The Enlightenment

The Enlightenment is a broad ideological and cultural movement of the eighteenth century that proclaimed faith in reason, science, education, and social progress as means of perfecting the human being and society, and the struggle against superstition, despotism, and estate privileges. The literature of the Enlightenment had a markedly didactic, publicistic character, combining artistry with philosophy and criticism. It is represented by Voltaire, Denis Diderot, and Jean-Jacques Rousseau in France, by Gotthold Lessing and the young Goethe in Germany, and by Jonathan Swift (Ireland) and Daniel Defoe (England). In Ukrainian culture, Enlightenment ideas were embodied by the philosopher Hryhorii Skovoroda with his teaching on self-knowledge, 'kindred labor', and moral perfection; the Enlightenment pathos of education and of affirming human dignity also nourished early modern Ukrainian literature — the work of Ivan Kotliarevsky and Hryhorii Kvitka-Osnovianenko.