Enlightenment

Explanation

The Enlightenment represents the moment when Europe was epistemically severed from theological centrality and began modernity. It is also used as a standard of comparison with the Islamic world, which did not experience a similar break at the same moment.

Referenced by

• The divide between Islamic and European histories
• The Islamic tradition is historically later than the European experience
• The Arab-Islamic Enlightenment was associated with humanism
• The Arab-Islamic Enlightenment was humanist and rational, and preceded the European one
• The Arab Enlightenment preceded the European one
• European modernity and its major rupture
• Human rationality flourished in the tradition and then remained conditioned by openness
• The Enlightenment’s break with theology
• A critique of the image of the Dark Ages
• The dominance of old theology persisted in Islam, while European modernity broke with it