"This book succeeds beautifully. Written with confidence and
concision, it lays out Jonathan Israel's central ideas about
the Radical Enlightenment and its fundamental importance in shaping
the values of democratic modernity. Those who already know his work
will find a clear and bold statement of his principal arguments, as
well as important elaborations and expansions. Those unfamiliar
with his scholarship will get a masterful introduction to the work
of one of the leading Enlightenment scholars in the world
today."--Darrin M. McMahon, Florida State University
"Interesting, erudite, and provocative, this book provides
readers with a succinct and clear introduction to Jonathan
Israel's wide-ranging work on the Radical Enlightenment. It
should command a broad readership."--James Schmidt, Boston
University
Democracy, free thought and expression, religious tolerance,
individual liberty, political self-determination of peoples, sexual
and racial equality - these values have firmly entered the
mainstream in the decades since they were enshrined in the 1948
U.N. Declaration of Human Rights. But if these ideals no longer
seem radical today, their origin was very radical indeed - far more
so than most historians have been willing to recognize. In A
Revolution of the Mind, Jonathan Israel, one of the world's
leading historians of the Enlightenment, traces the philosophical
roots of these ideas to what were the least respectable strata of
Enlightenment thought - what he calls the Radical Enlightenment.
Originating as a clandestine movement of ideas that was almost
entirely hidden from public view during its earliest phase, the
Radical Enlightenment matured in opposition to the moderate
mainstream Enlightenment dominant in Europe and America in the
eighteenth century. During the revolutionary decades of the 1770s,
1780s, and 1790s, the Radical Enlightenment burst into the open,
only to provoke a long and bitter backlash. A Revolution of the
Mind shows that this vigorous opposition was mainly due to the
powerful impulses in society to defend the principles of monarchy,
aristocracy, empire, and racial hierarchy - principles linked to
the upholding of censorship, church authority, social inequality,
racial segregation, religious discrimination, and far-reaching
privilege for ruling groups
Israel's new book is a breathtaking rethinking of the Enlightenment and its impact in the modern world.
Spinoza's radicalism was certainly frightening in its time, and Israel has valuably if aggressively opened the question of its influence on the Enlightenment and the era of revolution. -- Samuel Moyn Nation Israel is right to emphasize the importance of this intellectual movement, but since his is such a sweeping revision of so many generations of received ideas, his work raises the question of why the radical Enlightenment has been misunderstood or obscured for so long in favor of such colorful figures as Voltaire (in Israel's telling, a witty, snobbish sycophant)... We are lucky that a historian of Israel's caliber has taken these subjects on and lucky, too, that he has now produced a readable introduction to them. -- Benjamin Moser Harper's Magazine Israel's reasoned assertion for the influence of the Radical Enlightenment on democratic thought is certainly compelling, making this essential reading for students of the Enlightenment era as well as anyone interested in the foundations of modern democracy. Library Journal Israel's new book is a breathtaking rethinking of the Enlightenment and its impact in the modern world. Choice Perhaps no active scholar has shaped the conversation about the sources and meaning of the Enlightenment more than Jonathan Israel... Almost miraculously, Israel manages to embody the greatest intellectual virtues and vices. Christian Century Israel succeeds commendably in a great evaluation and dissemination of generally unknown texts from beyond the familiar territories of France, England, and America. In this respect, he broadens the common conception of where Enlightenment ideas were debated and implemented, unlike Isaiah Berlin, who failed to notice the American Enlightenment. -- Rivka Weisberg and Carl Pletsch 1650-1850
Jonathan Israel is professor of modern history at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton. He is in the process of finishing a monumental three-volume history of the Radical Enlightenment, the first two volumes of which, "Radical Enlightenment" and "Enlightenment Contested", have already been published.
Inhaltsangabe
Preface vii CHAPTER I: Progress and the Enlightenment's Two Conflicting Ways of Improving the World 1 CHAPTER II: Democracy or Social Hierarchy? The Political Rift 37 CHAPTER III: The Problem of Equality and Inequality: The Rise of Economics 92 CHAPTER IV: The Enlightenment's Critique of War and the Quest for "Perpetual Peace" 124 CHAPTER V: Two Kinds of Moral Philosophy in Conflict 154 CHAPTER VI: Voltaire versus Spinoza: The Enlightenment as a Basic Duality of Philosophical Systems 199 CHAPTER VII: Conclusion 221 Notes 243 Index 267
