Blackwell Reference Online

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An eighteenth-century cultural movement which attacked the authority of tradition, especially in matters of church and state, in the name of the public use of reason. K ant famously defined the Enlightenment as “man's emergence from his self-imposed immaturity,” and gave its motto as sapere aude ! – “Dare to understand!” The Enlightenment was a Europe-wide phenomenon, associated with the decline of feudalism, the growth of printing, and the increasing economic and social power of the bourgeois classes. It is important to note the national differences between its forms, in particular, the M aterialism of the French Encyclopedists (d'Alembert, Diderot, Helvetius, Holbach), the Scottish interest in political economy (Fergerson, Hume, Smith, Stuart), and the more cultural and historical concerns of the Germans (Goethe, Herder, Lessing, Schiller). In the period since the 1939-45 war, the idea of the Enlightenment has increasingly become the battleground for disputes over the concept of reason and the progressive or oppressive character of the heritage of European C ulture . More recently, it has provided the focus for debates between the followers of F oucault and H abermas , in which both sides understand the Enlightenment as the project of M odernity . 1932 ( 1951 ): The Philosophy of the Enlightenment . 1986a : “ What is Enlightenment ?.” 1967 : The Enlightenment: An ... log in or subscribe to read full text