Enlightenment

A period of European history, and an ideology, that emphasized the value of human reason and the capacity of the human mind to solve problems and advance in understanding. Advocates of this ideology have confidence in the power of reason to guide us in the pursuit of a better life. However, "enlightened" ideas were also the target of criticism and satire, for some believed that reason alone was not a virtue in itself and often could actually become a vice if applied in the wrong way. Satire is especially common during this movement: defined as the use of literary art to expose the folly of certain accepted ideas or practices, satire ridicules vices, weaknesses, and abuses for the sake of changing the way we think about our choices and the kind of world we have made to live in. The idea is that shame leads to correction, and the underlying assumption is that we have control over our own choices. Voltaire and Swift are prominent satirists of Enlightenment thinking as well as Englightened thinkers; both used their own reasoning ability to expose the how reason could not be its own justification--it is merely an instrument that could be played by the virtuous and the vicious alike.