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GCSE History · key term
An eighteenth-century intellectual movement that emphasised reason, observation, education and the possibility of improving society.
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Paper 2
Revise: Cultural DevelopmentsDuring the eighteenth century, British American colonists encountered two influential movements: the Great Awakening and the Enlightenment. Both linked the colonies with developments across the Atlantic, but they offered different approaches to understanding life. Revivalist preachers appealed to personal faith and religious emotion; Enlightenment thinkers emphasised reason, observation and education.
Paper 1
An eighteenth-century intellectual movement in which thinkers used reason to question established ideas, including ideas about human behaviour and how society should be organised.
Distinguish the Great Awakening’s emphasis on emotional religious experience from the Enlightenment’s emphasis on reason and observation. The Enlightenment did not necessarily mean rejecting belief in God.
Distinguish reformers’ beliefs from results: some Enlightenment thinkers argued that better conditions could reduce crime; this did not mean crime immediately declined.
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The Enlightenment was an eighteenth-century intellectual movement which encouraged people to use reason to examine established ideas. Thinkers debated human nature: why did people behave as they did, and could their behaviour be changed?