A History of Veganism - Part 3 of 4: Modern Era

In part two of our series, we saw that vegetarianism enjoyed resurgence in Europe during the Renaissance period, an influential time for the arts, culture and intellectual thought. Closely following the Renaissance, the Age of Enlightenment from the 17th to the 18th century, was a time in Europe marked by an emphasis on empiricism, which is to say, reason and scientific methods as a way to true knowledge. It was a new era in Western thought that saw significant advances in such ideals as individual liberty, democracy, women’s rights, and the separation of church and state. Eminent Enlightenment philosophers such as Voltaire of France and Genevan Jean-Jacques Rousseau, spoke about the sentience of animals.