Radical Enlightenment: Philosophy and the Making of Modernity 1650-1750

Features

• Cover Type: Paperback with 832 pages
• Published by: Oxford University Press, USA September 12, 2002
• Written in: English
• ISBN 10 Number: 0199254567
• ISBN 13 Number: 978-0199254569
• Book Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.1 x 1.8 inches
• Weighs: 2.7 pounds

Product Review

"His vast--and vastly impressive--book sets out to redefine the intellectual landscape of early modern Europe.awesome and magisterial, Radical Enlightenment will undoubtedly be one of the truly great historical works of the decade."--John Adamson, Sunday Telegraph
"[A] awesomestudy of the impact of Spinoza and his philosophy on European cultural history at the hinge of the 17th and 18th centuries.Sumptuous in the energy, clarity and breadth of its scholarship."--Los Angeles Times Book Review
"Mr. Israel's lucid, engrossing account of the Enlightenment's formative period explains why we want our intellectual histories rewritten for every generation, for this Enlightenment overflows with our favorite things."--The Scriblerian


Product Description
In the wake of the Scientific Revolution, the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries saw the complete demolition of traditional structures of authority, scientific thought, and belief by the new philosophy and the philosophers, including Voltaire, Diderot, and Rousseau. The Radical Enlightenment played a part in this revolutionary process, which effectively overthrew all justification for monarchy, aristocracy, and ecclesiastical power, as well as man's dominance over woman, theological dominance of education, and slavery. Despite the present day interest in the revolutions of the eighteenth century, the origins and rise of the Radical Enlightenment have received limited scholarly attention. The greatest obstacle to the movement finding its proper place in modern historical writing is its international scope: the Racial Enlightenment was not French, British, German, Italian, Jewish or Dutch, but all of these at the same time.
In this wide-ranging volume, Jonathan Israel offers a novel interpretation of the Radical Enlightenment down to La Mettie and Diderot, two of its key exponents. Particular emphasis is placed on the pivotal role of Spinoza and the widespread underground international philosophical movement known before 1750 as Spinozism.

Reader Reviews
This review is from: Radical Enlightenment: Philosophy and the Making of Modernity 1650-1750 (Hardcover) Israel's book offers a valuable new perspective on the nature of the Enlightenment. Instead of concentrating on England or France, Israel looks at all of Europe. There is considerable attention paid not only to the Netherlands, Israel's main area of expertise as a historian, but also to Spain, Portugal, Italy, the many German states and Scandinavia. Nor is this emphasis undeserved, since the Dutch Republic was the home of Spinoza, Sweden the home of Linnaeus, and Italy the home of Vico. Only two areas receive little attention. One is Russia, under the grip of Tsarist despotism. The other is the future United States, which were arguably peripheral to the intellectual life of the West before 1750. Israel argues that the Enlightenment can be seen as a construct and a conflict between four major forces. The first is Cartesianism, the second Newton-Lockean ideas, the third the Leibnitzian synthesis, and the fourth, and the main subject of this book, the Radical Enlightenment around Spinoza. The main theme of this book is that Spinoza's ideas, and the debates around them were central to the development of the Enlightenment. Israel's perspective is an unusual one. His book ends in 1750 and therefore only briefly discusses much of what people popularly consider the Enlightenment. Diderot gets only a few pages, and Rousseau and Voltaire get even less. The Scottish Enlightenment is not mentioned at all, and Hume is barely mentioned. Israel's concentration is on the critique of religion; it is this ultimately successful challenge that he considers the Enlightenment's major achievement. As a consequence other areas get less attention. It is Locke the theorist against innate ideas and the ambiguous believe in miracles that Israel concentrates on, not so much the constitutional theorist. The development of history, of economics, of many of the sciences are downplayed in this account. The liberation of women is discussed only briefly and the question of slavery is discussed even less. Many questions that have concerned intellectual history over the past few decades are dealt with only cursorily. One would have to go elsewhere to find out what were the links between the Enlightenment and the French Revolution, what was the relationship between religion, magic and the rise of science, and what was the popular mentality of the time? Likewise questions about the potential dark side of modernity, why Enlightenment arose at this particular time in history, or the origins of pornography will have to be looked at elsewhere. Nevertheless this book makes a valuable contribution. First off it demonstrates Spinoza's importance to the rise of the Enlightenment as his pantheism, materialism and determinism became the major challenge that other philosphers had to face. There is also some tantalizing evidence that Spinoza's ideas were making greater popular headway in the Netherlands than one might have thought. Second, it provides copious accounts of the many debates and discussions in intellectual life that other accounts tend to ignore. Many accounts concentrate on the "great men," while Straussian accounts tend to drastically oversimplify intellectual debates. By discussing such thinkers as Fontenelle and his debunking of classical oracles, Bekker on the death of the devil, the many Dutch thinkers who helped to propagate Spinoza's ideas one gets a fuller picture of the Enlightenment's progress. Third, Israel's book is full of many valuable insights. Israel is particularly good on how Spinoza's theory of toleration is more liberal than that of Locke's. He also shows how the "moderate" enlightenment consistently supported the censorship of their radical opponents. He is also good on the fundamental modernity of Vico, as well as on the limited influence Locke and Newton had on the continent before the 1730s. All in all, this is an important book.