by Ana Bazac<\/p>\n
The 18th<\/sup> century <\/em>was not only that of Enlightenment. There were even ideas which opposed[1]<\/a> to the message of progress through cultural development<\/em> of the many \u2013 although \u201cthe many\u201d were, at least for the German intellectuals, only townsmen, and rather propertied. But just because of the coexistence of adverse ideologies, we cannot hold the principle of Enlightenment to be guilty of the theses of the Counter-Enlightenment, as Adorno and Horkheimer believed.<\/p>\n And thus, we (not I\/me, but we all as rational beings) cannot hold \u201cKant\u201d \u2013 meaning the entire Kantian critical philosophy<\/em>, that which is the novelty brought about by Kant, and especially the Groundwork<\/em> (1785) constructing the categorical imperative, as well as the ulterior writings \u2013 guilty for theses which not only do not derive from<\/em>, but are wholly opposed to the categorical imperative<\/em>.<\/p>\n Obviously, we do not idealise Enlightenment\u2019s power to impose reason in the functioning of the human society, and neither that this reason was in that time the higher level of the reasonable organisation of society. The Western Enlightenment was the historical epoch of legitimisation of capitalism: as a society of citizens, utopian political liberalism based on the correctness of the principle of contract, both economic and social. \u201cCapitalism in a country\u201d, struggling for resources, markets and profits, competing for them with other \u201ccapitalisms in a country\u201d and subjugating the \u201crest\u201d of the world. This is why the Enlightenment views were contradictory: and, for instance, why Kant emitted racist ideas: but only before 1785<\/em>. Because from his ethical theory with its basis, the categorical imperative, no racism results.<\/p>\n *<\/strong><\/p>\n Actually, what did Enlightenment mean? It was felt by prominent intellectuals and theorised in the entire Western Europe: as both amount of scientific\/rationalist knowledge<\/em> and its diffusion<\/em>, that is the development of a rationalist spirit in the European peoples or, at least in the conscience and behaviour of the townsmen citizens. As a result, Enlightenment was a practical programme<\/em> of rationalist mass instruction, in order to counter the malignant role of<\/p>\n Therefore, Enlightenment is not only a doctrine<\/em> \u2013 a speculative exploit, ultimately \u2013 but at the same time a commitment to implementation<\/em>.<\/p>\n *<\/strong><\/p>\n We can take Enlightenment in the strict sense<\/em>, as a doctrine<\/em> of the method of raising the culture and social conscience of masses<\/em>, or in the broad sense<\/em>, as a doctrine<\/em> of general progress<\/em>, and especially of the political one, as a result of the implementation and assumption of rationalism.<\/p>\n In both senses, Enlightenment was the ideology<\/em> of the nascent and developing bourgeoisie in the Western Europe and, because its social origin itself was hierarchical (big, middle and petty strata of bourgeoisie), the Enlightenment ideology was also stratified<\/em>: and even though all these ideological strata were created by intellectuals, they were<\/p>\n And even though in its fight against the presence and voice of the lower classes and petty bourgeoisie, the big one took over the slogans of utopian liberalism in order to mobilise them to fight for its own power, the final victory of the big bourgeoisie in the bourgeois revolutions \u2013 victory showed by the phenomenon of Restoration, alliance of the big bourgeoisie with monarchy, Church and an already \u201ctoothless\u201d aristocracy \u2013 brought about the attack against the Enlightenment rationalism and the deletion of the hoped political rights. The fight of the middle bourgeoisie, again allied with the petty one and the poor, culminated in the 1848 revolutions which were defeated by the big bourgeoisie, after the new treason of the middle bourgeoisie against the petty one, fearing the poor. The reactionary<\/em> era lasted until the last decades of the 19th<\/sup> century, when, as a result of the pressure from below of workers and their organisations, an era of prevention<\/em> began.<\/p>\n However, for Kant and others, Enlightenment was both doctrines: the amount of rationalist knowledge as such leads to progress only through the education and assumption of this knowledge by citizens, who must and arrive to manifest freely in the public space; the progress is first of all that of freedom. And the vector of this process is the leading stratum, and first, the enlightened monarch.