The Philosophy of the Enlightenment (1932)

The present book aims to be more and less than a monograph on the philosophy of the Enlightenment.

It is above all because of him [Lessing] the the century of the Enlightenment, to a very great extent dominated by its gift of criticism, did not fall prey to the merely negative critical function--that it was able to reconvert criticism to creative activity and shape it and use it as an indispensable instrument of life and of the constant renewal of the spirit.