Personalistic overtones in the realization of Enlightenment ideas (based on the history of the Illuminati Order)

Abstract

The article considers one of the lines of understanding and realization of Enlightenment ideas, due to the peculiarities of the New European personality. A personality is an individual acting independently and therefore forced to build a world and private self-image that partially does not coincide with the generally accepted ones. Kant associates these features precisely with Enlightenment, with the competence to use one's mind without guidance from someone else. Two social institutions are considered, the young nation-state and the Catholic Church, striving to put the individual, Society and communities under their control and management. The author suggests that society and communities were created in response to the pressure and expansion of these social institutions. The similarities and differences of social institutions and communities represented by unions and orders are analyzed. The relations between these three subjects and social forces (institutions of church and state, Society and communities) were quite tense, there was a struggle between them, the result of which, on the one hand, was the demarcation and separation of zones of influence, on the other hand, the suppression of the enemy, which often turned out to be Society, communities and the individual. In this context, according to the author, a conspiracy discourse is emerging, which the closer to our time, the more it is used against communities and individuals. This struggle within the institutions of the state and the church, as well as in art, is illustrated by the example of the history of the Illuminati. The activities of the Illuminati and other Orders (communities) were directed by a New European personality who, as Kant wrote, aspired to adulthood, which was in contradiction with the desire of the state and the Catholic Church to direct and control the mind and actions of a person. The author believes that the confrontation of the individual, Society and communities with the state and its institutions persists in our time. Of course, we are talking about a certain type of personality, so to speak, Kantian, and not any; there are individuals and communities that support the state.