<\/p>\n *<\/strong><\/p>\n To show the importance of Enlightenment is not a Eurocentric view. The more so we understand this importance for the global history. The point is not that its ideas were conceived of only by Europeans: on the contrary, the role and criterion of reason was and is common to cultures worldwide<\/em>, and to point the different meanders of human reflection on man and the world is not only fascinating but necessary[3]<\/a>, because otherwise there is neither real knowledge of it and nor dialogue between the different facets of the same human culture. The focus on Enlightenment is a part of this dialogue.<\/p>\n It\u2019s difficult to refrain from discussing the Enlightenment as such: a cultural system of ideas<\/em> about society and the man-society relationships[4]<\/a>, preceding both the Western bourgeois revolutions of the 18th<\/sup> century and the German way of reformism leading to the German way of modernisation; and reflecting, through the starry-eyed lens of petty bourgeoisie aiming at the abolition of privileges and at its own freedom and equality that would be tantamount to the freedom and equality of \u201call\u201d, \u00a0the big bourgeoisie\u2019s scopes of political equality with the dominant layers of the feudal society, actually its primacy in a modern society based on \u201cmerits\u201d.<\/p>\n The set of Enlightenment ideas corresponded to the development of capitalist relations and logic in the Western society. This is why Spinoza, who gave a deep understanding of the \u201cmultitude\u201d \u2013 the common people in towns and countryside, as constituted from unique individuals<\/em> having their human aspirations, and not from serial and dependent beings who definitely renounced to their autonomy subordinating themselves to the leading entity forever[5]<\/a> \u2013 can be considered a precursor sketching the political and ethical lines of reasoning of the next, enlightened century[6]<\/a>; and why the discontinuity of ages, that is not a fiction, is so embedded in the continuity of the human creation, representing it[7]<\/a>.<\/p>\n The Enlightenment ideas arose from the antinomies of the monarchic and feudal hierarchical society, highlighted by the loud and deaf opposition of the many. Aiming to control this opposition, they were responses trying to preserve the fundamental pattern of continuity of the hierarchical relations <\/em>\u2013 through the slogans of political liberalism \u2013 within the \u201cfreedom\u201d of capitalist economy. But the ideas of the Enlightenment were also trans-capitalist attempts to appropriate the point of view of the many, as if they would have transposed in them the deep feelings of the many and made them audible. The belief in improving the lives of the greatest number of people through the development of their knowledge and their abilities to know was the main distinguishing characteristic of intellectuals in the years of the construction of modernity. Obviously, these intellectuals belonged to the affluent or at least prosperous strata[8]<\/a>.<\/p>\n The Enlightenment was constituted in the shadow of capitalist slogans and promises of the Western bourgeoisie to itself, and which considered those outside it and in lower status than it as insignificant means. Once more, this is the reason that in the era<\/em> of Enlightenment there were also discriminatory and exclusivist ideologies flourishing: as the racist and nationalist ones, promoting, through the veil of oddities that needed to be civilised or the veil of cultural freedom to manifest one group\u2019s culture, the bourgeois goals to impose its economic and political domination over the majority of the same linguistic culture and over the majorities of different cultures thought as being \u201cinferior\u201d. But we must not confound the era<\/em> of Enlightenment with the typical Enlightenment ideas<\/em>.