pseudoenlightenment

English

Etymology

From pseudo- +‎ enlightenment.

Noun

pseudoenlightenment (countable and uncountable, plural pseudoenlightenments)

1. False enlightenment.
   • 1984, Hal Himmelstein, Television Myth and the American Mind, New York, N.Y. […]: Praeger Publishers, →ISBN, page 114:

     [T]he social construct of the good life is manifest in these works—an urban American vision framed by the achievements of commerce and of the new pluralist pseudoenlightenment of equal opportunity.

   • 1991, Thomas Jackson Rice, “The Geometry of Meaning in Dubliners: A Euclidian Approach”, in Style, volume 25, number 1, DeKalb, I.L.: Northern Illinois University, →ISSN, →OCLC, page 397:

     His culminating vision is a pseudoenlightenment, contaminated by his unaltered egoism: "Gazing up into the darkness I saw myself as a creature driven and derided by vanity" (35; emphasis mine).

   • 2023 April 28, Giri Nathan, “Book Review: 'Chain-Gang All-Stars,' by Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah”, in The New York Times‎^[1], New York, N.Y.: The New York Times Company, →ISSN, →OCLC, archived from the original on 2023-04-28:

     One such audience member, catching a ray of pseudoenlightenment, realizes that watching a woman bash people to death for three years has turned him into "a feminist."