Annotation
The Enlightenment, usually called the Age of Reason, can be characterized as a period in which reason aspires to its own autonomy, while declaring the universality of its laws. This vision of Enlightenment has been rightly criticized by Adorno and Horkheimer who demonstrate its consequences in their "Dialectic of Enlightenment".
There is, however, also the other side of Enlightenment that shows the heteronomy of reason and the contingency of its laws. A typical representative of this other side of Enlightenment is Charles Louis de Secondat, baron de Montesquieu.
In "The Spirit of the Laws", Montesquieu denounces the tyranny of reason that enforces its laws regardless of local conditions of life, and in "Persian Letters" he takes the heteronomy of reason and contingency of its laws as a basis for his narrative in which he describes the impressions and experiences of the Persian travelers in Europe. This literary strategy makes it possible to view ones’ own world, society and culture from outside, and what is interesting for us is precisely the role and character of this outside.
We shall therefore examine it not only in "Persian Letters", but also in Voltaire’s "Micromegas", "Letters of Amabed" and others texts.