, liberal theorists such as John Locke and Adam Smith questioned absolutism and mercantilism by arguing for the authority of natural law and the market. Belief in progress, along with improved social and economic conditions, spurred significant gains in literacy and education as well as the creation of a new culture of the printed word—including novels, newspapers, periodicals, and such reference works as Diderot’s Encyclopédie—for a growing educated audience.
Alongside several movements of religious revival that occurred during the 18th century, European elite culture embraced skepticism, secularism, and atheism for the first time in European history. From the beginning of this period, Protestants and Catholics grudgingly tolerated each other following the religious warfare of the previous two centuries. By 1800, most governments had extended toleration to Christian minorities and in some states even to Jews. Religion was viewed increasingly as a matter of private rather than public concern.
The new rationalism did not sweep all before it; in fact, it coexisted with a revival of sentimentalism and emotionalism. Until about 1750, Baroque art and music glorified religious feeling and drama as well as the grandiose pretensions of absolute monarchs. During the French Revolution, romanticism and nationalism implicitly challenged what some saw as the Enlightenment’s overemphasis on reason. These Counter-Enlightenment views laid the foundations for new cultural and political values in the 19th century. Overall, intellectual and cultural developments reflected a new worldview in which rationalism, skepticism, scientific investigation, and a belief in progress generally dominated. At the same time, other worldviews stemming from religion, nationalism, and romanticism remained influential.