Critique of the Enlightenment is almost as old as the Enlightenment itself. Since Enlightenment thinkers promulgated a worldview that undermined traditional values and doctrines, it was inevitable that they would provoke rejoinders and objections from those who felt threatened. Many of the most heralded figures in the Enlightenment engaged in debates with representatives of the ancien régime whose ideas and ideals in politics, religion, aesthetics, and philosophy were suddenly called into question. Indeed, the history of the Enlightenment can be written as a series of conflicts between a new approach to nature and human endeavors, on the one hand, and retrograde and futile attempts to counter this approach, on the other. Reactionary critique, however, is ultimately barren, leading only backward to positions that were already known, and that were surpassed and discarded with the advent of the Enlightenment. Reactions to enlightened propositions from the establishment that felt itself under attack were mired in the dogma and superstitions of a bygone era. Much more interesting and productive was criticism that took issue with aspects of the Enlightenment, but developed a line of thought that would be productive for subsequent centuries. In some instances this sort of anti-Enlightenment critique sought to recognize dimensions of human activity left unilluminated by enlightened thought, thus demonstrating that light has been shed on only a portion of human existence, and that the human being in his entirety has been ignored. Using critique in its Kantian sense, detractors pointed to the limitations inherent in Enlightenment itself. At other times, those engaged in critique have considered themselves continuators of the Enlightenment, employing the very weapons of Enlightenment against it. Indeed, the fact that Enlightenment propagated “Kritik” as a central tenet inevitably encourages intellectuals dissatisfied with a perceived timidity of the Enlightenment or seeking to expand its scope to employ this notion of critique against particular aspects of enlightened thought. Unlike their retrograde and sterile counterparts, these productive critiques of Enlightenment thus partook in a necessary and constructive ambivalence: simultaneously opposing Enlightenment and carrying it further, critics of Enlightenment opened up possibilities and defined new terrain for thought.

A central difficulty in understanding this sort of anti-Enlightenment critique is identifying exactly what is being criticized. It has become increasingly apparent in recent scholarship that the European Enlightenment of the eighteenth century is not a unified movement.