SSC MTS 2026 PYQ — Question 87

SSC MTS - 17 Feb 2026 - Shift 2 • English • Q87

Read the following passage carefully and answer the questions based on the passage:

The term 'enlightenment' describes a cultural milieu and intellectual movement that began in Western Europe in the seventeenth century and reached its peak in the eighteenth. Its main characteristic was the belief that human reason, universal and consistent, is adequate to solve basic issues and to set fundamental standards of living. For some Enlightenment thinkers, the model of reason was the inductive method of science, which infers universal laws from particular empirical observations. For others, particularly Descartes and his followers, reason was modeled on geometry, involving the deduction of specific truths from clear and distinct universal ideas known intuitively by the 'light of reason.' Many Enlightenment thinkers employed both

What was the central belief of Enlightenment thinkers?

Show answer & explanation

Correct answer: B

Explanation

According to the second sentence of the text, the main characteristic of the movement was the 'belief that human reason, universal and consistent, is adequate to solve basic issues and to set fundamental standards of living.'

Therefore, the correct answer is option (B) Human reason is universal and sufficient for solving basic issues.