The Enlightenment had a number of antecedents, including the European Renaissance and the Scientific Revolution. But what made it special was that some of its more radical proponents, like Immanuel Kant, for instance, went so far as to argue that human reason rendered a belief in God unnecessary, and by extension, proclaimed that any belief in divine intervention or a divine plan for humanity was just superstition. Given that this was coming out of an overwhelmingly Christian Europe, this was a pretty controversial suggestion, and not all Enlightenment thinkers would go that far. And more moderate Enlightenment thinkers were also more willing to countenance hierarchical social and political structures. Like John Locke, a major Enlightenment thinker, formulated his version of inalienable rights as life, liberty, and property. And that's much more traditional than arguing, for instance, that property should be held communally. And it's no coincidence that the more moderate Enlightenment thinkers, like Locke and Adam Smith, happened to be British, and the real radicals were French.