Abstract
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg was a critical Aufklärer, resolutely rationalist, but aware that educating people is not enough to make them better and wiser. In the eyes of Jacques Bouveresse, for whom he is one of his favorite references, he embodies this "restless Aufklärung ", already acutely aware of its limits, of the need, for example, to do justice to feeling and affectivity". Thus conceived - far from any naive optimism about the powers of reason - the Enlightenment consists, in Lichtenberg's words, "properly speaking, in exact concepts of our essential needs "(Sudelbücher, J 246).
