Age of Enlightenment

In the book’s account, the Age of Enlightenment names a contrastive intellectual frame: reason appears as light opposing darkness, while the Kantian revolution relocates the excess once imagined as external into the core of subjectivity.

Enlightenment as a Contrast

The Age of Enlightenment is evoked through the image of the “Light of Reason” fighting darkness all around. This image presents darkness as something reason confronts from outside; the passage uses it to distinguish the Enlightenment conception from the later account associated with Kant and German Idealism.

Relation to the Kantian Break

The contrast concerns where excess is located. In the pre-Kantian universe described in the book, humans are beings of reason who struggle against animal lusts and divine madness. With Kant, the excess to be fought becomes immanent to subjectivity itself, figured as the “Night of the World.” The Age of Enlightenment therefore functions here as the historical and conceptual foil for a transformation in how the subject’s inner darkness is understood.