<\/p>\n *<\/strong><\/p>\n The picture of the future<\/em> \u2013 of the future society, that was to defeat, to surpass the \u201cAncient Order\u201d \u2013 is the main characteristic of Enlightenment<\/em>. This characteristic is due to the rationalism <\/em>(with its secular feature) of the era. In all the anterior historical epochs of Europe, the future was given, because it was created by an extra-mundane force; it was prefigured, thus closed. Now, the future was to be created by humans, and it was open. However, what was depicted? As any picture, the Enlightenment proposition was a blend, and thus it was difficult to discern the different strokes. The liberal future \u2013 and different liberal futures, mixed with old guarantees of stability and power, as in the Restoration type liberalism, long-drawn till nowadays \u2013 was considered by its promoters as the Ideal future, and the only one. But this was only the description\/definition<\/em> of the future \u2013 as other \u201cgiven\u201d \u2013 as the transposition into law of the already existing wage labour and capital relationships, so, as the attesting within law of the capitalist competition for power, this entire description being justified with beautiful words (toleration, freedom, progress, constitutional government[9]<\/a>). The means<\/em> of achieving this definition, this future, were in fact not really new: the separation of powers in the preconised bourgeois era of constitutional government was not the annihilation of domination<\/em>, but only a sharing of power and co-option in the power circle of capitalist groups and layers. And thus, submission<\/em> was to continue to be the basic status of the many: they could choose individual paths in their life, of course, but only in the frame of their obedience <\/em>to the rules of domination, and more, of their consent t<\/em>o this status of submission.<\/p>\n But is the context-dependency of human facts and thoughts not a universal meta <\/em>principle of behaviours and ideas? Obviously, it is: but the definite transition to capitalism, sung out triumphantly by Enlightenment, did not radically change the shape of the social relations, although just Enlightenment seemed to promise this. Accordingly, neither liberalism nor the liberal meanings of knowledge sharing and public education were truly new ideas<\/em>[10]<\/a>, distinguishing in nature from the old ones \u2013 but only in degrees \u2013 though their implementation generated a new civilisation: but only through the medium of the new power relations, political and economic institutions and laws. But what would have been \u2013 and what was \u2013 something truly new in the realm of ideological ideas?<\/p>\n *<\/strong><\/p>\n Obviously again, the ideas which offer a novel pattern of social reality are those which structurally change the social relationships, which, by the shifting of the point of view, do no longer consider the domination\u2013submission matrix eternal, but historical and having complex causes which, however, can be deciphered.<\/p>\n But could this type of ideas flourish during Enlightenment? No, or only marginally, as the utopian sketches till Gracchus Babeuf\u2019s Manifesto of the Equals<\/em> already speaking about a post-bourgeois revolution. However, what is important in the development of ideas is not so much their descriptive strength, as their substantiation.<\/p>\n *<\/strong><\/p>\n Kant provided this substantiation with the ethical demonstration of the categorical imperative<\/em>. The humans behave in historical and individual contexts according to different interests and views assumed and transmitted to them by millenary moral principles. This behaviour corresponds to these hypothetical <\/em>contexts, interests and views. However, this behaviour itself can be judged from an ethical standpoint. In all the hypothetical public contexts until now, people entered in relations positing them as means<\/em> of others. And each human being is a means for the others, because each and all of them have social roles and functions. But at the same time, all are human beings and the respect for the humanity of each person requires that the behaviour of all take this humanity into account: people must be treated not only as means but always at the same time as ends<\/em>. This moral treatment is imperative if the humans want to preserve their humanity, that is, their human species. \u00a0In different contexts, people behave according to different maxims. But what is essential is that moral<\/em> involves what is human in all these maxims, what is universal<\/em>. Technically, this is a universal law, and the formulations of the categorical imperative specify: that the maxims followed in random occurrences must be of such content that they could serve also as a universal moral law. Only in this way the human person keeps consciously his humanity and considers the humanity of others, so his and their both uniqueness and universality as ends, and their representativity for the rational beings able to understand and create universal ends.