ABSTRACT
The end of the Enlightenment was bound up with the rise to power of Napoleon Bonaparte. Napoleon Bonaparte encouraged movements, institutions, and individuals with an altogether distinct, and more authoritarian, perspective and discouraged those with Enlightenment values. Enlightenment's demise can be linked to a series of interrelated processes that marks a major point of transition in European and, possibly, in world history – the French Revolution. Order was God-given, not made by human beings; accordingly, notions such as the sovereignty of the people and democracy represented monstrous detours from a true path. When people attempt to be architects of societies, they exhibit exactly that false pride, shallow self-confidence, and disrespect for the true laws of God and nature of which the Enlightenment was so often accused. The Enlightenment that was invented in the wake of the Revolution arose at a momentous turning point in European history.
