One more before I enjoy some ☀️ Language— it’s evolution & learning how people use words is my passion. So I enjoyed reading the essay, “Essay, Enlightenment, Revolution” by Anahid Netsessian this morning.

“The latter-day fortunes of this shift are especially vivid in the writing of Karl Marx, who represents not the end but rather the apex of the Enlightenment *essay* and its formal as well as political development.

What was the Enlightenment? In the most benign terms, it was a period of political and cultural liberalization in Western Europe lasting roughly from the late seventeenth to the end of the eighteenth century. As the authority and prestige of the natural sciences grew, that of religious institutions waned. Political systems founded on the old feudal arrangement began to atrophy, and a new set of values emerged to match this increasingly secular world order. Such values, at least for historians who view them through a rose-colored lens, emphasized personal autonomy over group identity, free thinking over dogma and fanaticism, and a belief that the state should not interfere in the private lives of its subjects.”