Final answer:
Enlightenment ideals chiefly attacked the Catholic Church for its authoritative grip on society and the European aristocracy for their hereditary privileges. These revolutionary ideas supported reason and natural law, leading to significant political upheaval like the French Revolution. However, the ideals did not immediately extend to universal equality for all genders, races, or classes.
Step-by-step explanation:
The Enlightenment ideals powerfully attacked the authority and influence of the Catholic Church, among other traditional powers. Enlightenment thinkers criticized the Church for maintaining power through doctrines that they saw as superstition and for keeping society in subjugation through religious dogma. The ideas they propagated, such as Deism and questioning of traditional religious beliefs, promoted a view of society based on reason and empirical evidence rather than faith and papal authority. Moreover, Enlightenment philosophers like Voltaire exposed the Church's role in suppressing intellectual advancement and perpetuating social hierarchies.
Not content with religious reform alone, Enlightenment thinkers also targeted the European aristocracy and the prevailing monarchical systems, advocating for concepts such as natural rights, separation of powers, and constitutionalism. Their critiques set the stage for upheavals such as the French Revolution, embodying slogans like 'Liberté, égalité, fraternité' which advocated for the rights and potential of humans beyond the privileges of the elite.
Despite the focus on human rights, the reach of the Enlightenment was limited and did not originally advocate for universal equality. Most of its proponents were white, upper and middle-class males, and their ideas were not immediately inclusive regarding race, gender, or class, often excluding women, the lower social classes, and people of color from the rights and privileges they discussed.