Related to this:

A number of years ago I came up with a parallel discovery when someone quite innocently warned me against falling into "obscurantism" when undertaking a paper. The term "obscurantism" troubled me, so I looked it up and came up with a range of expressions, which, mutatis mutandis, are close to "dark ages." This is what I found:

According to the OED, the following is given (in part) for "Obscurantism:"

"Opposition to inquiry or enlightenment."
Usages: 1834 THOMPSON:"When the clergy complain...of the little influence they possess...the hereditary obscurantism of their caste is... at once the reason and the defence."

1860 MARSH :Continental liberty is threatened ...now by Muscovite barbarism, and now by pontifical obscurantism."

1883 AMERICAN VII: A victory of obscurantism and ignorance over enlightenment and progress.

And its Definition of "Obscurantist:"

One who opposes the progress of intellectual enlightenment.
Usage: 1884. G. SMITH 19TH CENT: "A priesthood as absolute and as obscurantist as the druids."

It is a French word originally so I looked it up in its French form too:

Hachet gives the following:

obscurantisme n. m. Hostilité systématique au progrès de la civilisation, des "lumières".

"Lumières" is given as:

3. Les lumières: la connaissance rationnelle (par oppos. À l'obscurantisme). || Le siècle des Lumières: le XVIIIe s., entre 1715 et 1789, marqué en France par l'Encyclopédie*, et qui se caractérise par le rejet de l'autorité et du fanatisme, au nom du progrès et de la raison.

A search on the Web of the French form, "obscurantisme," produced many definitions such as:

Obscurantisme:

Hostilité systématique au progrès de la civilisation. Opposition systématique et refus d'étudier de nouvelles evidences susceptibles de remettre en cause les théories dominantes.

I don't translate the French because the English cognates are clear.

This whole area is dealt with at length and repeatedly in the History of Political Ideas, particularly the last three volumes, so it would be a mistake to single out any one volume and say you will find what you want in this one. One can perhaps say that the original purpose of HPI was to restore the losses brought about by the "lumières" and their successors, but EV gave it up as a project— in part because he felt that competent scholarship was now resurgent so his work would be redundant and eventually fragile.

All of this is hardly merely a matter of mere historical curiosity. Not so long ago the Wall Street Journal devoted a long piece of reportage, analytically feeble but anecdotally rich, on how "intelligent design" is trying to make inroads into the university campus, funded by the dark power of the Templeton Fund, and bravely resisted by administrators and faculty committees everywhere [Not that I endorse current formulations of "intelligent design"].

So we must always silently ask:

Quid tenebras timetis?

[What is the darkness that you fear? (Ovid)]        

Fritz Wagner is a retired lawyer living in Columbus, Ohio. He was the founder of the evforum in 2000 and is the executive editor of  VoegelinView.