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The Enlightenment: And Why It Still Matters
NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY KIRKUS REVIEWSOne of our most renowned and brilliant historians takes a fresh look at the revolutionary intellectual movement that laid the foundation for the modern world. Liberty and equality. Human rights. Freedom of thought and expression. Belief in reason and progress. The value of scientific inquiry. These are just some of the ideas that were conceived and developed during the Enlightenment, and which changed forever the intellectual landscape of the Western world. Spanning hundreds of years of history, Anthony Pagden traces the origins of this seminal movement, showing how Enlightenment concepts directly influenced modern culture, making possible a secular, tolerant, and, above all, cosmopolitan world. Everyone can agree on its impact. But in the end, just what was Enlightenment? A cohesive philosophical project? A discrete time period in the life of the mind when the superstitions of the past were overthrown and reason and equality came to the fore? Or an open-ended intellectual process, a way of looking at the world and the human condition, that continued long after the eighteenth century ended? To address these questions, Pagden introduces us to some of the unforgettable characters who defined the Enlightenment, including David Hume, the Scottish skeptic who advanced the idea of a universal “science of man”; François-Marie Arouet, better known to the world as Voltaire, the acerbic novelist and social critic who challenged the authority of the Catholic Church; and Immanuel Kant, the reclusive German philosopher for whom the triumph of a cosmopolitan world represented the final stage in mankind’s evolution. Comprehensive in his analysis of this heterogeneous group of scholars and their lasting impact on the world, Pagden argues that Enlightenment ideas go beyond the “empire of reason” to involve the full recognition of the emotional ties that bind all human beings together. The “human science” developed by these eminent thinkers led to a universalizing vision of humanity, a bid to dissolve the barriers past generations had attempted to erect between the different cultures of the world. A clear and compelling explanation of the philosophical underpinnings of the modern world, The Enlightenment is a scintillating portrait of a period, a critical moment in history, and a revolution in thought that continues to this day.Praise for The Enlightenment “Sweeping . . . Like being guided through a vast ballroom of rotating strangers by a confiding insider.”—The Washington Post “Fascinating.”—The Telegraph (London) “A political tract for our time.”—The Wall Street Journal“For those who recognize the names Hegel, Hume, Rousseau, Kant, Voltaire, and Diderot but are unfamiliar with their thought, [Anthony] Padgen provides a fantastic introduction, explaining the driving philosophies of the period and placing their proponents in context. . . . Padgen’s belief that the Enlightenment ‘made it possible for us to think . . . beyond the narrow worlds into which we are born’ is clearly and cogently presented.”—Publishers Weekly (starred review)“The Enlightenment really does still matter, and with a combination of gripping storytelling about colorful characters and lucid explanation of profound ideas,
457 pages, Kindle Edition
First published January 1, 2002
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About the author
Anthony Pagden
48 books52 followersAnthony Pagden was educated in Santiago (Chile), London, Barcelona and Oxford and holds a B.A.. M.A. and D.Phil. from the University of Oxford. He has been a free-lance translator and a publisher in Paris a Fellow of Merton College, Oxford, Senior Research Fellow of the Warburg Institute (London), Professor of History at the European University Institute (Florence), University Reader in Intellectual History and Fellow of King’s College, Cambridge and the Harry C. Black Professor of History at Johns Hopkins. He joined UCLA in the Fall of 2002. His research has concentrated on the relationship between the peoples of Europe and its overseas settlements and those of the non-European world from the Atlantic to the Pacific. He is primarily interested in the political theory of empire, in how the West sought to explain to itself how and why it had come to dominate so much of the world, and in the present consequences of the erosion of that domination. His research has led to an interest in the formation of the modern concept of Europe and most recently in the roots of the conflict between the ‘West’ and the (predominantly Muslim) ‘East’. He has also written on the history of law, and on the ideological sources of the independence movements in Spanish-America, and is currently completing a book on cosmopolitanism and the Enlightenment . He has written or edited some fifteen books, the most recent of which are, Lords of all the World. Ideologies of Empire in Britain, France and Spain (1995), Peoples and Empires (2001), La Ilustración y sus enemigos (2002), Worlds at War, The 2500 year struggle between East and West (2008), and, as editor, The Idea of Europe from Antiquity to the European Union (2002). – all of which have been translated into several European and Asian languages. He is a regular contributor to the Times Literary Supplement, and The London Review of Books, and has written for The New Republic, The Los Angeles Times, The New York Times, Il Sole 24 Ore (Milan), El Mundo (Spain), El Pais, (Spain) and La Nueva Provincia (Argentina).
He teaches classes in the history of political thought from the sixteenth to the nineteenth century, in the theory of international relations, and seminars on imperialism and nationalism and on the theory of racism and ethnicity since antiquity.
He teaches classes in the history of political thought from the sixteenth to the nineteenth century, in the theory of international relations, and seminars on imperialism and nationalism and on the theory of racism and ethnicity since antiquity.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 68 reviews
May 7, 2013
A great introduction to the thinkers (and ideas) of the Enlightenment that manages not to oversimplify or caricature them and to show how others have (and do).
