WORLD HISTORY

Detailed explanation-1: -The Enlightenment brought secular thought to Europe and reshaped the ways people understood issues such as liberty, equality, and individual rights. Today those ideas serve as the cornerstone of the world’s strongest democracies.

Detailed explanation-2: -The French Revolution and the American Revolution were almost direct results of Enlightenment thinking. The idea that society is a social contract between the government and the governed stemmed from the Enlightenment as well.

Detailed explanation-3: -Although distinctive features arose in the eighteenth-century American context, much of the American Enlightenment was continuous with parallel experiences in British and French society. Four themes recur in both European and American Enlightenment texts: modernization, skepticism, reason and liberty.

Detailed explanation-4: -enlightened despotism, also called benevolent despotism, form of government in the 18th century in which absolute monarchs pursued legal, social, and educational reforms inspired by the Enlightenment.