Enlightenment myths: still blocking the view
Following the myths about ‘rationality’, discussed previously, there is a consequential myth about the Western Enlightenment. In this narrative, the Enlightenment was about the rise of ‘reason’ and the project of reforming the world in accordance with it. There was at this point two clever and deliberate misconstructions. In its origin, ‘the light of reason’ was a spiritual faculty, but almost secular in that it did not subordinate itself to a clerical institution. It mirrored in status one’s individual…