This article opens a cycle of articles devoted to the ontological aspects of the phenomenon of Enlightenment. The Enlightenment is treated as an internal mechanism of civilization designed to manipulate being (establishment in being – deprivation or attenuation of being). Comparing autochthonous and borrowed Enlightenments, the author tries to trace some patterns of interactions of ontologizing mechanisms of the enlightenmental type and to compare them with the similar mechanisms of different types. In the first article the author analyses the ideas (...) of autochthonous European Enlightenment from Antiquity to Post-Modern. (shrink)