<\/p>\n *<\/strong><\/p>\n In the effort to theoretically create a better organisation of society, to demand from all citizens behaviours based on good will, Kant was not alone. There were many intellectuals, high rank nobles and clergymen, physicians, scientists and university professors, philosophers and writers, constituted in cultural and scientific societies. In Prussia, these societies merged with the state in order to make reforms<\/em> for a better management of society, that would prevent a revolution. The reforms allowed a \u201cpassive revolution\u201d \u2013 as Gramsci called the modernisation from above \u2013 in a country where the feudal power still overwhelmed the bourgeois production and trade, but in its shadow, with its help.<\/p>\n The Berlin Wednesday Society in 1783-1798 (Berliner Mittwochsgesellschaft<\/em> (or Gesellschaft der Freunde der Aufkl\u00e4rung<\/em>)) was an example of these societies.\u00a0 Johann Karl Wilhelm M\u00f6hsen, delivered \u201cWhat Is to Be Done Towards the Enlightenment of Citizens?\u201d[11]<\/a>, in this society in 1783. This paper and other ones promoted the critical spirit<\/em> \u2013 result of education and ability of \u201cbien raisonner<\/em>\u201d, as Frederick the Great insisted \u2013 therefore the formation of modern members of society, of citizens. Hence, the entire Enlightenment age was a pedagogical age[12]<\/a>, because education was both a popular goal and a purpose \u2013 because a necessary condition of modern development \u2013 of the bourgeois layers. Enlightenment generated a process of development of the \u201cpublic sphere\u201d[13]<\/a> of transformational ideas and debates.<\/p>\n *<\/strong><\/p>\n But Kant went beyond the praise of education of rationality. The categorical imperative moral theory suggested that no progress in the human rationality is achievable if people still are treated only as means and never as ends at the same time; the telos<\/em> of the human beings fade[14]<\/a> and a cosmopolitan spirit for the perpetual peace is not possible only on the basis of hypothetical maxims which do not acquire a universal feature. No public spirit defeating the former \u201crepresentational culture\u201d is possible without, not a moral education but, a moral transformation <\/em>of society, based on the consideration of people always as ends and not only as means. The normative ethics<\/em> is demonstrated, and this demonstration indicates the interdependence of moral and concrete economic and political changes. Kant\u2019s theory is not speculation, but a path-orienting theory for the structural transformation of society<\/em>. This is his original position that made him the axial representative of Enlightenment, its emblem. In the political conception he could be but a utopian liberal[15]<\/a> benefitting from the enlightened Prussian monarchy, but the categorical imperative moral surpassed liberalism<\/em>: and also, the utopian optimism that was the general spiritual state of the 18th<\/sup> century, before the new capitalist relations won and became an explicit dominant system, defeating (and integrating within it) the former social order. The categorical imperative theory has so high stakes, on the basis of an implacable logic, that it warned ab initio<\/em> about the huge difficulty and revolutionary trials its transposition in life implies. From the standpoint of his moral theory, Kant was a moderate optimist, or rather a moderate pressed by the burden of realist scopes: and directing toward a \u201cmaximalist\u201d perspective of the human society.<\/p>\n *<\/strong><\/p>\n The Kantian paradigm, the flag of trust in reason, considered by most of the 18th<\/sup>, 19th<\/sup> and even 20th<\/sup> century people as essential for Enlightenment or even for the new era of modernity and dignity of all, was only one, although the main one, of the ideologies which shaped the modern world.<\/p>\n The bourgeois revolutions in the 18th<\/sup> century and the bourgeois-democratic in the 19th<\/sup> century had in the core of their thinking, the Enlightenment ideas. The lack of freedom is a limit, but just the limit is a heuristic instrument of freedom: if<\/em> people are enlightened. And<\/p>\n *<\/strong><\/p>\n As it is known, AI deduces the future from data of the past. And the future is, generally \u2013 let\u2019s be optimistic \u2013 superior to the past. Now let\u2019s make an exercise of imagination. If we were AI and we would know the categorical imperative, what other principle would we deduce as a superior one for the future?