Get Free Shipping on orders over $79
The Enlightenment : A Genealogy - Dan Edelstein
eTextbook alternate format product

Instant online reading.
Don't wait for delivery!

Go digital and save!

The Enlightenment

A Genealogy

By: Dan Edelstein

Paperback | 15 December 2010 | Edition Number 1

At a Glance

Paperback


$89.99

or 4 interest-free payments of $22.50 with

 or 

Ships in 10 to 15 business days

What was the Enlightenment? Though many scholars have attempted to solve this riddle, none has made as much use of contemporary answers as Dan Edelstein does here. In seeking to recover where, when, and how the concept of “the Enlightenment” first emerged, Edelstein departs from genealogies that trace it back to political and philosophical developments in England and the Dutch Republic. According to Edelstein, by the 1720s scholars and authors in France were already employing a constellation of terms—such as l’esprit philosophique—to describe what we would today call the Enlightenment. But Edelstein argues that it was within the French Academies, and in the context of the Quarrel of the Ancients and the Moderns, that the key definition, concepts, and historical narratives of the Enlightenment were crafted.

A necessary corrective to many of our contemporary ideas about the Enlightenment, Edelstein’s book turns conventional thinking about the period on its head. Concise, clear, and contrarian, The Enlightenment will be welcomed by all teachers and students of the period.

Industry Reviews
"In this crisply written and remarkably wide-ranging and learned book, Dan Edelstein encourages us to rethink our conventional understanding of the Enlightenment and its origins. Teeming with intellectual vitality, this short book returns to readers a bounty of insight and creative thought." - J. B. Shank, author of The Newton Wars and the Beginning of the French Enlightenment"

More in History

Looking from the North : Australian history from the top down - Henry Reynolds
The Town Like No Other : A Story of Broken Hill - Robert McLean

RRP $32.99

$28.75

13%
OFF
The Shortest History of Innovation - Andrew Leigh
Where It All Went Wrong : The case against John Howard - Amy Remeikis
On Pedantry : A Cultural History of the Know-it-All - Arnoud S. Q. Visser
Archiving Gaza in the Present : Memory, Culture and Erasure - Dina Matar
Jack White Complete Lyrics and Selected Writing - Jack White
The Menzies Legacy : Ideals, change, procession, 1960s and beyond - Zachary Gorman
Keeper of Lost Children - Sadeqa Johnson

RRP $34.99

$28.75

18%
OFF
A Short History of Ancient Rome - Pascal Hughes

RRP $49.99

$38.75

22%
OFF
The Zorg : A Tale of Greed, Murder and the Abolition of Slavery - Siddharth Kara
Japanese Haiku for Cat Lovers - William Scott Wilson

RRP $29.99

$26.75

11%
OFF
Convicts, Crimes and Tragic Times : Dark Days of Old Australia - Tony Matthews
A World Appears : A Journey Into Consciousness - Michael Pollan

RRP $39.99

$31.75

21%
OFF
The Eagle and the Hart : The Tragedy of Richard II and Henry IV - Helen Castor
All or Nothing : How Trump Recaptured America - Michael Wolff

RRP $24.99

$21.75

13%
OFF
Half of a Yellow Sun - Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

RRP $22.99

$20.75

10%
OFF
The North Sea : Along the Edge of Britain - Alistair Moffat

RRP $45.00

$34.75

23%
OFF