Aufklarung Definition & Meaning

Origin of Aufklarung

German auf up (from Middle High German ūf) (from Old High German upo in Indo-European roots) Klärung a making clear (from klären to make clear) (from Middle High German klæren) (from klār clear) (from Latin clārus clear)

From American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition

The Aufklarung, with its rational theology, was to him the type of abstraction.
It deserves to be noted here that the former, the theology of the Aufklarung, was, like that of the deists, destined to a short-lived notoriety; whereas the solid, accurate and scholarly researches of the rationalist critics of Germany, undertaken with no merely polemical spirit, not only form an epoch in the history of theology, but have taken a permanent place in the body of theological science.
As a distinct movement Pietism had run its course before the middle of the 18th century; by its very individualism it had helped to prepare the way for another great movement, the Illumination (Aufklarung), which was now to lead the world into new paths.
His mother, a daughter of Mencken, cabinet secretary to the king, was a woman of strong character and ability, who had been brought up at Berlin under the "Aufklarung."
This rationalism within the Church was a theological manifestation of the intellectual movement known as the Enlightenment (Aufklarung), and must be studied in close connexion with the purely philosophical rationalism already discussed.

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