The enlightenment project

pp. 17-40

in: Nicholas Capaldi, The enlightenment project in the analytic conversation, Berlin, Springer, 1998

Abstract

"Enlightenment" is a term used broadly by historians of ideas to refer to the intellectual and social ferment in Western Europe during the eighteenth century. This ferment was different in England from what it was in France, Germany, or Italy. One would therefore have to distinguish further among the British Enlightenment, the Scottish Enlightenment, the French Enlightenment, the German Enlightenment, etc. In addition, depending upon what features one emphasizes, some concepts which are included in one definition of the Enlightenment might be excluded in another. Figures who would be major representatives of the Enlightenment under one construal would also emerge as critics of the Enlightenment under another definition.¹