The Portable Enlightenment Reader (Portable Library) by Isaac Kramnick

by Isaac Kramnick

The Age of Enlightenment of the 18th century, also called the Age of Reason, was so named for an intellectual movement that shook the foundations of Western civilization. In championing radical ideas such as individual liberty and an empirical appraisal of the universe through rational inquiry and natural experience, Enlightenment philosophers in Europe and America planted the seeds for modern liberalism, cultural humanism, science and technology, and laissez-faire Capitalism. This volume brings together works from this era, with more than 100 selections from a range of sources. It includes examples by Kant, Diderot, Voltaire, Newton, Rousseau, Locke, Franklin, Jefferson, Madison, and Paine that demonstrate the pervasive impact of Enlightenment views on philosophy and epistemology as well as on political, social, and economic institutions.

Genres: Philosophy, History, Nonfiction, School, Classics, Literature, Politics

Unknown Binding

First published December 1, 1995

About the author

Isaac Kramnick was an American political theorist, historian of political thought, political scientist, and the Richard J. Schwartz Professor of Government at Cornell University. He was a subject-matter expert on English and American political thought and history.

Reviews

[Laurence R. · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is filled with really important writings about enlightenment, which I found very interesting. Obviously, some of them are very outdated, but it helped me understand how the 18th century worked. Some of the texts were actually very relevant even in the 21st century, so I liked how similar our thoughts could be.

[Billie Pritchett · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book was long and boring, and there were moments when I was so frustrated that I could not wait to get through it. Nevertheless, the book is a decent compendium of Enlightenment thought before and during the 18th century. What is most eye-opening about the book are several paradoxes in argument. Immanuel Kant writes that the Enlightenment is an all-inclusive movement concerned with trusting one's own reasoning faculties, namely in deciding what one wants for herself and in how one chooses to live her life. Yet in a later essay, he argues that women are naturally inferior to men, and that it would behoove a woman to learn geography, for example, as much as it would for her, and here I closely paraphrase, to grow a beard. Also, Kant argues that white people are naturally superior to people of other skin colors. And, Jean-Jaques Rousseau, who has such a rosy view of the human being in the state of nature, prior to civilization, in a time when, he argues, all people are free and equal, later argues that women are naturally unequal, and moreover have the sole purpose of pleasing men, which just completely turns his earlier argument vis-a-vis equality on its head. Like paradoxes abound. What must be remembered, too, is that these sorts of paradoxes, at one turn praising liberty, equality, and human reasoning, and at the next turn entertaining false prejudices, are persistent problems for us children of the Enlightenment, who have not been able to make our philosophical outlooks mesh with our daily lives. To admit in one breath that all people deserve equal treatment and in the next, for example, to agree with one's friends that women should not be treated the same, given that they are so prone to irrational behavior, belies our conviction that human beings are relevantly similar until proven otherwise. Furthermore, even in instances when real differences are shown to exist, for example, between male and females, it does not follow that because of factual dissimilarities there should be normative, unequal means of treatment, since equality is not equivalent to sameness. This would be a good book to own, especially because of its relevance to the Western tradition, and because it reveals that the sorts of paradoxes people face in the post-industrial Western world relative to larger social and political philosophy are not much different than the paradoxes the original thinkers about these issues faced when they were creating these frameworks.

[Benjamin Spurlock · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have never felt such a sense of accomplishment over finishing a book as I have with this one. It's been an on again, off again read for two years, and several times I found myself wondering if it was worth it.

Bluntly, it was and is. The Enlightenment was the most influential intellectual movements in history, and we are still living in the aftermath of Kant, Voltaire, and Smith, among their many contemporaries. To read this book is to read one's own family history, warts and all, and I highly encourage anyone to read this as a part of their own philosophical journey.

On a personal level, as a writer, I found a great deal of inspiration from this selection, and I imagine that some of it will stay with me until the end of my days. I can only hope that others who read this will persevere through the difficult parts, or those they might find tedious. The effort is more than worth it.

[Kevin Stilley · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is the best selection of Enlightenment Readings of which I am aware. I disagree with a great many of the included writings. However, as Aristotle said, the mark of an educated person is the ability to entertain an idea without accepting it.

[Flynn Evans · Rating 5 out of 5]

An eclectic collection of primary sources from the Enlightenment which introduces the reader to the novel intellectual framework which was introduced to the West beginning in the seventeenth century with Descartes and gave rise to modernity as a whole.

[Bevan Lewis · Rating 4 out of 5]

A good range of Primary source readings and a reasonable introduction to Enlightenment thinking and historiography.

[Georgia ✧.* · Rating 3 out of 5]

For school, we read: "What is Enlightenment?", "The New Science", "The Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy" and "On Bacon and Newton" and more....... Very interesting.

[Mark Schnell · Rating 4 out of 5]

It is a good sampling of writings from the Enlightment, but probably not a good introduction to the Enlightment if one had never heard of it before. Some of the passages were heavy reading, so as I slogged through and finished them, it was always a joy when the next selection happened to be something, anything, written by Voltaire.

If you are a student, and wanting to read something that will exercise your reading ability, you will find no shortage of complex sentence constructions whose predicate, a half a page or more later, leaves you trying to remember what the subject of the sentence started out as.

