1. The Enlightenment was a self-conscious movement of intellectuals who elaborated on the scientific world view that originated in the seventeenth century in the hope that its new way of understanding things would make people more rational, tolerant, virtuous, and free.

2. The French philosophes led the Enlightenment , advocating science, secularism, and social utility.

3. The philosophes, suggesting either reform from above or a balance of powers, made relatively mild political and social recommendations. Rousseau stood out as a profound radical theorist in politics as well as in other fields.

4. High culture during the eighteenth century was cosmopolitan and dominated by the French. Characteristic trends were a dramatic increase in the number of publications, a flowering of academies and salons, the rise of the novel, and the development of the symphony.

5. Popular culture remained recreational, public, collective, and oral.