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> What was the Enlightenment? Damned if I know.

It was the rediscovery of Aristotle along with the newly formed universities giving him an audience. Everything else fell out of that.

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Rediscovery of Aristotle? Newly-formed universities? You are describing the late Medieval era and early Renaissance. The Enlightenment is the much later period of the 17th and 18th centuries. Moreover, the rediscovery of Aristotle and early universities were within a context of Roman Catholic scholasticism, while the height of the Enlightenment was skeptical, to put it mildly, about religion.

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