So, what is worth saving?:
“But our ability even to frame our understanding of the world in terms of something larger than our own small patch of ground, our own culture, family, or religion, clearly does (connect to Enlightenment ideals]. And in that, we are all, inescapably, the heirs of the architects of the Enlightenment ‘science of man.’ For this, then, if for no other reason, the Enlightenment still matters.” 415
So, what is worth saving?:
“But our ability even to frame our understanding of the world in terms of something larger than our own small patch of ground, our own culture, family, or religion, clearly does (connect to Enlightenment ideals]. And in that, we are all, inescapably, the heirs of the architects of the Enlightenment ‘science of man.’ For this, then, if for no other reason, the Enlightenment still matters.” 415
July 31, 2013
Enlightening...but harder work than it need have been...
Like most people, I have a vague idea of what is meant by Enlightenment values – scepticism, reason, science etc. – and could probably name, if pushed, a few of the intellectuals and philosophers associated with it. I hoped this book might give me a clearer idea of the history and development of the period and of the contribution of some of the main players. And to a degree it did. Pagden concentrates very much on the intellectual developments and how they impacted on the political sphere. There is very little in the book about the cultural aspects of the Enlightenment – the salon culture is mentioned, but mainly in passing, and although he refers to the emphasis placed by some of the philosophers on arts and music, he doesn’t go into what impact this had on the artistic culture of the time.
In the first couple of chapters, Pagden briefly discusses the Reformation and the Scientific Revolution, showing how the ideas of the Enlightenment philosophers grew out of and built onto these. In the following chapters, he takes us on a roughly chronological journey through the period of the Enlightenment, concentrating on the writings of the philosophers and highlighting how they influenced each other. Towards the end, he discusses to what extent the French Revolution resulted from Enlightenment ideas and shows the philosophical backlash following this period. And finally, he very briefly highlights the influence that Enlightenment thinking still has, particularly in the West, on national and international forms of governance.
There is no question about the amount of scholarship that has gone into this book and I undoubtedly feel considerably better informed about the subject. However, there are several problems that prevent me from feeling I could wholeheartedly recommend it. Firstly, Pagden’s writing style is often so convoluted that I found I had to read and re-read to be sure I got the sense of what he was saying. His sentences are full of asides and fragmentary quotes that, while relevant, make the process of reading much harder work than should have been necessary.
“Hamann, the “magus of the north,” of whom Hegel said that he was “not only…original…But an Original,” and whose writings “do not so much have a particular style, as they are style,” was something of a crank (whom Goethe, although he thought him the “brightest head of his time,” once shrewdly compared to Vico.”
If you strip the extraneous matter out of this, basically it says Hamann was something of a crank – there, isn’t that easier? But this sentence also brings me to my second problem – the book would have been considerably helped by a list of the philosophers with a brief summary of their contribution and beliefs. There are so many names that I frankly couldn’t remember who was who or what each believed. So a comparison to Vico means nothing to me, however shrewd it may be. There is, of course, an index and a bibliography, but this meant I was constantly flipping backwards and forwards to remind myself of what had been said about someone four chapters previously, or, as became the case more and more, deciding I didn’t care enough to bother.
Then there are the inconsistencies. Taking the example of the Peace of Westphalia both of the following quotes are taken from the same page (28):
“The “Peace of Westphalia”, as it came to be known, was the first treaty between sovereign nations which succeeded in creating a lasting peace and not merely a temporary ceasefire, as all previous treaties had.”
Frankly this sentence stunned me as I tried to remember a period when Europe had a lasting peace prior to 1945. But I didn’t have to remain stunned for long, since the very next paragraph begins:
“The treaty did not achieve an immediate, or indeed, in the end, a lasting peace.”
It does become apparent what Pagden means by this (that wars stopped being specifically about religion following the treaty) but it’s just one example of many of how the scholarship of the work is let down by the manner of writing.
And lastly, the book is absolutely chock full of typos, missed words and uncorrected errors – the proofreading is the most abysmal I have ever seen in an academic work.
In summary, I’m glad to have read this and feel considerably enlightened by it, but feel it was much harder work than it need have been. A book that I think would probably be very interesting for someone with an existing fairly good knowledge of the period and the people involved in it, but perhaps not one I would suggest as an introduction to the subject for a casual reader like myself.
NB This book was provided for review by Amazon Vine UK.
www.ficitonfanblog.wordpress.com
Like most people, I have a vague idea of what is meant by Enlightenment values – scepticism, reason, science etc. – and could probably name, if pushed, a few of the intellectuals and philosophers associated with it. I hoped this book might give me a clearer idea of the history and development of the period and of the contribution of some of the main players. And to a degree it did. Pagden concentrates very much on the intellectual developments and how they impacted on the political sphere. There is very little in the book about the cultural aspects of the Enlightenment – the salon culture is mentioned, but mainly in passing, and although he refers to the emphasis placed by some of the philosophers on arts and music, he doesn’t go into what impact this had on the artistic culture of the time.
In the first couple of chapters, Pagden briefly discusses the Reformation and the Scientific Revolution, showing how the ideas of the Enlightenment philosophers grew out of and built onto these. In the following chapters, he takes us on a roughly chronological journey through the period of the Enlightenment, concentrating on the writings of the philosophers and highlighting how they influenced each other. Towards the end, he discusses to what extent the French Revolution resulted from Enlightenment ideas and shows the philosophical backlash following this period. And finally, he very briefly highlights the influence that Enlightenment thinking still has, particularly in the West, on national and international forms of governance.
