Lichtfunken

Light as a metaphor for knowledge and understanding can be found in ancient Greek philosophy. In his famous Allegory of the Cave, the Athenian philosopher Plato (428-348 BCE) described the journey from an underground cave up to the light as an act of enlightenment. In the Age of Enlightenment, this light of reason was meant to illuminate the path to modernity, which stood in opposition to the Middle Ages, perceived as an era of dark superstition. Before the term “Aufklärung” became common in the German language, the English word “to enlighten” was used, meaning to create understanding and inform about a matter in an illuminating way. Other European languages directly adopted the metaphor of light and illumination to designate this intellectual epoch: “les lumières, enlightenment, oświecenie.” The Enlighteners were perceived as “dealers of light” who opposed the trade in darkness, as expressed by the scholar Georg Christoph Lichtenberg (1742–1799).