Page History

...

In responding to the question about the normative meaning of the Enlightenment, I say: "[T]he Enlightenment is to be understood normatively as the consistent affirmation of the unique authority of human reason over all other putative authorities" (322). And consistently with this, I go on to speak repeatedly of "the unique authority of human reason over all other supposed authorities," "reason's unique authority," "the unique authority of reason even in religion," and so on (324, 326, 327). The problem with this, of course, is that it implies that reason is simply an authority, even if a unique authority, among all other (putative, or supposed) authorities, instead of being the implicit primal authorizing source of authority —more authority—more exactly, the noetic, as distinct from the ontic, implicit authorizing source. It is in its being just this, indeed, that the uniqueness claimed for reason's authoritativeness consists. It is not a unique authority, even the highest such authority; it is uniquely authoritative.

...