<\/p>\n *<\/strong><\/p>\n Instead of conclusions<\/strong><\/p>\n The core of the Enlightenment doctrine is the categorical imperative.<\/p>\n In the polemic of Robert E. Allinson[16]<\/a> and Michael H. Mitias[17]<\/a> around the question of the need of a new Enlightenment in the 21st<\/sup> century<\/em>, Ma\u0142gorzata Czarnocka[18]<\/a> pointed at the fundamental similarity of the two, and the complementary elements brought about by each of them.<\/p>\n Both suggested \u201cthe need for the world\u2019s transformation in an Enlightenment spirit\u201d[19]<\/a>.<\/p>\n Michael H. Mitias showed that: the ideals of reason, science\/truth, humanism, all being concrete transpositions of goodness, truth and beauty, are universal<\/em>, and conceived of in concrete historical conditions; therefore, we do not need a new Enlightenment, but \u201ca reinterpretation of the ideals of the European Enlightenment\u201d in the present conditions. Actually, Allinson\u2019s view was the same: because the 18th<\/sup> century European Enlightenment \u2013 but as a historical period, as well as through the persons of big philosophers, not as a doctrine promoting specific values\/ideals \u2013 brought about mixed ideas (with those racist and Eurocentric), we need a new Enlightenment cleansed of such malignant products of historical human minds. Another consideration was the different focus on either the continuity of Enlightenment (Professor Mitias) or discontinuity of the historical epochs, as the present one that seems to having degrade the Enlightenment values (Professor Allinson).<\/p>\n However, if we understand Enlightenment not only as a theoretical supply of values but also as a call for their implementation \u2013 actually, just because these values are not passive descriptions but warm urges \u2013 then yes, we need a \u201cnew Enlightenment\u201d, as Robert Allinson insisted. That is, I say, the developments of contents<\/em> of values in the contemporary challenging times. If we do not develop these contents, the values\/ideals remain vague and consequently, able to be used in a \u201cdouble speak\u201d (Orwell) that, on the contrary, destroys even their original meaning that is implied under any of their historical forms.<\/p>\n In this sense, once more, the categorical imperative cannot be surpassed by other ethical criterion and stake: but it requires and determines principles of implementation. And these are the principle of abolition of the private property (that is not tantamount to the personal one) and the abolition of the political fragmentation of humanity, because only with this abolition the cultural uniqueness of groups can flourish, are the sine qua non<\/em> principles of implementing the categorical imperative.<\/p>\n Only in this perspective, the Enlightenment values have relevance. Actually, only in this perspective have they, beyond their content given by that historical epoch, a necessary and universal<\/em> peculiarity of being values, criteria and stakes of universal <\/em>appreciation by humans.<\/p>\n The philosophers, dealing with the articulation of ideas, are preoccupied only with the topic they pursue. And their professional dialogue is the only thing they can do in order to really substantiate the concepts and values of their ideas. But this doesn\u2019t mean that they show only these immaterial tools of the historical process of humankind. They show also the actors<\/em> of this process: the values have a dynamic force only through the activity of humans. This is the reason of the double function and relevance of values: both descriptive and practical. And this is the reason of the necessary feature of values: the presence of telos<\/em> in their internal logic. And the Enlightenment pointed out that the values whose telos<\/em> is not universal\/universalizable<\/em>, are not really positive for humankind, that is, for all members of this species<\/em> and for each of them<\/em>, and on long term.<\/p>\n Once more, the Enlightenment revealed that the well-being of groups cannot transcend the well-being of all the human groups<\/em> and of every member of them<\/em>, and that the ethical principle of the categorical imperative must be continued within the structural social relations, as principle of common\/social property and thus, as principle of abolition of domination-subsumption.