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This essay is written on the following premises and argues for them. "Enlightenment" is a word or signifier, and not a single or unifiable phenomenon which it consistently signifies. There is no single or unifiable phenomenon describable as "the Enlightenment," but it is the definite article rather than the noun which is to be avoided. In studying the intellectual history of the late seventeenth century and the eighteenth, we encounter a variety of statements made, and assumptions proposed, to which the term "Enlightenment" may usefully be applied, but the meanings of the term shift as we apply it. The things are connected, but not continuous; they cannot be reduced to a single narrative; and we find ourselves using the word "Enlightenment" in a family of ways and talking about a family of phenomena, resembling and related to one another in a variety of ways that permit of various generalizations about them. We are not, however, committed to a single root meaning of the word "Enlightenment," and we do not need to reduce the phenomena of which we treat to a single process or entity to be termed "the" Enlightenment. It is a reification that we wish to avoid, but the structure of our language is such that this is difficult, and we will find ourselves talking of "the French" or "the Scottish," "the Newtonian" or the "the Arminian" Enlightenments, and hoping that by employing qualifying adjectives we may constantly remind ourselves that the keyword "Enlightenment" is ours to use and should not master us.
There is resistance to the employment of these premises, and it seems to arise in at least two ways. In the first place, "Enlightenment" in the twenty-first century denotes to some writers (including some historians) a cause or programme--typically a secular liberalism--with which they identify themselves and which they desire to defend against its enemies. Others--at least until recently--have seen in it a historical process they attack as harmful, while describing it in much the same terms as do its champions. Both groups consequently find in the eighteenth century phenomena to whose discovery they are ardently and whiggishly committed. In the second place, there is a superstitious fear that to reduce "Enlightenment" to a number of processes going on...