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Inventing the Enlightenment: Anti-Jacobins, British Hegelians, and the Oxford English Dictionary
- Journal of the History of Ideas
- Johns Hopkins University Press
- Volume 64, Number 3, July 2003
- pp. 421-443
- 10.1353/jhi.2003.0042
- Article
- Additional Information
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For over a century, the Oxford English Dictionary has defined Enlightenment as “shallow and pretentious intellectualism, unreasonable contempt for tradition and authority.” But this definition misreads two passages from Stirling's Secret of Hegel (1865) and misrepresents how “enlightenment,” “illumination,” and “Aufklärung” were employed in the wake of the French Revolution. An examination of British critiques of the Revolution and early translations of texts by Kant, Mendelssohn, and Hegel shows that, prior to the close of the nineteenth century, “enlightenment” designated a process, not a period, and had few negative connotations.