Enlightenment Contested Philosophy, Modernity, and the Emancipation of Man 1670-1752

by Israel, Jonathan I.

• ISBN13: 9780199541522
• ISBN10: 0199541523
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2009-01-15
• Publisher: Oxford University Press

Summary

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.

Author Biography

Jonathan Israel is Professor of Modern European History, Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton.

Table of Contents

Introductory

Early Enlightenment, Revolution, and the Modern Age

Philosophy and the Making of Modernity

The Crisis of Religious Authority

Faith and Reason: Bayle versus the Rationaux

Demolishing Priesthood, Ancient and Modern

Socinianism and the Social, Psychological, and Cultural Roots of Enlightenment

Locke, Bayle, and Spinoza: A Contest of Three Toleration Doctrines

Germany and the Baltic: Enlightenment, Society, and the Universities

Newtonianism and Anti-Newtonianism in the Early Enlightenment: Science, Philosophy, and Religion

Political Emancipation

Anit-Hobbesianism and the Making of 'Modernity'

The Origins of Modern Democratic Republicanism

Bayle, Boulainvilliers, Montesquieu: Secular Monarchy versus the Aristocratic Republic

'Enlightened Despotism': Autocracy, Faith, and Enlightenment in Eastern and South-Eastern Europe 1689-1755

Popular Sovereignty, Resistance, and the 'Right to Revolution'

Anglomania, anglicisme, and the 'British Model'

The Triumph of the 'Moderate Enlightenment' in the United Provinces

Intellectual Emancipation

The Overthrow of Humanist Criticism

The Recovery of Greek Thought

The Rise of 'History of Philosophy'

From 'History of Philosophy' to Histoire de l'Esprit humain

Italy, the Two Enlightenments, and Vico's 'New Science'

The Party of Humanity

The Problem of Equality

Sex, Marriage, and the Equality of Women

Race, Radical Thought, and the Advent of Anti-Colonialism

Rethinking Islam: Philosophy and the 'Other'

Spinoza, Confucius, and Classical Chinese Philosophy

Is Religion Requisite for a Well-Ordered Society?

Radical Philosophes

The French Enlightenment prior to Voltaire's Lettres Philosophiques (1734)

Men, Animals, Fossils: French Hylozoic materialisme before Diderot

Realigning of the parti philosophique: Voltair, Voltairemanie, antivoltairianisme 1733-1747

From Voltaire to Diderot

The 'Unvirtuous Atheist'

The parti philosophique Embraces the Radical Enlightenment 1747-1752

The 'War of the Encyclopedie: The First Stage 1745-1752

Postscript

Bibliography

Index

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