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A Revolution Of The Mind: Radical Enlightenment And The Intellectual Origins Of Modern Democracy (2009)

by Jonathan Israel(Favorite Author)

3.66 of 5 Votes: 5

ISBN

0691142009 (ISBN13: 9780691142005)

languge

English

genre

History & Biography

publisher

Princeton University Press

review 1: Jonathan Israel has written some Very Big Books about the Enlightenment that I hope to read someday. Unfortunately, time pressures and work have forced me to make do with this 300 page summary/manifesto of his 2400 page argument.As far as I can tell, his argument is based upon three main points: the history of the Enlightenment has its roots in the 17th century and the arguments of Spinoza; the Enlightenment as we know it is an international, not just national phenomenon that can be further defined as part of a 'radical' or 'moderate' tradition; and that the ideas of the Radical Enlightenment were a major contributor to the political revolutions of the early 19th century.The first two points are well done here. Israel doesn't always go for the 'big names' of Locke, Kant, a... morend Hume, but he insists on placing them within their historical context and their competitors and colleages, such as d'Holbach, Diderot, Helvetius, and Schimmelpennick. The third point doesn't seem as well established. It's more of a 'the ideas showed first, the revolution happened second, therefore the ideas caused the revolution'. But this might seem unfair. This is only a summary of a summary, after all, and Israel could very likely describe these histories in his other books.Still a fair primer. I still think I should read the trilogy, however.
review 2: This book in many ways amounts to an abstract or summary of his brilliant (and quite lengthy) trilogy on the Enlightenment (Radical Enlightenment, Enlightenment Contested, and Democratic Enlightenment), all of which I've read and enjoyed over the past few years as I've studied the Enlightenment.As with all of his books they are informative and quite readable if you're into 2-inch-thick non-fiction titles covering a fairly obscure but incredibly important process in Western civilization. : less

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