There is no question about the amount of scholarship that has gone into this book and I undoubtedly feel considerably better informed about the subject. However, there are several problems that prevent me from feeling I could wholeheartedly recommend it. Firstly, Pagden’s writing style is often so convoluted that I found I had to read and re-read to be sure I got the sense of what he was saying. His sentences are full of asides and fragmentary quotes that, while relevant, make the process of reading much harder work than should have been necessary.
“Hamann, the “magus of the north,” of whom Hegel said that he was “not only…original…But an Original,” and whose writings “do not so much have a particular style, as they are style,” was something of a crank (whom Goethe, although he thought him the “brightest head of his time,” once shrewdly compared to Vico.”
If you strip the extraneous matter out of this, basically it says Hamann was something of a crank – there, isn’t that easier? But this sentence also brings me to my second problem – the book would have been considerably helped by a list of the philosophers with a brief summary of their contribution and beliefs. There are so many names that I frankly couldn’t remember who was who or what each believed. So a comparison to Vico means nothing to me, however shrewd it may be. There is, of course, an index and a bibliography, but this meant I was constantly flipping backwards and forwards to remind myself of what had been said about someone four chapters previously, or, as became the case more and more, deciding I didn’t care enough to bother.
Then there are the inconsistencies. Taking the example of the Peace of Westphalia both of the following quotes are taken from the same page (28):
“The “Peace of Westphalia”, as it came to be known, was the first treaty between sovereign nations which succeeded in creating a lasting peace and not merely a temporary ceasefire, as all previous treaties had.”
Frankly this sentence stunned me as I tried to remember a period when Europe had a lasting peace prior to 1945. But I didn’t have to remain stunned for long, since the very next paragraph begins:
“The treaty did not achieve an immediate, or indeed, in the end, a lasting peace.”
It does become apparent what Pagden means by this (that wars stopped being specifically about religion following the treaty) but it’s just one example of many of how the scholarship of the work is let down by the manner of writing.
And lastly, the book is absolutely chock full of typos, missed words and uncorrected errors – the proofreading is the most abysmal I have ever seen in an academic work.
In summary, I’m glad to have read this and feel considerably enlightened by it, but feel it was much harder work than it need have been. A book that I think would probably be very interesting for someone with an existing fairly good knowledge of the period and the people involved in it, but perhaps not one I would suggest as an introduction to the subject for a casual reader like myself.
NB This book was provided for review by Amazon Vine UK.
www.ficitonfanblog.wordpress.com
March 29, 2013
I got an early copy through NetGalley and have been reading it over the last week. Pagden is a professor of political science and history at UCLA, and that crossing of disciplines is manifest in the book. But the real emphasis is on political science. There are some good anecdotes, but the bulk is a lively discussion of political theory.
The introduction makes a compelling point that the Enlightenment's more vocal critics (the Romantics, Horkheimer and Adorno, Alistair MacIntyre) are only seeing one half of the Enlightenment, namely the sovereignty of reason & experience over tradition & prejudice. The other half the haters aren't taking into account is the theory of sentiment, that natural faculty of the imagination by which we can put ourselves in another's place. The theory of sentiment allowed the possibility of a natural morality free not just from divine decree but also from all religious and national partisanship. For the first time in history, it was possible to conceive of loving our neighbor not because he or she shared our religion or came from the same country as us, and not because a god told us to, but because he or she was human, and because humans have rights simply by virtue of being human. Over the course of the book, Pagden traces the development of sentiment from the dismissal of religious dogmatism to a world-embracing cosmopolitanism. The fleshing out of this theory of sentiment makes up the bulk of the book. I found that it really opened up the major thinkers for me, and introduced me to some (Pufendorf, Wolff, Mazzini) that I had never met.
But here are some of my problems with Pagden's method. 1) He calls attention to some major omissions in the theory of sentiment -- the Englightenment thinkers' insufficient attention to the equality of women, the application of scientific reasoning to race (phrenology, etc.) -- but doesn't adequately explore them. These are still live issues in our culture today (didn't Pagden see Django Unchained with Leo DiCaprio's amazing speech about phrenology?) and create holes in his argument, and so deserve a little more than a passing glance. This omission is due in part to the fact that 2) his is an aristocratic form of history writing. He is interested in what the Great Men said to one another, what they read and what they wrote. If Lesser Men perverted their words to justify the violence of the French Revolution or slavery, well, that's not really the Enlightenment thinkers' fault. I have to pull a BS card on that line of reasoning. But the real problem is that 3) the whole sweep of the book struck me as teleological and somewhat messianistic, with Kant, Diderot, Locke, Voltaire, and co. being crammed into the role of the messiah, along with Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin, of course. I can't help but feel that, for American readers, there's a kind of originalist politics hidden inside, and perhaps not because that's the author's politics but only because he wasn't willing enough to show where and how far the Enlightenment thinkers went wrong. Pagden hints at readings of more recent thinkers like Isaiah Berlin and Richard Rorty in the conclusion but doesn't go nearly far enough, which is a shame because by looking backwards and constantly talking about only the Great Men, Pagden remains committed to a conservative and outdated form of intellectual hero worship.
Complaints aside, I'm glad I read it and think intelligent people could really get a lot out of it.
