Reassessing the Radical Enlightenment

"""The appearance of this volume is to be welcomed because it brings together a group of experts in order to offer an overview of the current state of the debate and to look in detail at areas of contention. Collections of essays are notoriously something of a curate’s egg, but Steffen Ducheyne is to be congratulated for assembling a distinguished and interdisciplinary team of historians and philosophers and, more importantly, for persuading them to keep to their brief. (...) this volume will, at least, give both professional scholars and students a valuable introduction to a complex and contentious field."" - Julian Swann, Birkbeck College, University of London ""(...) it is an extremely important addition to any historical library, whether public or private. Its strength is that it evenhandedly presents numerous issues that truly engage the conceptualization of the Enlightenment, and it is unafraid of presenting views that conflict—sometimes starkly—with the field’s dominant historian. It is not, however, an introduction to the Enlightenment or even to the Radical Enlightenment. It is a rich and nuanced work aimed at students of the Enlightenment already familiar with fundamental interpretive and historiographical issues."" - John D. Eigenauer, Professor of Philosophy, Taft College ""This highly-readable, intelligently assembled collection of essays represents a significant, original, inspiring contribution to the study of the Enlightenment. This volume is indeed likely to become a standard book for all those interested in the Radical Enlightenment."" - Diego Lucci, American University in Bulgaria ""Ducheyne has put together a volume which achieves his aim of providing an introduction to the ‘Radical Enlightenment’ and the debates surrounding it. But this collection is much more than just a textbook on a historiographical debate- there is plenty here to interest the experts as well. The question of what constitutes the radicalism of the Enlightenment is not resolved, but there is much here to fuel discussion. That, to my mind, is a strength of the volume."" - Sarah Hutton, University of York""...there can be no question that this companion volume accomplishes its twin aims: “to provisionally provide a (partial) synthesis of the state of the art and, second, to push forward research on the Radical Enlightenment by a series of new studies” (2). This edited volume is the best distillation presently available of work pertaining to the Radical Enlightenment for new researchers, graduate students preparing for qualifying examinations, and more seasoned researchers alike. Indeed, individual chapters could be useful for advanced undergraduates as well."" -Jeffrey D. Burson, Georgia Southern University"