The debate is about how to define this fashionable idea, intruding ever more frequently into ordinary conversations, of an “Enlightenment.” Everyone makes use of it as they can, but everyone also understands it somewhat differently. It started with a man named Johann Friedrich Zöllner, who, in one of his articles, defending the institution of church marriage, posed in a footnote the question: “Was ist Aufklärung?” This unexpectedly invited a flood of responses, including from famous people. Moses Mendelssohn was the first to respond to it, and with time an article on enlightenment was
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