The introduction makes a compelling point that the Enlightenment's more vocal critics (the Romantics, Horkheimer and Adorno, Alistair MacIntyre) are only seeing one half of the Enlightenment, namely the sovereignty of reason & experience over tradition & prejudice. The other half the haters aren't taking into account is the theory of sentiment, that natural faculty of the imagination by which we can put ourselves in another's place. The theory of sentiment allowed the possibility of a natural morality free not just from divine decree but also from all religious and national partisanship. For the first time in history, it was possible to conceive of loving our neighbor not because he or she shared our religion or came from the same country as us, and not because a god told us to, but because he or she was human, and because humans have rights simply by virtue of being human. Over the course of the book, Pagden traces the development of sentiment from the dismissal of religious dogmatism to a world-embracing cosmopolitanism. The fleshing out of this theory of sentiment makes up the bulk of the book. I found that it really opened up the major thinkers for me, and introduced me to some (Pufendorf, Wolff, Mazzini) that I had never met.
But here are some of my problems with Pagden's method. 1) He calls attention to some major omissions in the theory of sentiment -- the Englightenment thinkers' insufficient attention to the equality of women, the application of scientific reasoning to race (phrenology, etc.) -- but doesn't adequately explore them. These are still live issues in our culture today (didn't Pagden see Django Unchained with Leo DiCaprio's amazing speech about phrenology?) and create holes in his argument, and so deserve a little more than a passing glance. This omission is due in part to the fact that 2) his is an aristocratic form of history writing. He is interested in what the Great Men said to one another, what they read and what they wrote. If Lesser Men perverted their words to justify the violence of the French Revolution or slavery, well, that's not really the Enlightenment thinkers' fault. I have to pull a BS card on that line of reasoning. But the real problem is that 3) the whole sweep of the book struck me as teleological and somewhat messianistic, with Kant, Diderot, Locke, Voltaire, and co. being crammed into the role of the messiah, along with Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin, of course. I can't help but feel that, for American readers, there's a kind of originalist politics hidden inside, and perhaps not because that's the author's politics but only because he wasn't willing enough to show where and how far the Enlightenment thinkers went wrong. Pagden hints at readings of more recent thinkers like Isaiah Berlin and Richard Rorty in the conclusion but doesn't go nearly far enough, which is a shame because by looking backwards and constantly talking about only the Great Men, Pagden remains committed to a conservative and outdated form of intellectual hero worship.
Complaints aside, I'm glad I read it and think intelligent people could really get a lot out of it.
July 4, 2022
This book deserves multiple readings. I’m shocked at how much fun it was to read, but there is so much information in such a small space that I’m a bit overwhelmed. Pagden’s central thesis is for the continued value of the enlightenment by showing how critical it was in throwing off our reliance on religious dogma, thus freeing us to think beyond the accepted boundaries. Tied up in all this is the movement toward a truly secular understanding of human rights, and government. Multi-culturalism—that idea being wielded like a club by pundits of our own time—has it’s beginnings in the writers of the enlightenment. This book is all about ideas and Pagden shows how these grew and changed through dialogs between writers of the time. Through this book I was introduced to an exciting assortment of writers, most of whom were new to me.
Pagden is a brilliant historian and apparently a polyglot; quotations in French, German, and Latin are sprinkled throughout the book. The work is written to be read by normal blokes like me, but veers into analysis that at times left me feeling lost. His discussion of the French Revolution left me wondering if I had missed something, then I realized the lack was my own void concerning this particular portion of history. A quick read of the French Revolution article on Wikipedia answered my questions and allowed me to return to Pagden’s book having placed myself on the map of history, as it were. This motivation to read other books, to expand my own knowledge, and to question my assumptions recurred throughout my reading. By the end of the book I had a long list of bibliographic references that will no doubt take me years to get through.
A note about editions. The audiobook version I listened to is narrated by Robert Blumenfeld, who does a wonderful job with the—to my American ears—foreign names and quotations. However, he has a rushed cadence that is tiring and can be a bothersome distraction from the prose quality. His reading is just a bit too quick, not allowing enough time to digest a sentence before rushing into the next one. The printed edition contains a bibliography and index that is a treasure trove of research material. Personally, I had trouble getting through the printed edition, so purchased the audio version and bounced back and forth between them.
Pagden is a brilliant historian and apparently a polyglot; quotations in French, German, and Latin are sprinkled throughout the book. The work is written to be read by normal blokes like me, but veers into analysis that at times left me feeling lost. His discussion of the French Revolution left me wondering if I had missed something, then I realized the lack was my own void concerning this particular portion of history. A quick read of the French Revolution article on Wikipedia answered my questions and allowed me to return to Pagden’s book having placed myself on the map of history, as it were. This motivation to read other books, to expand my own knowledge, and to question my assumptions recurred throughout my reading. By the end of the book I had a long list of bibliographic references that will no doubt take me years to get through.
A note about editions. The audiobook version I listened to is narrated by Robert Blumenfeld, who does a wonderful job with the—to my American ears—foreign names and quotations. However, he has a rushed cadence that is tiring and can be a bothersome distraction from the prose quality. His reading is just a bit too quick, not allowing enough time to digest a sentence before rushing into the next one. The printed edition contains a bibliography and index that is a treasure trove of research material. Personally, I had trouble getting through the printed edition, so purchased the audio version and bounced back and forth between them.
