JACOB’s LADDER: Reason, Liberty and Science. The Contribution of Freemasonry to the Enlightenment

The theme of the article relies to the particular contribution of Freemasonry in the initiation and development of modernity, focusing on science, religion and politics. We know that, during the late Middle Ages, the European society was obedient to the „Church-Tradition-Monarchy” trinity; this status-quo collapsed due to the rational way of thinking; also the establishment of the universal human rights belongs to the Enlightenment, whose theses were supported mainly by Freemasons. Many researchers have proposed to show the extent to which Freemasonry helped to build the ideals of Enlightenment. The main conclusions that can be drawn, by analyzing their tracks, are: (1) All famous leaders of the Enlightenment had connections to Freemasonry; (2) The Enlightenment tenets overlap Freemasonry tenets, and, therefore they were supported and propagated by English, French, and American lodges; (3) Freemasonry progressively turned into a transnational vehicle for liberal thinking, disseminating the concepts of property and freedom in Europe and across the Atlantic.