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The hypothesis of a darker side of the Enlightenment suggests that the modernity from which the Enlightenment emerged produced a transcendental and conquering “I” that transformed nature and non-European peoples into entities to be subjugated and dominated. As a result, the thinking developed that the Enlightenment was unable to work for formerly colonised populations. Referring this era back to the racist and patriarchal matrix that forged it also raises a question of epistemic justice; that is to say the rehabilitation of the beings-in-the-world of peoples whose ability to produce knowledge according to the canons of positivist science has been challenged. However, this all-encompassing assessment of the Enlightenment period, seen here as a monolithic block rather than as a proliferation of often contradictory ideas, does not exhaust the significance of the ‘century of philosophy’ for nations still at the margins of history.