/lit/ - Literature

>>19535330
all of the enlightenment intellectuals were coping hard

>The absolutistic state as a guardian of peace and order fulfilled a functional role. However, as peace was gradually normalised, the sovereign lost its legitimacy. The indispensible nature of the state became disposable. It even went further, because “protection by the state was replaced by protection from the state”.

>The personal sphere increased and changed character. Innocence disappeared. It could be private and involve the shaping of the individual or it could be collective. It was moral and moralising. Morals – the critical moral, the moral critique – came to consider itself superior to the explicitly morally neutral state. Morality and critique became the art that taught people that princes and states are disposable – it became a challenging art and competing politicum.

>The secret was the location of morals. It was here that new ideas regarding freedoms and rights developed: “in his private world man was free; there alone was he human.” And: “Freedom in secret became the secret of freedom.” The hidden was the essence of the existence for the Illuminati and Freemasons. The Freemasons expressed the social interests of the new bourgeois, but more importantly they expressed the ideas of the enlightenment. The Masonic Lodge expressed a moral verdict of the sovereign prince both through its critique and its mere existence; in contrast, the prince saw a reduction in his area of control and appeared despotic.

>>18188022
this

read Koselleck