April 8, 2018
Professor Anthony Pagden’s, The Enlightenment And Why It Still Matters provided me a new perspective on an important period in intellectual development. He focuses on how the the critical thinkers of that period helped to develop the concept of cosmopolitianism – the idea that humanity could evolve to a place, “ that would one day lead to the creation of a universal civilization capable of making all indiviuals independent, autonomous, freed of dictates from above and below, self-knowing, and dependant soley upon one another for survival.” (p. 371) – an inspriring vision.
Professor Pagden is a thoughtful and careful author. He takes the readers methodically through the period, introducing people many writers on the Enlightenment ignore. The reader will get to know Bougainville, Saunderson, Wolff, and Vattel; not in that order. The reader will come to know the common names of the period in a different – well light – Condorcet, Diderot, Rousseau, Saftesbury, Voltaire and especially Kant.
This was a book I was very glad to have picked-up and spent the time to carefully read. It gave me a new understanding of Enlightenment period and a renewed belief that it does really still matter.
Professor Pagden is a thoughtful and careful author. He takes the readers methodically through the period, introducing people many writers on the Enlightenment ignore. The reader will get to know Bougainville, Saunderson, Wolff, and Vattel; not in that order. The reader will come to know the common names of the period in a different – well light – Condorcet, Diderot, Rousseau, Saftesbury, Voltaire and especially Kant.
This was a book I was very glad to have picked-up and spent the time to carefully read. It gave me a new understanding of Enlightenment period and a renewed belief that it does really still matter.
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December 29, 2017I tried - I really did. But the writing was so horrendous, I couldn't read more than a paragraph without my eyes crossing. Entire pages had to be read several times over to even follow where a sentence led, much less where it finally ended up. I really wanted to get through it, but I couldn't make it more than two chapters.
May 4, 2019
An interesting if somewhat disorganized look at the Enlightenment. Pagden covers a lot of the normal ground, proceeding thematically rather than trying to cover each major thinker as a unit. He's also big on the Enlightenment as a conversation, a debate over essential questions of politics, morality, religion, epistemology, etc. He has a really clear explanation of how the Enlightenment challenged and largely overthrew a medieval system of thought based in scholasticism and natural law thinking.
Pagden's big focus, and arguably his most original contribution in this book, is his discussion of how exploration and interactions with foreign peoples shook up European thought in this time span. He goes into all kinds of travel narratives and showed how engagement with and imaginings of foreign societies shaped the Enlightenment. For example, natural law thought assumed that all peoples could access and reason their way to certain moral truths, but the discovery and study of numerous tribal societies showed no inkling of these supposed universals. Debates about the state of nature and the natural condition of human beings were deeply shaped by readings o tribal societies, especially the in the Americas. They seemed to Europeans to be a more raw and essential version of human being, and how they behaved in this state appeared as hard evidence of what the core of human nature was, although people didn't agree on how to interpret their thought. Many Enlightenment thinkers looked to China and Islamic societies in their studies of law, politics, and the development of ideas, especially Montesquieu. In fact, if you were going to really critique the Enlightenment, I'd say you should start with the fact that so many of these thinkers came to unduly expansive judgments about these peoples and human nature in general based merely on what they read. They generally dismissed the ideas of the explorers and social scientists who actually met these peoples, haughtily saying they weren't equipped to interpret what they actually witnessed.. In this case, many Enlightenment thinkers were deeply lacking in intellectual humility.
I did find the book to be a bit thin on "why it still matters." Pagden makes a familiar case that the Enlightenment set the ground for modern liberal and democratic politics as well as our discourses of rights, global governance, and secularism. He also discusses the critics of the Enlightenment, from rightists and communitarians who objected to the assault on tradition and that neglect of man as a social, communal being to leftists who saw the Enlightenment's ostensible pursuit of "universal civilization" and hyper-rationalism as the root of scientific racism and later crimes of modernity. I think the rightist critique is actually stronger here, given that Enlightenment liberalism always seems to be struggling against the forces of tribe, faith, and nation. Beyond that, he's a bit vague on why it still matters. I think for me Pinker still has the best argument about why the Enlightenment still matters. If you have read him you could probably pass on this book, but if you haven't this is a pretty good survey of the more weedy ideological disputes of the Enlightenment.
Pagden's big focus, and arguably his most original contribution in this book, is his discussion of how exploration and interactions with foreign peoples shook up European thought in this time span. He goes into all kinds of travel narratives and showed how engagement with and imaginings of foreign societies shaped the Enlightenment. For example, natural law thought assumed that all peoples could access and reason their way to certain moral truths, but the discovery and study of numerous tribal societies showed no inkling of these supposed universals. Debates about the state of nature and the natural condition of human beings were deeply shaped by readings o tribal societies, especially the in the Americas. They seemed to Europeans to be a more raw and essential version of human being, and how they behaved in this state appeared as hard evidence of what the core of human nature was, although people didn't agree on how to interpret their thought. Many Enlightenment thinkers looked to China and Islamic societies in their studies of law, politics, and the development of ideas, especially Montesquieu. In fact, if you were going to really critique the Enlightenment, I'd say you should start with the fact that so many of these thinkers came to unduly expansive judgments about these peoples and human nature in general based merely on what they read. They generally dismissed the ideas of the explorers and social scientists who actually met these peoples, haughtily saying they weren't equipped to interpret what they actually witnessed.. In this case, many Enlightenment thinkers were deeply lacking in intellectual humility.
