Initiatives such as the establishment of SBS and his willingness to accept the flood of refugees flowing after the victory of the communists in the Vietnam war stamp him out as a beacon of enlightenment given the developments in subsequent decades.
For some, especially for critics of the Enlightenment, in this point Lessing is already beyond the Enlightenment, given that it is characteristic of the Enlightenment to know the particular through its subsumption under the universal law (of reason).
The Enlightenment gave pleasure much better press.
The literary theorist Terry Eagleton once remarked that the Enlightenment gave birth to two doctrines distinguished only by the letter "s".
That influence is huge; if you wanted to locate the moment at which the Enlightenment gave way to the Romantic age, you might well settle on "Don Giovanni".
The Dalai Lama, who is revered by his followers as the 14th reincarnation of the Buddha Avalokiteshvara, who achieved spiritual enlightenment, gave up his political functions in 2010.
He leans here on the recent work of Jonathan Israel, a British-born professor of modern European history at Princeton, whose influential three-volume rethinking of the Enlightenment gives a central place to Amsterdam's most famous philosopher, Baruch Spinoza.
Islam and the princes Danger: mad professor at work Let them come to Bombay ReprintsIn Mr Israel's opinion, the Radicals offered the only true Enlightenment, giving us democracy, equality, individual liberty and secular morality.
Particularly in Great Britain during the late 18th and early 19th centuries, the Scottish Enlightenment gave rise to a new set of ideas about property that were influenced greatly by the English utilitarian political philosopher Jeremy Bentham.
The critic Astra Taylor, in "The People's Platform: Taking Back Power and Culture in the Digital Age," argues that Adorno and Max Horkheimer, in their 1944 book "Dialectic of Enlightenment," gave early warnings about corporations "drowning out democracy in pursuit of profit".
The article cited Auschwitz as an example of how the Enlightenment had "given birth" to totalitarianism.
