The Enlightenment shaped modernity. Western values of representative democracy and basic human rights, gender and racial equality, individual liberty, and freedom of expression and the press, form an interlocking system that derives directly from the Enlightenment's philosophical revolution. This fact 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. He demonstrates that the Enlightenment was an essentially revolutionary process, driven by philosophical debate. From 1789, its 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 who took the lead in the French National assembly, the Paris commune, or the editing of the Parisian revolutionary journals, they nonetheless forged 'la philosophie moderne' -- in effect Radical Enlightenment ideas -- into a world-transforming ideology that had a lasting impact in Latin America and eastern Europe as well as France, Italy, Germany, and the Low Countries. Whilst all French revolutionary journals clearly stated 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'.
By:
Jonathan Israel (Professor of Modern History Institute for Advanced Study Princeton)
Imprint: Oxford University Press
Country of Publication: United Kingdom
Dimensions:
Height: 233mm,
Width: 166mm,
Spine: 57mm
Weight: 1.602kg
ISBN: 9780199668090
ISBN 10: 0199668094
Pages: 1088
Publication Date: 17 January 2013
Audience:
College/higher education
,
Professional and scholarly
,
A / AS level
,
Further / Higher Education
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Active
"1: Introduction Part 1: The Radical Challenge 2: Nature and Providence: Earthquakes and the Human Condition 3: The Encyclopédie Suppressed (1752-60) 4: Rousseau against the Philosophes 5: Voltaire, Enlightenment, and the European Courts 6: Anti-Philosophes 7: Central Europe: Aufklärung divided Part II: Rationalizing the Ancien Régime 8: Hume, Scepticism, and Moderation 9: Scottish Enlightenment and Man's Progress 10: Enlightened Despotism 11: Aufklärung 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: Aufklärung 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"
<br>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; RadicalEnlightenment; and Enlightenment Contested. <br>
Reviews for Democratic Enlightenment: Philosophy, Revolution, and Human Rights 1750-1790
`Review from previous edition 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 `a brave and ambitious historian...Israel has found a way of dramatising the debates and attitudes which eventually lay the foundations for something we can call modernity.' BBC History Magazine `Israelâs industry and immense erudition are admirable. He cites or refers to thousands of original sources in many languages and stemming from various cultural heritages, many of them hitherto unknown to or seldom used by scholars of the Enlightenment.' Joseph Mali, The European Legacy