<\/p>\n The Enlightenment signalled that progress is not an inexorable and objective march, but depends on the contents<\/em> of moral values and thus, on the public debate of the reasons<\/em> of contents and the extra-theoretical domain of practical interests and relations. However, the public analysis\u00a0 discovered that, just because of the universal quest of humans for \u201cthe goodness, the truth and the beauty\u201d \u2013 namely, for their conditions \/ the conditions to really\u00a0 live under their aegis \u2013 : on the one hand, there is a sense of history that seems to be an inexorable and impersonal given, while on the other hand, the dominant groups do not recognise this sense of history because if they would do, they should recognise the entire logic of the human universal striving for the above values. As a result, the dominant groups privilege the process<\/em> with its momentary, temporary and restrictive teloi <\/em>of the domination. And the dominated groups emphasise both the telos<\/em> of history and the logic to go to it.<\/p>\n Accordingly, the political repercussion in the class-divided society is not the \u201cequilibrium between the dominant classes and the dominated classes\u201d, but the struggle against this division itself led by the moral values whose core is the categorical imperative<\/em>. Actually, this struggle shows the interdependence between the biological determinism and the cultural\/moral determinism of the human species: and thus, the \u201csuperiority\u201d of the latter from the standpoint of dynamics and change. Our biological determinism is the same as that of our ancestors 3000 years ago, but our cultural <\/em>\u2013 meaning, obviously, cognitive (scientific and technical achievements) \u2013 and<\/em>, here emphasised, moral determinism<\/em> is that which changes and fuels the behaviour of agents and the sense of history.\u00a0 And even though the everyday problems lead to moral choices between moral models facing social constraints, and thus to moral uncertainty, this phenomenon is not solved only by the ad hoc<\/em> moral theories which we compare[20]<\/a>, but ultimately by the categorical imperative that subtends all these theories and is the real construct and emblem of Enlightenment.<\/p>\n \n \n [1]<\/a> After an early history, the term<\/em> counter-enlightenment appeared in Lewis White Beck, Early German Philosophy: Kant and his Predecessors, Cambridge, Ma., 1969; and in Isaiah Berlin, \u201cThe Counter-Enlightenment\u201d (1973). In: Isaiah Berlin, The Proper Study of Mankind: An Anthology of Essays<\/em>, Edited by Henry Hardy and Roger Hausheer, New York, Ferrar, Strauss & Giroux, 1997, pp. 243-268.<\/p>\n [3]<\/a> See, for example, the beautiful David Graeber, Pirate Enlightenment, or the Real Libertalia<\/em> (2019), New York, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2023.<\/p>\n [4]<\/a> The ideas about society and the man-society relationships form what was named ideology<\/em>; or ideology was defined as the ideas about society and man-society relationships from the standpoint of concrete, conscious or not, position of people within the economic and political power relations (Marx). There are not \u201cneutral\u201d ideas about society and man-society relationships.<\/p>\n [5]<\/a> This demonstration of opposition between the multitude in Spinoza and in Hobbes was provided by P. Virno, A Grammar of the Multitude: For an Analysis of Contemporary Forms of Life<\/em>, trans. I. Bertoletti, J. Cascaito, A. Casson [Los Angeles, New York: Semiotext(e)\/ Foreign Agents, 2004].<\/p>\n [6]<\/a> Jonathan Israel, Radical Enlightenment: Philosophy and the making of modernity, 1650\u20131750<\/em>, Oxford University Press, 2001.<\/p>\n [7]<\/a> For example, the volume Lumi\u00e8res et classicism\/Enlightenment and Classicism\/Aufkl\u00e4tung und Classizismus<\/em>, of the International Review of Eighteenth-Century Studies (IRECS) \/Revue internationale d\u2019\u00e9tude du dix-huiti\u00e8me si\u00e8cle (RIEDS)<\/em>, edited by \/ sous la direction de Jean-Christophe Abramovici (Universit\u00e9 Paris IV\u2013Sorbonne), Daniel Fulda (Universit\u00e4t Halle\u2013Wittenberg) Vol. 3 (Quebec University), 2017.<\/p>\n [8]<\/a> See Betty A. Schellenberg, \u201cReading in an Epistolary Community in Eighteenth-Century England\u201d, in DeNel Rehberg Sedo (Ed.), Reading Communities from Salons to Cyberspace<\/em>, Palgrave Macmillan London, 2011, pp. 25-43.