Abstract: The Enlightenment was a movement that aimed to improve human beings' life of this world rather than other world in the 18^th century in Europe. It was meanwhile a movement in which thinkers preached their ideas to a wider range of audience. To rethink the Enlightenment, we should notice that thinkers of the Enlightenment not only criticized the power of religious authorities but tried to understand religion as well. Efforts were made not only to improve human beings' life of this world at the practical level but also to deeply understand the condition of human beings. The philosophers of the Enlightenment not only paid attention to "society" but also elaborated on the concept of the "public". In terms of the relationship between the Enlightenment and modernity, what is important is to inquire the conceptual histories of the "Enlightenment" and "modern"(or "modernity"), returning to the primary terms of the "Enlightenment", that is, "lumières" and "Aufklärung", and examining their relationship with the historical facts in the 18^th century.

Key words: Enlightenment, religion, sociality, the public, modernity