Did the Enlightenment Really Happen? – Kevin Schmiesing

J. C. D. Clark contends that across Europe in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries , “enlightenment was everywhere, but the Enlightenment was nowhere” Clark : The Enlightenment that did not happen is the one that is an actor in history, a discrete and intelligible movement encompassing many people across many national boundaries.

Historians do well to avoid using terms that reify concepts that obscure what actually happened in the past.

David Hume , Clark notes, “did not see himself as part of a movement.” Clark suggests that a thinker of Hume ’s extraordinary abilities might well have inspired a school of followers explicitly acknowledging their debt to him.

The language of the Enlightenment will likely not disappear from our discussions of the past, but those who continue to use it should, thanks to J. C. D. Clark’s learned and forceful critique, do so with more profound awareness of its drawbacks.

Clark is skeptical about the use of concepts in historical method, having justly shown how much mischief they can cause.