What is the Enlightenment, for us? Are we its heirs, its continuers, its defenders? Or should we acknowledge our distance from it, and try to imagine a different sort of connection to this now-distant past?
At the present moment, the temptation to identify with the Enlightenment is almost overwhelming. In dark times, after all, few historical subjects exert more allure than one with such a promise of illumination. How inspiring, how reassuring, to think that there was once a moment when reason challenged superstition, when justice promised to overcome power, when the spirit of toleration seemed to prevail over dogmatism and persecution! How tempting it is to think that if only we could reawaken the spirit of the Enlightenment, and rekindle the torches of the philosophes, we might yet dissipate the shadows now gathering around us.