Tell the story of the Enlightenment. Reflections on the historiography of philosophy and its political use

Abstract

This article aims to consider how the history of philosophy is being made, mainly how the Enlightenment’s history is being told. To this end, it analyses a recent book by Antony Pagden to clarify a practice that seems to be frequent in the historiography of this cultural and philosophical movement of the 18th century: that of its political use. The work is divided into two parts: first, there is an academic critique, concentrating on how Pagden constructs his story of the Enlightenment. Then, a political exegesis is carried out to clarify what purposes the author seems to have pursued at the time of publication of his work. In the conclusion, finally, a series of considerations of a metaphilosophical nature are made.