Enlightenment Contested

Philosophy, Modernity and the Emancipation of Man 1670-1752

By: Jonathan I. Israel

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Hardcover | 25 November 2006

At a Glance

Hardcover
1024 Pages

Dimensions(cm)
23.39 x 15.6 x 5.23

Hardcover

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Jonathan Israel presents the first major reassessment of the Western Enlightenment for a generation. Continuing the story he began in the best-selling Radical Enlightenment , and now focusing his attention on the first half of the eighteenth century, he returns to the original sources to offer a groundbreaking new perspective on the nature and development of the most important currents in modern thought.

Israel traces many of the core principles of Western modernity to their roots in the social, political, and philosophical ferment of this period: the primacy of reason, democracy, racial equality, feminism, religious toleration, sexual emancipation, and freedom of expression. He emphasizes the dual character of the Enlightenment, and the bitter struggle between on the one hand a generally dominant, anti-democratic mainstream, supporting the monarchy, aristocracy, and ecclesiastical authority, and on the other a largely repressed democratic, republican, and "materialist" radical fringe. He also contends that the supposedly separate French, British, German, Dutch, and Italian enlightenments interacted to such a degree that their study in isolation gives a hopelessly distorted picture.

A work of dazzling and highly accessible scholarship, Enlightenment Contested will be the definitive reference point for historians, philosophers, and anyone engaged with this fascinating period of human development.

Industry Reviews

The core ideas of this book deserve to be widely disseminated and debated. `Review from previous edition Enter Jonathan Israel. His vast - and vastly impressive - book sets out to redefine the intellectual landscape of early modern Europe. The stupendous scale of this book ranges from London to Moscow, Stockholm to Naples, in a virtuoso display of polyglot learning . . . Magnificent and magisterial, Radical Enlightenment will undoubtedly be one of the truly great historical works of the decade.' John Adamson, Sunday Telegraph `There is much to praise in Israel's majestic account of the Enlightenment and his detective work in placing Spinoza at the heart of it.' A.C. Grayling, FT Weekend `The scholarship is breathtaking. Israel has read everything, absorbed every nuance, followed up every byway ... Five years from now, our views of the Enlightenment will have been enormously influenced by Israel.' Peter Watson, New Statesman `Deserves to be widely read because it is an example of ground-breaking vastly well-informed and thoroughly new history' David Horspool, The Guardian

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