Read the text and answer the PTE Reading Multiple-Choice question by selecting all the correct responses. You will need to select more than one response.
The Age of Enlightenment (also known as the Age of Reason or simply the Enlightenment) was an intellectual and philosophical movement that dominated Europe in the 17th and 18th centuries with global influences and effects.
The Enlightenment included a range of ideas centered on the value of human happiness, the pursuit of knowledge obtained by means of reason and the evidence of the senses, and ideals such as liberty, progress, toleration, fraternity, constitutional government, and separation of church and state.
The Enlightenment has its roots in a European intellectual and scholarly movement known as Renaissance humanism and was also preceded by the Scientific Revolution and the work of Francis Bacon, among others.
Some date the beginning of the Enlightenment back to the publication of René Descartes’ Discourse on the Method in 1637, featuring his famous dictum, Cogito, ergo sum (“I think, therefore I am”). Others cite the publication of Isaac Newton’s Principia Mathematica (1687) as the culmination of the Scientific Revolution and the beginning of the Enlightenment.
European historians traditionally date its beginning with the death of Louis XIV of France in 1715 and its end with the 1789 outbreak of the French Revolution. Many historians now date the end of the Enlightenment as the start of the 19th century, with the latest proposed year being the death of Immanuel Kant in 1804.
Philosophers and scientists of the period widely circulated their ideas through meetings at scientific academies, Masonic lodges, literary salons, coffeehouses and in printed books, journals, and pamphlets.
The ideas of the Enlightenment undermined the authority of the monarchy and the Catholic Church and paved the way for the political revolutions of the 18th and 19th centuries. A variety of 19th-century movements, including liberalism, communism, and neoclassicism, trace their intellectual heritage to the Enlightenment.
Question: Which of the following are the features of the Age of Enlightenment?
A It was led by intellectual and philosophical motives
B It focused on government and christianity
C It was motivated by the Renaissance
D It ended after demise of a France ruler
E It led to predominance of monarchy and the Catholic Church
Answer:
A It was led by intellectual and philosophical motives
C It was motivated by the Renaissance
Answer Explanation:
A [….was an intellectual and philosophical movement that dominated Europe in the 17th and 18th centuries….]
C [….The Enlightenment has its roots in a European intellectual and scholarly movement known as Renaissance humanism…]