Abstract

Both in academic and public discussions the term “enlightened” is not only an often used but also an often misused one. Thus, this article again investigates the question “What is Enlightenment?” One main thesis, which for some contemporary self-proclaimed followers of Enlightenment may be a bit hard to swallow, is that it is just the influence of a certain mediaeval thinker on historical Enlightenment that can help to develop a systematic and not only historical concept of Enlightenment. For this purpose, this article combines three problems of this very concept: the discussion on “What is Enlightenment?” in late German Enlightenment; the fuzziness of any distinction between “Enlightenment” and “Counter-Enlightenment”; the very difference between the way that Jewish Enlightenment (Haskala) and “Christian” Enlightenment refer to their mediaeval philosophical ancestors.