El espíritu de la ilustración

After the death of God and the dismemberment of utopias, our time seems thrown into uncertainty. Many of the intellectual efforts today are aimed at finding a common framework on which to base acts and speeches. And history shows us that we are not alone in this task. Tzvetan Todorov analyzes in this essay the humanist aspect of the Enlightenment, a period of agitation and debate in which thinkers of the stature of Rousseau, Kant, Voltaire or Diderot stand out; a key moment in the history of thought in the West where an attempt was made to shape -from approaches unrelated to both religious dogmas and inherited and traditional thoughts- issues such as the autonomy of man, the ultimate goal of our species, happiness or the possibility of reaching universal postulates. An intellectual project, a critical thinking effort that provided valuable tools and guidance that laid the foundations for thinking about the problems of our time with the inexcusable premise of not accepting simplistic reasoning or dogmatic truths.