Arguably the most decisive shift in the history of ideas in modern times was the complete demolition during the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries - in the wake of the Scientific Revolution - of traditional structures of authority, scientific thought, and belief, by the new philosophy and the philosophies, culminating in Voltaire, Diderot, and Rousseau. In this revolutionary process which effectively overthrew all justification for monarchy, aristocracy, slavery, and ecclesiastical authority, as well as man's asendancy over woman and theology's domination over education and study, substituting the modern principles of equality, democracy, and universality, the Radical Enlightenment played a crucially important part. Despite the present-day interest in the revolutions of the late eighteenth century, the origins and rise of the Radical Enlightenment have been astonishingly little studied, doubtless largely because if its very wide international sweep and the obvious difficulties of fitting it into the restrictive conventions of 'national history' which until recently tended to dominate all historiography. The greatest obstacle to the Radical Enlightenment finding its proper place in modern historical writing is simply that it was not French, British, German, Italian, Jewish or Dutch, but all of these at the same time. In this novel interpretation of the Radical Enlightenment down to La Mettrie and Diderot, two of its key exponents, particular stress is placed on the pivotal role of Spinoza and the widespread underground international philosophical movement known before 1750 as Spinozism.
I. The 'Radical Enlightenment' 1: Introduction 2: Government and Philosophy 3: Society, Institutions, Revolution 4: Women, Philosophy, and Sexuality 5: Censorship and Culture 6: Libraries and Enlightenment 7: The Learned Journals II. The Rise of Philosophical Radicalism 8: Spinoza 9: Van den Enden: Philosophy, Democracy, and Egalitarianism 10: Radicalism and the People: The Brothers Koerbagh 11: Philosophy, the Interpreter of Scripture 12: Miracles Denied 13: Spinoza's System 14: Spinoza, Science, and the Scientists 15: Philosophy, Politics, and the Liberation of Man 16: Publishing a Banned Philosophy 17: The Spread of a Forbidden Movement III. Europe and the 'New' Intellectual Controversies 1680-1720 18: Bayle and the 'Virtuous Atheist' 19: The Bredenburg Disputes 20: Fontenelle and the War of the Oracles 21: The Death of the Devil 22: Leenhof and the 'Universal Philosophical Religion' 23: The 'Nature of God' Controversy IV. The Intellectual Counter-Offensive 24: New Theological Strategies 25: The Collapse of Cartesianism 26: Leibniz and the Radical Enlightenment 27: Anglomania: The 'Triumph' of Newton and Locke 28: The Intellectual Drama in Spain and Portugal 29: Germany and the Baltic: 'The 'War of the Philosophers' V. The Clandestine Progress of the Radical Enlightenment 1680-1750 30: Boulainvilliers and the Rise of French 31: French Refugee Deists in Exile 32: The Spinozistic Novel in French 33: English Deism and Europe 34: Germany: The Radical Aufklaerung 35: The Radical Impact in Italy 36: The Clandestine Philosophical Manuscripts 37: From La Mettrie to Diderot 38: Epilogue: Rousseau, Radicalism, Revolution
Reviews for Radical Enlightenment: Philosophy and the Making of Modernity 1650-1750
`Review from previous edition There is much to praise in Israel's majestic account of the Enlightenment and his detective work in placing Spinoza at the heart of it.' A.C. Grayling, FT Weekend `Enter Jonathan Israel. His vast - and vastly impressive - book sets out to redefine the intellectual landscape of early modern Europe. The stupendous scale of this book ranges from London to Moscow, Stockholm to Naples, in a virtuoso display of polyglot learning.' John Adamson, Sunday Telegraph `By far the most subversive and influential of radicals, Israel argues, was Benedict de Spinoza (1632-77), the Amsterdam Jew whom most historians have tended to dismiss hitherto as the Cinderella at the Enlightenment Ball.' John Adamson, Sunday Telegraph `... powerful originality of a book that sets out to redefine the entire dramatis personae of the Enlightenment, re-assigning major roles, and introducing a far more varied and cosmopolitan cast than has ever previously been allowed to be seen.' John Adamson, Sunday Telegraph `Magnificent and magisterial, Radical Enlightenment will undoubtedly be one of the truly great historical works of the decade.' John Adamson, Sunday Telegraph
- Shortlisted for British Academy Book Prize 2002.
- Winner of AHA Gershoy Prize 2001.
