What's Left of Enlightenment? A Postmodern Question

by Keith Michael Baker (Editor), Peter Hanns Reill (Editor)

It has become increasingly clear in recent years that, for all their differences, the many varieties of thinking commonly grouped together under the rubric of “postmodernism” share at least one salient characteristic: they all depend upon a stereotyped account of the Enlightenment. Postmodernity requires a “modernity” to be repudiated and superseded, and the tenets of this modernity have invariably been identified with the so-called Enlightenment Project. This volume aims to explore critically the now conventional opposition between Enlightenment and Postmodernity and question some of the conclusions drawn from it.

In so doing, the authors focus on three general areas. Part I, “Enlightenment or Postmodernity?”, reflects on the way in which contemporary discussion characterizes the two movements as radical alternatives. Part II, “Critical Confrontations,” provides a kind of archaeology of this opposition by charting a series of critical engagements by those who have affirmed or demeaned Enlightenment values in the twentieth century. Part III, “A Postmodern Enlightenment?”, complicates the perceived dichotomy between Enlightenment and Postmodernity by pointing to the existence within the Enlightenment of elements frequently seen as characteristic of Postmodernity.

The contributors are Lorraine Daston, Dena Goodman, David Hollinger, Lawrence E. Klein, Jonathan Knudsen, Michael Meranze, Richard Rorty, Hans Sluga, and Johnson Kent Wright.

Genres: Philosophy, History

216 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2001

About the author

Keith Baker is professor of early modern European history and, by courtesy, of French and Italian, J.E. Wallace Sterling Professor in the Humanities, and Jean-Paul Gimon Director of the France-Stanford Center. His research focuses on intellectual history and the history of political culture, and on the cultural and political origins of the Englightenment and the French Revolution. He is the author of Condorcet. From Natural Philosophy to Social Mathematics and Inventing the French Revolution. Prof. Baker has held a Guggenheim Fellowship, has been named Chevalier dans l’Ordre des Palmes Académiques, and is an elected member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and of the American Philosophical Society. In 2014, he won the American Historical Association's lifetime achievement award.