![]() ![]() In this dissertation, I have called that perspective the horror of existence: the tacit acknowledgment that whatever is naturally and historically presented to the human agent is to be treated with suspicion. ![]() Thus, the Enlightenment made a largely self-content analysis of the natural, traditional and historical condition of humanity which suggested that underneath its emancipatory, rationalist optimism lurksan unspoken perspective on reality that, in the verse of Alexander Pope, on weak wings, from far, pursues flights. Ay, there's the rub, so rhymes the Bard of Avon, for wherefrom arriveth the urge to flee the dark? The rationalist propensity to remodel and re-invent the world is testament to a dreary and pessimistic analysis of the human condition. Specifically, the Enlightenment (or the Aufklärung or the Siècle des Lumières) believed that reason would guide humanity from darkness to the light. The historical period of the 18th and early 19th century is usually perceived as the high point of human self-emancipatory optimism. ![]()
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