The Enlightenment
History of an Idea - Updated Edition
1st Edition
Published on 28. July 2015
232 pages
978-1-4008-6583-3 (ISBN)
Description
A compelling reevaluation of the Enlightenment from one of its leading historians
In this concise and powerful book, one of the world's leading historians of the Enlightenment provides a bracing and clarifying new interpretation of this watershed period. Arguing that philosophical and historical interpretations of the era have long been hopelessly confused, Vincenzo Ferrone makes the case that it is only by separating these views and taking an approach grounded in social and cultural history that we can begin to grasp what the Enlightenment was-and why it is still relevant today. Ferrone explains why the Enlightenment was a profound and wide-ranging cultural revolution that reshaped Western identity, reformed politics through the invention of human rights, and redefined knowledge by creating a critical culture. These new ways of thinking gave birth to new values that spread throughout society and changed how everyday life was lived and understood. Featuring an illuminating afterword describing how his argument challenges the work of Anglophone interpreters including Jonathan Israel, The Enlightenment provides a fascinating reevaluation of the true nature and legacy of one of the most important and contested periods in Western history.
The translation of this work has been funded by SEPS-Segretariato Europeo per le Pubblicazioni Scientifiche.
In this concise and powerful book, one of the world's leading historians of the Enlightenment provides a bracing and clarifying new interpretation of this watershed period. Arguing that philosophical and historical interpretations of the era have long been hopelessly confused, Vincenzo Ferrone makes the case that it is only by separating these views and taking an approach grounded in social and cultural history that we can begin to grasp what the Enlightenment was-and why it is still relevant today. Ferrone explains why the Enlightenment was a profound and wide-ranging cultural revolution that reshaped Western identity, reformed politics through the invention of human rights, and redefined knowledge by creating a critical culture. These new ways of thinking gave birth to new values that spread throughout society and changed how everyday life was lived and understood. Featuring an illuminating afterword describing how his argument challenges the work of Anglophone interpreters including Jonathan Israel, The Enlightenment provides a fascinating reevaluation of the true nature and legacy of one of the most important and contested periods in Western history.
The translation of this work has been funded by SEPS-Segretariato Europeo per le Pubblicazioni Scientifiche.
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Persons
Vincenzo Ferrone is professor of modern history at the University of Turin. He has been a visiting scholar at the Collège de France and at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton.
Content
Introduction - Living the Enlightenment vii
Acknowledgments xvi
Part I The Philosophers' Enlightenment: Thinking the Centaur 1
1 Historians and Philosophers: The Peculiarity of the Enlightenment as Historical Category 3
2 Kant: Was ist Aufklärung? The Emancipation of Man through Man 7
3 Hegel: The Dialectics of the Enlightenment as Modernity's Philosophical Issue 12
4 Marx and Nietzsche: The Enlightenment from Bourgeois Ideology to Will to Power 23
5 Horkheimer and Adorno: The Totalitarian Face of the Dialectic of Enlightenment 30
6 Foucault: The Return of the Centaur and the Death of Man 34
7 Postmodern Anti-Enlightenment Positions: From the Cassirer-Heidegger Debate to Benedict XVI's katholische Aufklärung 43
Part II The Historians' Enlightenment: The Cultural Revolution of the Ancien Régime 55
8 For a Defense of Historical Knowledge: Beyond the Centaur 57
9 The Epistemologia imaginabilis in Eighteenth-Century Science and Philosophy 67
10 The Enlightenment-French Revolution Paradigm Between Political Myth and Epistemological Impasse 79
11 The Twentieth Century and the Enlightenment as Historical Problem: From Political History to Social and Cultural History 87
12 What Was the Enlightenment? The Humanism of the Moderns in Ancien Régime Europe 95
13 Chronology and Geography of a Cultural Revolution 120
14 Politicization and Natura naturans: The Late Enlightenment Question and the Crisis of the Ancien Régime 140
Afterword
The Enlightenment: A Revolution of the Mind or the Ancien Régime's Cultural Revolution? 155
Notes 173
Index 203
Acknowledgments xvi
Part I The Philosophers' Enlightenment: Thinking the Centaur 1
1 Historians and Philosophers: The Peculiarity of the Enlightenment as Historical Category 3
2 Kant: Was ist Aufklärung? The Emancipation of Man through Man 7
3 Hegel: The Dialectics of the Enlightenment as Modernity's Philosophical Issue 12
4 Marx and Nietzsche: The Enlightenment from Bourgeois Ideology to Will to Power 23
5 Horkheimer and Adorno: The Totalitarian Face of the Dialectic of Enlightenment 30
6 Foucault: The Return of the Centaur and the Death of Man 34
7 Postmodern Anti-Enlightenment Positions: From the Cassirer-Heidegger Debate to Benedict XVI's katholische Aufklärung 43
Part II The Historians' Enlightenment: The Cultural Revolution of the Ancien Régime 55
8 For a Defense of Historical Knowledge: Beyond the Centaur 57
9 The Epistemologia imaginabilis in Eighteenth-Century Science and Philosophy 67
10 The Enlightenment-French Revolution Paradigm Between Political Myth and Epistemological Impasse 79
11 The Twentieth Century and the Enlightenment as Historical Problem: From Political History to Social and Cultural History 87
12 What Was the Enlightenment? The Humanism of the Moderns in Ancien Régime Europe 95
13 Chronology and Geography of a Cultural Revolution 120
14 Politicization and Natura naturans: The Late Enlightenment Question and the Crisis of the Ancien Régime 140
Afterword
The Enlightenment: A Revolution of the Mind or the Ancien Régime's Cultural Revolution? 155
Notes 173
Index 203
