Enlightenment was a historical period when dozens of schools of thought blooming and debating in various fields of studies, such as philosophy, law, politics, science, art and music.
From its cradle — France, Germany, the Britain, Netheland, and Italy — to the rest of Europe, and even to America, the intellectual and philosophical movement has create the modern western world. For example, Adam Smith’s ‘wealth of nation’, Edward Gibbon’s ‘Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire’, Jean-Kacques Rousseau’s social contract theory, Thomas Paine’s ‘Common Sense’, Montesquieu’s separation of powers theory, John Locke’s theory of the relationship between state and individuals, Gottfried Leibniz’s invention of calculus, Ignacy Krasicki’s ‘Fables and Parables’, Immaneul Kant’s ‘Critique of Pure Reason’, Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin’s contribution to ‘the United States Declaration of Independence’, Thomas Hobbes’s ‘Leviathan’, Johann Gottfried von Herder’s prolific philosophical ideas (e.g. the dependence of thought on language), Father of the Symphony Joseph Haydn’s influnce on music, and Denis Diderot’s creature of Encyclopédie.
Enlightenment, just like other parts of the human history, has its up and down. After WWII, the Enlightenment has become the burden to the development of a modern society, and thus evolved into divergent point of views, such as liberalism, socialism, and etc. In the macro background of changes across the globe, with the micro level of necessity of development, Englightenment has forced to leave its historical importance, if not voluntarily, in favor of new model to fit in the needy society and solve raising problems.