ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the ideas around a ‘sexual revolution’ while exploring a number of factors that contributed to the Enlightenment age, frequently based on ideas and behaviour with a much longer pedigree. Notably this will be achieved by looking at evolving views around the importance of the passions to everyday life and society, the significance of erotica and pornography during this time and ending with a discussion of masculinity. In Anthony Pagden’s opinion the Enlightenment is more important than the ‘Renaissance’ and the ‘Reformation’, which both irreversibly transformed culture, because it provided humanity with the notion of what it meant to be modern, i.e. tolerant, open-minded and enlightened. The Enlightenment was different from the Renaissance and the Reformation in that it was attempting to overturn the past and was keenly aware of its ‘own place in history; through a critical philosophical movement’.
