The Counter-Enlightenment refers to a loose collection of intellectual stances that arose during the European Enlightenment in opposition to its mainstream attitudes and ideals. The Counter-Enlightenment is generally seen to have continued from the 18th century into the early 19th century, especially with the rise of Romanticism. Its thinkers did not necessarily agree to a set of counter-doctrines but instead each challenged specific elements of Enlightenment thinking, such as the belief in progress, the rationality of all humans, liberal democracy, and the increasing secularisation of society.
Divine Justice smites Jean-Baptiste Pigalle's statue of Voltaire. Anonymous, 1773
Joseph-Marie, Comte de Maistre was one of the more prominent altar-and-throne counter-revolutionaries who vehemently opposed Enlightenment ideas.
Isaiah Berlin traces the Counter-Enlightenment back to J. G. Hamann (shown).
Rousseau is identified by Graeme Garrard as the originator of the Counter-Enlightenment.
The Age of Enlightenment was the intellectual and philosophical movement that occurred in Europe in the 17th and the 18th centuries. The Enlightenment featured a range of social ideas centered on the value of knowledge learned by way of rationalism and of empiricism and political ideals such as natural law, liberty, and progress, toleration and fraternity, constitutional government and the formal separation of church and state.
Reading of Voltaire's tragedy, The Orphan of China, in the salon of Marie Thérèse Rodet Geoffrin in 1755, by Anicet Charles Gabriel Lemonnier, c. 1812
René Descartes, widely considered a seminal figure in the emergence of modern philosophy and science
German philosopher Immanuel Kant, one of the most influential figures of Enlightenment and modern philosophy
Cesare Beccaria, father of classical criminal theory