Hello and welcome to the History Extra podcast from BBC History Magazine, Britain's best-selling history magazine.

I'm Ellie Corthorn.

For today's Everything You Wanted to Know episode, we're tackling the Enlightenment, a history-changing, intellectual and philosophical movement that swept

across Europe in the 17th and 18th centuries.

Our expert for today's episode is Professor Ritchie Robertson, whose books include The Enlightenment,

The Pursuit of Happiness. As always, without everything you wanted to know, series,

our questions are drawn from a mixture of popular internet search queries

and ones that you've submitted to us on our various social media platforms. Putting your

questions to Richie was our production editor, Spencer Mizzin. Well, Richie, I'd like to start with a

question from Nathan Halsey, which was submitted on Facebook.

Now, you might have to bear of me a little bit here, but Nathan asks,

I'm not very enlightened regarding the Enlightenment. So can you please enlighten me regarding this enlightening time in our history? Now, I think that Nathan

is kind of asking, what was the enlightenment? And it goes about saying that that is an enormous

question. But I was wondering if you could give our listeners a, say, a five-minute overview of this

philosophical and intellectual movement. What was it? When did

it happen and where did it happen? Okay, I'll do my best, and I can know that I'll amplify what I see

in response to later questions. The Enlightenment was three things. First, it was an intellectual movement, and that makes one think of the expression the

age of reason.

But that only gets half the truth.

The Enlightenment was about reason, still more about using one's own reason to question authority. In 1784, the philosopher

Kant, whom I hope to say more about later, published an essay answering the question,

What is Enlightenment? His answer is very famous, but it bears repeating. He said,

...