Abstract
In the wake of World War II, intellectuals and historians whose faith in progress had been shaken looked to the eighteenth century as the source of modernity’s ills. From the Holocaust, to Soviet totalitarianism, to the bland conformity of mass society in 1950s America, the Enlightenment was viewed as the cradle of some of the twentieth century’s most undesirable qualities. Beginning in the interwar period, historians began to discuss what the Enlightenment symbolized; from debates on its scope, influence, and present-day relevance, there was a concerted effort even before World War Two to identify the philosophical movements of the eighteenth century which came to shape the modern world. Yet after World War II and during the early years of the Cold War, historians sought to define the West’s intellectual heritage to distinguish it from its ideological opponent, the Soviet Union. And it is here that the majority of Enlightenment historiography begins. For these reasons, I will examine the ways in which scholars instrumentalized the Enlightenment for particular ends, be they political, moral, or religious. Through the selective uses of sources, competing interpretations of the Enlightenment’s influence and denunciations of its fundamental challenges to revealed religion were common, particularly among conservative figures. I hope to analyze the ways in which these scholars contributed to the era’s creation as an historical concept.
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