Credere aude Mystifying Enlightenment

By analyzing the Kantian response to the query What is Enlightenment?, esotericism, and, more specifically, Freemasonry as a spiritual search, this study offers a re-interpretation of the eighteenth century, one in which Enlightenment, as the predominance of rationalism, and Illuminisme are viewed as complementary rather than antithetical. By focusing on the history and nature of continental Freemasonry and the Masonic affiliation of two French authors as expressed in their work--Louis-Claude de Saint-Martin and Dominique Vivant Denon--this study addresses issues of importance today. Links between material possessions, human self-realization, and regeneration, which were exploited by these writers, call for a new look at the esoteric origins of and component in psychoanalysis, spirituality, sexuality, and power, and, ultimately, cause us to view our modern society as, in part, the inheritor of a spiritual legacy from the eighteenth century