“For the traditionalists the Enlightenment boiled down to a fatal misunderstanding. All philosophes had been wrong about the nature and also, if one could put it that way, about the sex of prejudice. They had mistaken an earth mother who sustained and inspired her children for a bogeyman of a father. Then, seeking to overthrow this father, they had in reality done away with the mother-figure.”

— Alain Finkielkraut

Source: The Undoing of Thought (1988), p. 26.

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

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Alain Finkielkraut 4

French essayist, born 1949 1949

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