Synopses & Reviews
That the Enlightenment shaped modernity is uncontested. Yet remarkably few historians or philosophers have attempted to trace the process of ideas from the political and social turmoil of the late eighteenth century to the present day. This is precisely what Jonathan Israel now does.
In Democratic Enlightenment, Israel demonstrates that the Enlightenment was an essentially revolutionary process, driven by philosophical debate. The American Revolution and its concerns certainly acted as a major factor in the intellectual ferment that shaped the wider upheaval that followed, but the radical philosophes were no less critical than enthusiastic about the American model. From 1789, the General Revolution's impetus came from a small group of philosophe-revolutionnaires, men such as Mirabeau, Sieyes, Condorcet, Volney, Roederer, and Brissot. Not aligned to any of the social groups represented in the French National assembly, they nonetheless forged "la philosophie moderne"--in effect Radical Enlightenment ideas--into a world-transforming ideology that had a lasting impact in Latin America, Canada and eastern Europe as well as France, Italy, Germany, and the Low Countries. In addition, Israel argues that while all French revolutionary journals powerfully affirmed that la philosophie moderne was the main cause of the French Revolution, the main stream of historical thought has failed to grasp what this implies. Israel sets the record straight, demonstrating the true nature of the engine that drove the Revolution, and the intimate links between the radical wing of the Enlightenment and the anti-Robespierriste "Revolution of reason."
Acclaim for earlier volumes in the trilogy:
"His vast--and vastly impressive--book sets out to redefine the intellectual landscape of early modern Europe. Magnificent and magisterialwill undoubtedly be one of the truly great historical works of the decade." -- Sunday Telegraph
"The scholarship is breathtaking. Israel has read everything, absorbed every nuance, followed up every byway." -- New Statesman
"An enormously impressive piece of scholarship. The breadth and depth of the author's reading are breathtaking and Enlightenment Contested is set to become the definitive work for philosophers as well as historians on this extraordinary period." -- Tribune
Review
"A magisterial study of the immediate and middle-range intellectual underpinnings of the French and subsequent democratic revolutions...this trilogy is by far the most comprehensive and best study of the late 18th-century attitudinal changes that shaped modern thought and action...No serious work equals it in span...or depth...this is an essential book for all who are studying the Enlightenment." -- Library Journal
"Israel has turned up evidence of the Radical Enlightenment's influence in surprising places, and that labor alone should ensure that this book finds a place on every specialist's shelf." -- New York Times Book Review
About the Author
Jonathan Israel is Professor of Modern History at the Institute for Advance Study, Princeton. He is a Fellow of the British Academy and corresponding fellow of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Sciences. His previous books include
The Dutch Republic: Its Rise, Greatness and Fall, 1477-1806, Radical Enlightenment: Philosophy and the Making of Modernity 1650-1750, and
Enlightenment Contested: Philosophy, Modernity, and the Emancipation of Man 1670-1752.
Table of Contents
1. Introduction
Part 1: The Radical Challenge
2. Nature and Providence: Earthquakes and the Human Condition
3. The Encyclopedie Suppressed (1752-60)
4. Rousseau against the Philosophes
5. Voltaire, Enlightenment and the European Courts
6. Anti-Philosophes
7. Central Europe: Aufklarung divided
Part II: Rationalizing the Ancien Regime
8. Hume, Scepticism, and Moderation
9. Scottish Enlightenment and Man's Progress
10. Enlightened Despotism
11. Aufklarung and the Fracturing of German Protestant Culture
12. Catholic Enlightenment: the Papacy's Retreat
13. Society and the Rise of the Italian revolutionary Enlightenment
14. Spain and the Challenge of Reform
Part III: Europe and the Re-Making of the World
15. The Histoire Philosophique, or Colonialism Overturned
16. The American Revolution
17. Europe and the Amerindians
18. Philosophy and Revolt in Ibero-America (1765-92)
19. Commercial Despotism: Dutch Colonialism in Asia
20. China, Japan, and the West
21. India and the Two Enlightenments
22. Russia's Greeks, Poles, and Serfs
Part IV: Spinoza Controversies in the Later Enlightenment
23. Rousseau, Spinoza and the 'General Will'
24. Radical Break-Through
25. The Pantheismusstreit (1780-87)
26. Kant and the Radical Challenge
27. Goethe, Schiller and the new "Dutch Revolt against Spain"
Part V: Revolution
28. 1788-9: the "General Revolution" begins
29. The Diffusion
30. 'Philosophy' as the Maker of Revolutions
31. Aufklarung and the Secret Societies (1776-92)
32. Small State Revolution in the 1780s
33. The Dutch Democratic Revolution of the 1780s
34. The French Revolution: from 'Philosophy' to Basic Human Rights (1788-90)
35. Epilogue: 1789 as an Intellectual Revolution