Many people today think of the 18th-century Enlightenment as an exciting season of reason, a black swan moment when new energies flowed, when the early modern world began to be turned upside down, thanks to the fearless critics of power, pride, and prejudice, who suddenly thought differently, imagined a bold new future and called on their fellow citizens to press hard to make reason a reality.
The interpretation is unfortunately too simple. Truth is that the intellectual upheaval that came belatedly to be called the Enlightenment (the phrase was a 19th-century neologism, typically circulated by its enemies) was in fact a much messier affair.
Historians, philosophers, and political thinkers have taught us to see this 18th-century upheaval in less Whiggish, less sanguine ways. Grandiloquent treatments of “the Enlightenment”—Anthony Pagden’s “The Enlightenment and Why It Still Matters“ (2013) springs to mind, as does A.C. Grayling’s recent gushing defenses of Bacon, Hobbes, and Locke and other early luminaries in ”The Age of Genius“ (2016)—are quite out of fashion, and for solid reasons.
