Dialectics of enlightenment or dialectic of enlightening

Abstract

In this article problem of the Enlightenment is analyzed through the contest among the historical-descriptive and the philosophical-normative approach to the Enlightenment, that has essentially practical-polemical sense in author’s opinion. The author reconstructs this contest in the following way. Until the half of 20th century, the philosophical-normative concept of the Enlightenment, which was constructed by critics and enemies of the Enlightenment under the decisive influence of Hegel’s philosophy, was dominate. Since the Enlightenment is essentially disqualified by this approach, an attempt of its defense is directed at the historical study of the Enlightenment intending to be shown that the philosophical normative conception of the Enlightenment is construct of its critics which don’t correspond to historical facts. The author emphasizes that a rejection of the philosophical-normative approach, which reconstruct the Enlightenment through a certain synthetic principle, and an examination of the Enlightenment as historical phenomenon, result in a destruction of the very concept of the Enlightenment and a risk of the loss of meaning. The author considers that the failure of the historical-descriptive approach to the Enlightenment is evident because it reaffirms a constructivistic approach, that was the fundamental objection to the philosophical-normative approach. In the concluding part of the article, the author proposes a solution of the conceptual problem of the Enlightenment through the conceptual distinguishing of the Enlightenment, as a historical phenomenon, and enlightenment, as a intellectual activity and process. In that case, the Enlightenment would represent only a part of the more comprehensive problem of enlightenment in that the Enlightenment’s and the Counter-Enlightenment’s conceptions of enlightenment are moments no more in the "dialectic of the Enlightenment", but in the "dialectic of enlightenment".