I did find the book to be a bit thin on "why it still matters." Pagden makes a familiar case that the Enlightenment set the ground for modern liberal and democratic politics as well as our discourses of rights, global governance, and secularism. He also discusses the critics of the Enlightenment, from rightists and communitarians who objected to the assault on tradition and that neglect of man as a social, communal being to leftists who saw the Enlightenment's ostensible pursuit of "universal civilization" and hyper-rationalism as the root of scientific racism and later crimes of modernity. I think the rightist critique is actually stronger here, given that Enlightenment liberalism always seems to be struggling against the forces of tribe, faith, and nation. Beyond that, he's a bit vague on why it still matters. I think for me Pinker still has the best argument about why the Enlightenment still matters. If you have read him you could probably pass on this book, but if you haven't this is a pretty good survey of the more weedy ideological disputes of the Enlightenment.
January 16, 2016
The book it's not a book on the history or the philosophy of the enlightenment age, but, rather, a chronicle on how they thought about thinking about science and the science of man.
He characterizes the Enlightenment by it's "dynamic and cosmopolitan" approach to thinking. The dynamic approach rejected knowledge based only on tradition, authority, revelation, or pretending to know things that weren't really known, and the cosmopolitan approach made the thinkers base there beliefs on logic, empirical, and analytical methods (when they were at their best which was not always!). Their method of thought is a guidebook for critical reasoning and is still completely relevant to today's times.
He starts the enlightenment age with Hobbs and says that most of the rest of the century is spent humanizing Hobbs and putting his thought into the Stoic, Epicurean or the Skeptical camp. Mostly this is in the first third of the book when he is talking about philosophy and natural philosophy (science).
Everybody needs to read at least one book on this time period, and this probably is the best book available on audible to introduce the topic. The author is probably not a philosopher or a pure historian and therefore, writes an accessible and easy to follow book for the listener to be able to follow the dialog of the the "Enlightenment Project" and presents the ideas of the time period by looking at a topic as if it were one long conversations between enlightenment thinkers.
He looks at one topic, takes one or two of the great thinkers of the topic and covers that topic in depth and than adds what others during that period thought about that period of time. He'll spend two hours on Tahiti and he'll tell you why it was so important at that time period.
I read a lot books on science and they often point me to the importance of The Enlightenment Age. This book tells me why that period of time was so important and is still relevant to today and how we should approach critical reasoning today. There doesn't seem to be that many good books on audible on this period of time and this one is probably the best overview of the time period.
He characterizes the Enlightenment by it's "dynamic and cosmopolitan" approach to thinking. The dynamic approach rejected knowledge based only on tradition, authority, revelation, or pretending to know things that weren't really known, and the cosmopolitan approach made the thinkers base there beliefs on logic, empirical, and analytical methods (when they were at their best which was not always!). Their method of thought is a guidebook for critical reasoning and is still completely relevant to today's times.
He starts the enlightenment age with Hobbs and says that most of the rest of the century is spent humanizing Hobbs and putting his thought into the Stoic, Epicurean or the Skeptical camp. Mostly this is in the first third of the book when he is talking about philosophy and natural philosophy (science).
Everybody needs to read at least one book on this time period, and this probably is the best book available on audible to introduce the topic. The author is probably not a philosopher or a pure historian and therefore, writes an accessible and easy to follow book for the listener to be able to follow the dialog of the the "Enlightenment Project" and presents the ideas of the time period by looking at a topic as if it were one long conversations between enlightenment thinkers.
He looks at one topic, takes one or two of the great thinkers of the topic and covers that topic in depth and than adds what others during that period thought about that period of time. He'll spend two hours on Tahiti and he'll tell you why it was so important at that time period.
I read a lot books on science and they often point me to the importance of The Enlightenment Age. This book tells me why that period of time was so important and is still relevant to today and how we should approach critical reasoning today. There doesn't seem to be that many good books on audible on this period of time and this one is probably the best overview of the time period.
August 20, 2021
I am looking to see if a solution to the great problems of today lies in Enlightenment thinking. I’ve read how the American founding fathers were influenced by the Greeks and the Romans and they were mainly Deists. Pagden’s book took me to a deeper understanding of the political and philosophical influences that American political and judicial institutions. It calibrated me to the Thirty Years War ending religious governments in Europe and also how Enlightenment thinkers broke the lock Scholasticism had on philosophy and freedom of thought in Europe. Enlightenment thinkers fostered a new spirit of scientific reasoning, personal freedom, equality, and toleration. Their rationalist and empiricist thinking were well known and influenced the lives of the educated and upper classes in the Seventeenth Century in Europe and in the colonies. There is, however, no coverage of direct links, to the founding documents of the United States—leaving additional homework for me to do. As Pagden notes at the end of his book there was also much criticism of the Enlightenment by conservatives for causing the French Revolutions and spawning upheaval movements into the nineteenth century across Europe—apparently an attempt to provide both sides of the story, nonetheless his thinking is very much on the liberal side. It reveals an interest in Enlightenment influences on the development of liberal democracies as well discussing a cosmopolitanism that underlies current international institutions. This book was a good starting point for me to dig further into the philosophical movements of this era. Will the liberal democracies and international institutions of today be able to survive competing systems and the crises of the near future springing from population, climate, and forces of reaction, or is Enlightenment 2.0 needed? That’s what I want to know.