<\/p>\n [9]<\/a> Karl Marx, \u201cEngland\u2019s 17th Century Revolution. A Review of Francois Guizot\u2019s 1850 pamphlet Pourquoi la revolution d’Angleterre a-t-elle reussi?<\/em>\u201d (1850), https:\/\/www.marxists.org\/archive\/marx\/works\/1850\/02\/english-revolution.htm<\/a>: \u201cFor Guizot, English history ends with the consolidation of the constitutional monarchy. For him, everything that follows is limited to a pleasant alternating game between Tories and Whigs… In reality, however, the consolidation of the constitutional monarchy is only the beginning of the magnificent development and transformation of bourgeois society in England. Where M. Guizot sees only gentle calm and idyllic peace, in reality the most violent conflicts and the most penetrating revolutions are taking place. Under the constitutional monarchy, manufacturing at first expands to an extent hitherto unknown, only to make way for heavy industry, the steam engine, and the colossal factories. Whole classes of the population disappear, to be replaced by new ones, with new living conditions and new requirements. A new, more gigantic bourgeoisie comes into existence; while the old bourgeoisie fights with the French Revolution, the new one conquers the world market. It becomes so all-powerful that even before the Reform Bill gives it direct political power, it forces its opponents to enact legislation entirely in conformity with its interest and its needs. It wins direct representation in Parliament and uses it for the destruction of the last remnants of real power left to the landowners. It is, finally, at the present moment engaged in a thorough demolition of the beautiful codes of the English Constitution, which M. Guizot so admires\u201d.<\/p>\n [10]<\/a> See only the excellent Alain Michel, Rh\u00e9torique et philosophie chez Cic\u00e9ron. Essai sur les fondements philosophiques de l\u2019art de persuader<\/em>, Paris, PUF, 1960.<\/p>\n [11]<\/a> Translated by James Schmidt, in James Schmidt (ed.), What is Enlightenment? Eighteenth-Century Answers and Twentieth-Century Questions<\/em>, (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996), pp. 49-52.<\/p>\n [12]<\/a> G. Felicitas Munzel, Kant’s Conception of Pedagogy: Toward Education for Freedom<\/em>, Evanston, Ill. Northwestern University Press, 2012; also, Klas Roth and Chris W. Surprenant (eds.),\u00a0Kant and Education: Interpretations and Commentary<\/em>, Routledge, 2012.<\/p>\n [13]<\/a> J\u00fcrgen Habermas, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere (1962), (Cambridge, Polity, 1989<\/em>).<\/p>\n [14]<\/a> Ana Bazac, \u201cThe philosophy of the raison d\u2019\u00eatre<\/em>: Aristotle\u2019s telos <\/em>and Kant\u2019s categorical imperative\u201d, Biocosmology \u2013 Neo-Aristotelism<\/em>, Vol. 6, No. 2, 2016, pp. 286-304.<\/p>\n [15]<\/a> He conceived Enlightenment in a \u201cminimalist\u201d view, if we can take over Samuel Fleischacker\u2019s, What is Enlightenment?<\/em>, (London and New York: Routledge, 2013) demarcations.<\/p>\n [16]<\/a> Who was the guest editor of three monothematic issues around this question: \u201cDo We Need a New Enlightenment for the Twenty\u2013first Century. Part I.\u201d Dialogue and Universalism<\/em>, monothematic issue, 31 (2), 2021; \u201cDo We Need a New Enlightenment for the Twenty\u2013first Century. Part II.\u201d Dialogue and Universalism<\/em>, monothematic issue, 31 (3), 2021; \u201cDo We Need a New Enlightenment for the Twenty\u2013first Century. Part III.\u201d Dialogue and Universalism<\/em>, monothematic issue, 32 (1), 2022.<\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0 And who answered in the special rubric On the Need of Enlightenment, in Dialogue and Universalism<\/em>, 33 (1) 2023, as \u201cOn the Question of Whether We Need a New Enlightenment for the 21st Century\u201d, pp. 217-228;<\/p>\n [17]<\/a> \u201cDo We Really Need a New Enlightenment for the 21st Century?\u201d, Dialogue and Universalism<\/em>, 33 (1) 2023, pp. 195-216.<\/p>\n [18]<\/a> \u201cHow Do We Shape a Reform of the 21st-Century Human World in an Enlightenment Spirit? On Projects by Robert E. Allinson and Michael H. Mitias\u201d, Dialogue and Universalism<\/em>, 33 (1) 2023, pp. 229-242.<\/p>\n\n
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[2]<\/a> Marquis de Jean-Antoine-Nicolas de Caritat Condorcet, Esquisse d’un tableau historique des progr\u00e8s de l’esprit humain <\/em>(1793-1794\/1795, posthumous) Paris, Librairie philosophique Jean Vrin, 1970, pp. 79, 153, 180.<\/h1>\n