The tradition of uniting wisdom and light is very old. The metaphors that link both in Indo-European languages are so frequent, so integrated that they are barely consciously perceived. But not only in them, but also in ours, it has the same relationship: we call light the smart person and we talk about light intelligence. Religion has often said that the path of knowledge is bright (trying to dilute the opposition between reason and faith), let us remember the motto Ego sum lux mundi or the doctrine of the enlightenment of Augustine of Hipona. (May the goddesses leave us with bright paths, for more than light paths that go naturally towards the paradois were artificially illuminated paths for hell.)

In ancient times, wisdom was often understood as knowledge of the most luminous objects. Plato played with light and shadow in the famous cave myth, imagining that the path to wisdom, through education, was a liberation from the shadow. Philosopher, philosopher and theologian from the 6th century, accused Aristotle of having made a game of words between sophia (wisdom) and sápheia (clarity), because the former clarified all things. Today for us, to see clearly is to understand well and to be in the dark lost in ignorance.

The same metaphor hides behind the view of the Middle Ages as a dark time. Although it has been fashionable for a long time to repeat that it was not for so long, that is to say, that dark time – you do not know – that we have been painted and that we have represented that it was not the Middle Ages (this time the risk is at the other end: It was not the Middle Ages imagining themselves as something, as a paradise of equality and fraternity). In spite of everything, after the Middle Ages came the Renaissance, resurrecting light and bringing enlightenment to the top, to the Enlightenment, also called “Age of Lights”, for considering that reason came in the hand of the candle, illuminating the darkness caused by blind and uncritical faith.

German Romanticism – radical contemporary reactions against the Enlightenment and, in most authors, very reactionary – wanted to show that the lights give us away (“A lot of light this century!”, Herder, one of the fathers of Romanticism, shouted. Summer midday light doesn't let you see anything, it burns everything and plans. Things appear much more profiled with oblique light to darken. In dark light, everything is separated and better perceived. At a time of excess light, when there is no shadow, it doesn't look good.

Herder's cry against glare is in Kanten Sapere! has often been understood as contrary to the call (call to personal understanding). I think they are complementary, but this time we are going to avoid that debate.

The truth is that there are clear, i.e. ingenious, quick thinkers who focus on what others do not see and point the shadows as such (I said to the thinker, I could tell the store, the cleaner, the professor or the politics). But there are also enlightened people who think they act under the influence of almost supernatural power, believing that they own the truth. Predictors convinced that things are more capable of knowing than others. Light, simple thinkers illuminated. How do they differ? Is the limit between the two clear and concrete? In both cases, light, the metaphor of knowledge. But has it never happened that the supposedly luminous ones do not stop in time and become listeners? I would say that this has been seen more than once (yes, we all have one in our head! ). May the goddesses not allow clarity to give us.