August 8, 2018
I wrote a scathing and harsh review on this book. Perhaps I should have been more nuanced in my review, and perhaps I should evaluate (and value) the book a little bit more for what it is - rather than what it isn't. So let me try to come up with a more thoughtful response (for the original review see below).
Anthony Pagden tries to explain what the Enlightenment was (and what it wasn't). He does this by zooming in on particular events, stories and persons from (mainly) the eighteenth century. All this is meant as a plea for a re-evaluation of the Enlightenment ideals in the wake of the postmodernist and communitarian onslaught in the twentieth century.
According t0 Pagden, the Enlightenment was, ultimately, the quest to found a 'science of man'. Since the 'science of the world' worked so well - especially Newton's mechanics - philosophers tried to apply the same discovered method of searching for truth (i.e. the scentific method) in the terms of seventeenth century: raising a system of definitions, axioms, and deductions, in which observation and experiment verify the axioms).
With a template of how to conduct science (i.e. Newton's natural philosophy); with an ever-increasing set of data about different, then unknown, cultures all over the world; with some of the brightest minds of the eighteenth century all set on the same goal; the Enlightenment ended in Kant's formulation of a cosmopolitan right (i.e. human rights) as opposed to civil and state rights.
In short: the ideas of Hobbes, Locke and Hume ended in a theoretical understanding of how human beings thought (one could say this is the foundation of psychological science). Adam Smith added to this that 'sympathy' was the driving force behind humanity: people want to feel good about themselves, and seeing others feel well is part of feeling good. For the Enlightenment thinkers commerce was a cosmopolitan ideal: the whole world be connected and interdependent, preventing the senseless wars of the past centuries.
During this same epoch, there was a radical change in how mankind thought about rights and jurisprudence: natural law was view more and more as litererally that: morality followed natural laws, just as objects falling towards the Earth follow natural laws. Discovering these natural laws gave insight into the universality of what makes human beings take: seek pleasure and avoid pain.
Another major trend was the discovery of primitive cultures (i.e. 'savages'). Travellers wrote books and journals about the customs, traditions and religions of these newly discovered and exotic peoples; philosophers studied these reports from the armchairs and came to the conclusion that cultural relativism was the only option left. At least scientifically - the existence of different mores and customs didn't imply that other cultures weren't inferior to European cultures.
Philosophy led to psychology; psychology led to sociology (i.e. the study of European cultures) and anthropology (i.e. the study of foreign cultures); sociology and anthropology led to new moral ideals (i.e. Kant's cosmopolitan right and the need for international, human law). This is, according to Pagden, the story of the Enlightenment. It all culminated in the French Revolution, in which these ideals were put into practice and ended with the blade of the guillotine (itself an application of the valued scientific insights) cutting the necks of many innocents.
The Romantic movement, frustrated as these German intellectuals were by the defeat of their Prussian armies by Napoleon, went berserk and started a smearing campaign that the marxists and the later postmodernists (via Herder, Hegel, Heidegger, etc.) would use to portray the Enlightenment ideals as bourgeouis power play and highly explosive stuff. This idea, which is still prevalent - too widespread, according to me - in contemporary mainstream media, politics and society, leads to cultural depression and self-hate. It is rather refreshing to look at the statistics of our contemporary world, look back at those same statistics around the year 1700, and conclude that the ideals of the Enlightenment - individual freedom, intellectual development, human rights, rational thinking - have brought us some much and that this smearing campaign has been mostly ineffective. This is also what Pagden exclaims in the last few paragraphs of the book: according to him the Enlightenment is alive and well, especially so in the European Union (which is, according to him, a culmination of Kant's ideas). It is worth defending and caring about.
The book itself isn't written terribly well. This is why my first response after putting it down was to write my original, scathing review. The strength of Pagden is his use of personal anecdotes: one learns a lot about contemporary events and ideas when dealing with actual people - instead of dealing only with a history of abstract ideas. His main thesis - that the Enlightenment is the origin of a philosophical history/a science of man - is rather accurate and cleverly put. It is also supported by a long list of references and notes. But the book really lacks a structure, which makes it really hard to grasp the main lines of thought. Towards the end, things become somewhat less vague and mystic, yet by then the reader has lost the opportunity to fully grasp all the ideas conveyed earlier. One could of course re-read the book, but one could also ask a writer to offer some better structure to help the reader connect, and understand, the material offered. I wonder if someone who doesn't know beforehand about the ideas and persons involved in eighteenth century Enlightenment can use this book to understand this historical epoch better.
------------------------------------------
ORIGINAL REVIEW:
Terribly written book. Easy to follow, but Pagden could have done with at least 100 pages less than the book now contains. It is really long winded, full of personal anecdotes of the thinkers involved, and at times it seems the book lacks a coherent structure. I can't imagine anyone not familiar with the thinkers and/or ideas involved, getting anything out of this book.
The Enlightenment: And Why It Still Matters (2012) had the potential to be truly gripping; it has ended up as a complete disaster.
Anthony Pagden tries to explain what the Enlightenment was (and what it wasn't). He does this by zooming in on particular events, stories and persons from (mainly) the eighteenth century. All this is meant as a plea for a re-evaluation of the Enlightenment ideals in the wake of the postmodernist and communitarian onslaught in the twentieth century.
