The Old/New Enlightenment: From the Compossible to the Complex

Abstract

There has been considerable debate as of late concerning the need for a new Enlightenment. The “old” Enlightenment was considered inadequate to contemporary challenges, having failed in achieving genuine reform. Arguments for and against a “new” Enlightenment have come from a range of disciplines: the history of ideas, political science, philosophy, socio‐economic history, and literary studies. The cause for a perceived need for a new approach to Enlightenment concepts is multivalent. Most immediate is the radical questioning of the value of the humanities in general and literature in particular, the corporatization of higher education, a misreading of the historical epoch itself, and a shift to right‐wing ideologies in Western societies. This essay reviews reasons behind the perceived need for a reevaluation, but argues that only reclamation of its essential values is necessary. The guiding concepts here are Leibniz's concept of compossibility and the recognition of motion as integral to everything.