Wiktionary

enlightenment

See also: Enlightenment

English edit

Alternative forms edit

Etymology edit

From enlighten +‎ -ment.

Pronunciation edit

  • IPA(key): /ɪnˈlaɪtənmənt/, /ənˈlaɪtənmənt/, /-laɪtmənt/
  • Audio (Southern England)(file)

Noun edit

enlightenment (usually uncountable, plural enlightenments)

  1. An act of enlightening, or the state of being enlightened or instructed.
  2. A concept in spirituality, philosophy and psychology related to achieving clarity of perception, reason and knowledge.
    • 1893, Thomas Huxley, Evolution and Ethics:
      But the man who has attained enlightenment sees that the apparent reality is mere illusion, or, as was said a couple of thousand years later, that there is nothing good nor bad but thinking makes it so.
    • 2014 July 31, Oliver C. Speck, editor, Quentin Tarantino's Django Unchained: The Continuation of Metacinema‎[1], Bloomsbury, →ISBN, page 25:
      Thus Django becomes the carrier of the “public use of one's reason”—the Kantian road to enlightenment given to him by the German “Forty-Eighter” dentist–turned-bounty hunter Dr. “King” Schultz, and represents the fictive, allohistorical beginning of the battle against slavery and racism in the United States.

Synonyms edit

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References edit

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