On Enlightenment

The idea of enlightenment entails liberty, equality, rationalism, secularism, and the connection between knowledge and human well being. Originating at the time when science and democracy began to push back the forces of superstition and oligarchy in Ancient Greece, it reached its apogee with the post-revolutionary rise of democracy in Britain, France, and America. In spite of the setbacks of revolutionary violence, political mass murder, and two world wars, the spread of enlightenment values has become the yardstick by which moral, political, and even scientific advances are measured. Indeed, most critiques of the enlightenment ideal point to failure in implementation rather than principal. By contrast, David Stove, in On Enlightenment, attacks the intellectual roots of enlightenment thought, to define the limitations of its successes and the areas of its likely failures.