What Enlightenment Is

The idea of enlightenment as a life-transforming movement from ignorance to truthWhen we think of the enlightenment, we think of the period known as “the Enlightenment,” an era of social and intellectual progress, led by great thinkers—Newton and Locke, Hume and Smith, Franklin and Jefferson. Others see enlightenment not as a period but as a project: in particular, a project centered on control and domination by means of rationality. In this book, Ryan Patrick Hanley offers a third way of understanding enlightenment—not as a period or a project, but as the process that brings us out of the darkness of ignorance into the light of truth. He traces the evolution of the idea of enlightenment in the Western tradition by examining six pivotal interventions in its development: Plato, the Jewish and Christian scriptures, Augustine, Descartes, Rousseau, and Kant.Hanley considers what all concepts of enlightenment have in common, finding that they share the idea that the search for truth is fundamentally transformative and changes not only one’s vision but also one’s being. What have shifted over time, he argues, are how we understand the route to enlightenment and what it means to be enlightened. Later thinkers privilege the immanent over the transcendent, turning inward rather than upward. With What Enlightenment Is, Hanley offers both the first extended history of a central concept in philosophy and a guide to why and how those striving to live the best life might choose to seek enlightenment.