Includes bibliographical references (pages 953-1029) and index.
Contents:
1. Introduction. Defining the enlightenment ; Interpreting the enlightenment : the argument ; Social context, cultural process, ideas -- Part I : the radical challenge. 2. Nature and providence : earthquakes and the human condition. (The great enlightenment earthquake controversy (1750-1757) ; Philosophy and interpreting disaster) ; 3. The Encyclopedie suppressed (1752-1760). (Fighting 'la philosophie moderne' ; Diderot loses his contributors ; The 'war' of the Encyclopedie after 1759) ; 4. Rousseau against the philosophes. (Breaking with the Encyclopedistes ; Virtue restored ; Deism and the roots of political radicalism) ; 5. Voltaire, enlightenment, and the European courts. (Moderate enlightenment dominant? ; Regrouping at Cleves ; A faltering mainstream) ; 4. Anti-philosophes. (Anti-philosophie as a cultural force ; Catholic enlightenment against radical thought ; Philosophy, religion, and the social order ; Anti-philosophie versus Spinoza and Bayle) ' 7. Central Europe : Aufklärung divided. (The legacy of Leibniz and Wolff ; Berlin and its Royal Academy ; Kant : searching for the middle passage ; Reimarus : erosion from the centre) -- Part II : Rationalizing the ancien régime. 8. Hume, scepticism, and moderation. (Hume's enlightenment ; Hume, aristocracy, and the British empire) ; 9. Scottish Enlightenment and man's 'progress.' (Smith, Ferguson, and civil society ; Kames, race, and providence ; Reid and 'common sense') ; 10. Enlightened despotism. (Radical enlightenment against 'enlightened despotism' ; The German small states ; Joseph II, 'Josephism', and the Austrian monarchy ; Music, literature, and the fine arts) ' 11. Aufklärung and the fracturing of German Protestant culture. (Deism besieged ; Bahrdt and freedom of expression ; Lessing and the Fragmentenstreit) ; 12. Catholic enlightenment : the papacy's retreat. (Moderate versus radical enlightenment in Italy ; Beccaria and legal reform) ; 13. Society and the rise of the Italian revolutionary enlightenment. (The 'Reform of Italy' controversy ; Reforming Austrian Milan ; Deprivation, revolution, and the 'two Sicilies') ; 14. Spain and the challenge of reform. (Remaking a transatlantic empire ; The Jesuits and Carlos III's church policy ; The Olavide Affair ; Spain and the radical challenge) -- Part III : Europe and the remaking of the world. 15. The Histoire philosophique, or colonialism overturned. (The book that made a world 'revolution' ; Philosophy and the Indies ; Transatlantic impact ; The Historie philosophique as a project of world revolution) ; 16. The American revolution. (Enlightenment and the birth of the United States ; Counter-enlightenment and modernity ; Princeton, Harvard, Yale, and Columbia ; Undemocratic states ; An inconclusive legacy) ; 17. Europe and the Amerindians. (Aztecs and Incas reconfigured ; Amerindians : saved, or to be saved? ; The Tupac Amaru Rebellion) ; 18. Philosophy and revolt in Ibero-America (1765-1792). (The Creole-Peninsular rift ; Bourbon enlightenment in the Americas ; Radical enlightenment diffused across the Atlantic ; The American Revolution and the Spanish American Revolution (1780-1809) ; Philosophy and self-emancipation from Spain) ; 19. Commercial despotism : Dutch colonialism in Asia. (An Asian empire ; The enlightenment radiating from Batavia) ; 20. China, Japan, and the West. (Sinophilia in the later enlightenment ; Chinese society : two incompatible radical accounts ; Enlightenment in Asia : the case of Japan) ; 21. India and the two enlightenments. (Radical critique of the British Raj ; Administration and law in British India) ; 22. Russia's Greeks, Poles, and serfs. (Russia's 'liberation of Greece' (1769-1772) ; Diderot's clash with Catherine ; Russia's first radical) -- Part IV : Spinoza controversies in the later enlightenment. 23. Rousseau, Spinoza, and the 'general will.' (Towards the modern democratic conception of sovereignty ; Radical enlightenment, revolution, and Rousseau's counter-enlightenment) ; 24. Radical breakthrough. (D'Holbach's 'bombs' ; Voltaire's last encounter : battling Spinoza ; The trial of Delisle de Sales (1775-1777)) ; 25. Pantheismusstreit (1780-1787). (Lessing's legacy ; The early stages of the German 'Spinoza controversy' ; Mendelssohn, Jacobi, and the public rift ; Kant's intervention ; Later stages of the Pantheismusstreit) ; 26. Kant and the radical challenge. (Dilemmas of moderation ; Critiquing Kant's critical philosophy) ; 27. Goethe, Schiller, and the new 'Dutch revolt' against Spain. (Drama and political philosophy ; Art as the new 'religion') -- Part V : revolution. 28. 1788-1789 : the 'general revolution' begins. (Nobility versus the Third Estate ; The revolution's second phase ; Books and revolution) ; 29. The diffusion. (Publishers, booksellers, and Colporteurs ; Anti-philosophie and the diffusion of radical literature) ; 30. 'Philosophy' as a maker of revolutions. (D'Holbach's politics ; Representative democracy) ; 31. Aufklärung and the secret societies (1776-1792). ('Revolution' and the secret societies ; Weishaupt's 'general reformation of the world' ; Bavaria's counter-enlightenment ; The Deutsche Union ; Prussia's counter-enlightenment) ; 32. Small-state revolutions in the 1780s. (The Geneva Revolution of 1782 : democrats versus 'aristocrats' ; Aachen, Liège, and the Austrian Netherlands) ; 33. The Dutch Democratic Revolution of the 1780s. (How to make democracy ; Liberation movement in exile) ; 34. The French Revolution : from 'philosophy' to basic human rights (1788-1790). (From the Bastille to the king's return to Paris (July-October 1789) ; Ideas and the revolutionary leadership ; Philosophes against the revolution) ; 35. Epilogue : 1789 as an intellectual revolution. (The 'general revolution' as a global process ; Commemorating the revolutionary enlightenment's heroes.)
Summary:
The Enlightenment shaped modernity. Western values of representative democracy and basic human rights and freedoms form an interlocking system that derives directly from the Enlightenment's philosophical revolution. This 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 does in the third part of his revisionist series. 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. 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 the countries from which it sprang. --From publisher description.
This resource is supported by the Institute of Museum and Library Services under the provisions of the Library Services and Technology Act as administered by State Library of Iowa.