About this book
What was the Enlightenment? Though many scholars have attempted to solve this riddle, none has made as much use of contemporary answers as Dan Edelstein does here. In seeking to recover where, when, and how the concept of "the Enlightenment" first emerged, Edelstein departs from genealogies that trace it back to political and philosophical developments in England and the Dutch Republic. According to Edelstein, by the 1720s scholars and authors in France were already employing a constellation of terms—such as l'esprit philosophique—to describe what we would today call the Enlightenment. But Edelstein argues that it was within the French Academies, and in the context of the Quarrel of the Ancients and the Moderns, that the key definition, concepts, and historical narratives of the Enlightenment were crafted.
A necessary corrective to many of our contemporary ideas about the Enlightenment, Edelstein's book turns conventional thinking about the period on its head. Concise, clear, and contrarian, The Enlightenment will be welcomed by all teachers and students of the period.
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Table of contents
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- 1. Interpreting the Enlightenment: On Methods
- 2. A Map of the Enlightenment: Whither France?
- 3. The Spirit of the Moderns: From the New Science to the Enlightenment
- 4. Society, the Subject of the Modern Story
- 5. Quarrel in the Academy: The Ancients Strike Back
- 6. Humanism and Enlightenment: The Classical Style of the "Philosophes"
- 7. The Philosophical Spirit of the Laws: Politics and Antiquity
- 8. An Ancient God: Pagans and Philosophers
- 9 "Post Tenebras Lux: Begriffsgeschichte" or "Régime d’Historicité?"
- 10. Ancients and the Orient: "Translatio Imperii"
- 11. Enlightened Institutions (I): The Royal Academies versus the Republic of Letters
- 12. Enlightened Institutions (II): Universities, Censorship, and Public Instruction
- 13. Worldliness, Politeness, and the Importance of Not Being Too Radical
- 14. From Enlightenment to Revolution: A Shared History?
- 15. France and the European Enlightenment
- 16. Conclusion: Modern Myths
- Abbreviations
- Notes
- Selected Bibliography for the Enlightenment
- Index
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