Abstract

The purpose of this essay is to analyze and relate two proposals for illustration made by the European philosophy of the eighteenth century, their singularities and seeking more differences than their commonalities. Both of them were developed in countries with different cultural and political conjunctures and based on the peculiarities of their respective enlightenments. This is the Aufklärung of Immanuel Kant (1724-1804), who became famous with the booklet Answer the question: what is "Enlightenment"?, written in 1784, and the Lumières embodied by the speculator Denis Diderot (1713-1784) and mainly expressed in the entry "Philosopher" of the Encyclopedia of 1765