[Ryan Somma · Rating 5 out of 5]

An impressive tomb of essays and selections from Enlightenment authors that took me 10 years to finish reading. Parts of it are inspiring and others disheartening as I was exposed to intellectuals I once admired writing about the inferiority of women and minorities. Diderot, Voltaire, and Paine came out unscathed and I was introduced to many new authors. It was also fascinating to read the essays that were precursors to concepts such as fair trails, prohibiting cruel and unusual punishment, and public education.

[Philip Tidman · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Portable Enlightenment Reader is an excellent way to get a grasp of the main philosophical arguments produced by the European enlightenment period of the 17th and 18th centuries, as philosophers and scientists began to move away from prescribed religious doctrine. Not a small book, in fact only nominally portable, it is well worth dipping into for anybody interested in the birth of modern Western philosophy.

[Christina B · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was a lovely and enriching read that takes many pictures centuries and worth of thinkers and excerpts from some of their most prolific works. Today, we often hear or something or experience the influence of these figures who were leading thinkers in their time. This book presents the opportunity to read from the source directly, deepen our thinking, and allow us to recognize the legacy of what we see today.

It is a short and valuable read that I would recommend.

[Joshua Reichard · Rating 2 out of 5]

Before reading this book one has to have at least a little understanding of the Enlightenment. I found myself lost half the time and the other half wishing I know more about the major figures in this book. I can see how it would be helpful if someone has read the full works in this book but merely reading the excerpts is not helpful in the long run.

[Clint Lum · Rating 3 out of 5]

Read several essays with my students. Hard to rate: The volume is nicely edited and helpful. But the Enlightenment has proven to be, in my view, harmful to the West (if not directly then indirectly through its fruits).

Also, the Enlightenment is so diverse. Some thinkers are great and some truly terrible.

[Chloe · Rating 3 out of 5]

i mean its a good collection of enlightenment era primary sources. but its so boring...

[John Paul Arceno · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very informative textbook for Enlightenment Philosophy

[Aiden Hunt · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great collection of essays from the Enlightenment. Some ideas hold up better than others, but it's valuable to see where modern thought comes from.

[Scotty · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good series of articles from people who contributed to the enlightenment.

[Ein Reads · Rating 1 out of 5]

I had to read this book for school. All I can say is that it was boring af. I hate my teacher for making me read this.

[Kenny · Rating 5 out of 5]

Essential compendium of enlightenment thought from d’Alembert to Wollstonecraft.

[Katie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Read excerpts for class

[Peter Talbot · Rating 5 out of 5]

Delicious, informative, extensive compendium of snippets related to "Enlightenment" thinking in philosophy, politics, history, science, art and culture. A must-have reference for any student of the period. Good translations from French (Diderot, Voltaire, Rousseau, Condorcet, Helvetius, etc.) and German (Kant, Leibnitz) with a heavy representation of Locke, Hume, Burke, Priestley and Scottish Common Sense writers. Reading it cover to cover is a chore, but so many of the excerpts are important that it was rewarding and useful in the extreme.

[Carlos · Rating 2 out of 5]

While this book wasn’t always exactly a thrill to read, it did serve to quickly introduce the attentive reader to some of the most influential works published during the Enlightenment. By its very nature of being a compilation of tens of works by several authors across almost two centuries, the book can only serve to give the unfamiliar reader through this quintessential piece of modernity. In such a book, then, the goal can be at most to entice the reader to actually go and pick up the works that are excerpted, and in this respect this book accomplishes its goal. Although I can’t honestly say that I would have picked up this book had it not been part of a history course, I can say that it has made me curious to dig deeper and what better way can there be to understand the spirit of the Enlightenment than by having your curiosity peaked.

[Blair · Rating 5 out of 5]

In my (academic) formative years I was taught that enlightenment was what drove the modern individual. I agreed. Some time later, I changed my mind, that enlightenment didn't drive us as much as it should, that we should engage in it more often. These days, I'm not sure about the currency of enlightenment, being the double-edged sword it is. But if you're like me - somehow cynical yet still enjoys inspiring philosophy - this portable reader could, if not should, be literally portable for you. Take it with you, read it in spurts.

[Megan Perry · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book was a hard read in some areas but did was worth the effort. It is a must-read for anyone interested in the Enlightenment. There are numerous works from different philosophe from the Enlightenment. They were from all different areas of the world. There are numerous passages and quotes in Latin that were not translated. Some of those were difficult to figure out.

[Rick Eng · Rating 5 out of 5]

Surprising to learn that brilliant minds such as Kant and Hume harbored strong bias toward other races as "stupid and inferior." I guess one has to remember the context of the time and these men were of their times... so much the argument for accepting post-modernism.

[Robert McDonald · Rating 2 out of 5]

A good collection of classic writings. Makes me want to read more Voltaire.

[Elsie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fascinating to peruse their writings in our current political climate. I also enjoyed hearing the adults in the 1600's complain about the lazy, indolent adolescents.

[Holtmanelevateonline.com · Rating 5 out of 5]

An excellent read if you are looking for primary source quotes and collaborative materials of the like.

[Osman Koyuncu]

The Portable Enlightenment Reader

[Andrea Patlan · Rating 4 out of 5]

fantastic collection of Enlightenment writers works.