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The Age of Enlightenment (; ; ; ) was an eighteenth-century movement in European and American philosophy, or the longer period including the Age of Reason. The term can more narrowly refer to the intellectual movement of The Enlightenment, which advocated Reason as the primary basis of authority. Developing in France, Britain and Germany, its sphere of influence also included Austria, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland, Russia, Scandinavia, Spain and, as a matter of fact, the whole of Europe.