ABSTRACT
A fundamental principle of the Enlightenment and of subsequent “Western” culture is the comprehensive re-evaluation of tradition, and especially of religious assumptions. Philosophers and intellectuals led the way in an effort to replace the authority of the church with the authority of reason. In freeing itself from the bonds of the irrational, the traditional and the blind obedience required by ecclesiastical authorities, the Western world saw itself as reaching intellectual maturity – emancipating itself from its self-imposed state of tutelage, as Kant put it.
