The Enlightenment was a cultural and intellectual movement that arose toward the end of the seventeenth century and reached its apex in the eighteenth century.Enlightenment: a cultural and intellectual movement of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries in the West that emphasized reason. The movement stressed the primacy of reason in the human quest to acquire knowledge and discover truth. The Enlightenment’s emphasis on reason contributed to a climate in which philosophers and intellectuals increasingly attacked traditional Christianity, in both its Protestant and Catholic varieties, as irrational and superstitious.

DEFINE: Defines the Enlightenment as an intellectual movement centered on reason that challenged religious tradition.

Green, Todd H, The Fear of Islam_ An Intro…, loc. 158