According t0 Pagden, the Enlightenment was, ultimately, the quest to found a 'science of man'. Since the 'science of the world' worked so well - especially Newton's mechanics - philosophers tried to apply the same discovered method of searching for truth (i.e. the scentific method) in the terms of seventeenth century: raising a system of definitions, axioms, and deductions, in which observation and experiment verify the axioms).
With a template of how to conduct science (i.e. Newton's natural philosophy); with an ever-increasing set of data about different, then unknown, cultures all over the world; with some of the brightest minds of the eighteenth century all set on the same goal; the Enlightenment ended in Kant's formulation of a cosmopolitan right (i.e. human rights) as opposed to civil and state rights.
In short: the ideas of Hobbes, Locke and Hume ended in a theoretical understanding of how human beings thought (one could say this is the foundation of psychological science). Adam Smith added to this that 'sympathy' was the driving force behind humanity: people want to feel good about themselves, and seeing others feel well is part of feeling good. For the Enlightenment thinkers commerce was a cosmopolitan ideal: the whole world be connected and interdependent, preventing the senseless wars of the past centuries.
During this same epoch, there was a radical change in how mankind thought about rights and jurisprudence: natural law was view more and more as litererally that: morality followed natural laws, just as objects falling towards the Earth follow natural laws. Discovering these natural laws gave insight into the universality of what makes human beings take: seek pleasure and avoid pain.
Another major trend was the discovery of primitive cultures (i.e. 'savages'). Travellers wrote books and journals about the customs, traditions and religions of these newly discovered and exotic peoples; philosophers studied these reports from the armchairs and came to the conclusion that cultural relativism was the only option left. At least scientifically - the existence of different mores and customs didn't imply that other cultures weren't inferior to European cultures.
Philosophy led to psychology; psychology led to sociology (i.e. the study of European cultures) and anthropology (i.e. the study of foreign cultures); sociology and anthropology led to new moral ideals (i.e. Kant's cosmopolitan right and the need for international, human law). This is, according to Pagden, the story of the Enlightenment. It all culminated in the French Revolution, in which these ideals were put into practice and ended with the blade of the guillotine (itself an application of the valued scientific insights) cutting the necks of many innocents.
The Romantic movement, frustrated as these German intellectuals were by the defeat of their Prussian armies by Napoleon, went berserk and started a smearing campaign that the marxists and the later postmodernists (via Herder, Hegel, Heidegger, etc.) would use to portray the Enlightenment ideals as bourgeouis power play and highly explosive stuff. This idea, which is still prevalent - too widespread, according to me - in contemporary mainstream media, politics and society, leads to cultural depression and self-hate. It is rather refreshing to look at the statistics of our contemporary world, look back at those same statistics around the year 1700, and conclude that the ideals of the Enlightenment - individual freedom, intellectual development, human rights, rational thinking - have brought us some much and that this smearing campaign has been mostly ineffective. This is also what Pagden exclaims in the last few paragraphs of the book: according to him the Enlightenment is alive and well, especially so in the European Union (which is, according to him, a culmination of Kant's ideas). It is worth defending and caring about.
The book itself isn't written terribly well. This is why my first response after putting it down was to write my original, scathing review. The strength of Pagden is his use of personal anecdotes: one learns a lot about contemporary events and ideas when dealing with actual people - instead of dealing only with a history of abstract ideas. His main thesis - that the Enlightenment is the origin of a philosophical history/a science of man - is rather accurate and cleverly put. It is also supported by a long list of references and notes. But the book really lacks a structure, which makes it really hard to grasp the main lines of thought. Towards the end, things become somewhat less vague and mystic, yet by then the reader has lost the opportunity to fully grasp all the ideas conveyed earlier. One could of course re-read the book, but one could also ask a writer to offer some better structure to help the reader connect, and understand, the material offered. I wonder if someone who doesn't know beforehand about the ideas and persons involved in eighteenth century Enlightenment can use this book to understand this historical epoch better.
------------------------------------------
ORIGINAL REVIEW:
Terribly written book. Easy to follow, but Pagden could have done with at least 100 pages less than the book now contains. It is really long winded, full of personal anecdotes of the thinkers involved, and at times it seems the book lacks a coherent structure. I can't imagine anyone not familiar with the thinkers and/or ideas involved, getting anything out of this book.
The Enlightenment: And Why It Still Matters (2012) had the potential to be truly gripping; it has ended up as a complete disaster.
August 8, 2022
Can't blame a book on the entire Enlightenment movement for being too extensive, I guess. The fact that this book still manages to explain the relations between the many concepts and schools of thought rather elegantly speaks more for it than against.
As a first foray into the subject in your leisure time, however, it can seem overwhelming or like too much information. Even relatively minor concepts tend to be explained in great detail. In the end I felt like I had already forgotten many of the major points in this sea of information. Also, the whole "And Why It Still Matters" part is rather understated – if only because our entire Western civilization is a product of Enlightenment philosophy. So basically, every line in this book is why it still matters. It just doesn't draw all too many explicit connections between the Age of Enlightenment and modern phenomena.
Are there easier, more succinct ways to get into individual concepts or thinkers of the Enlightenment age? Sure. But as far as comprehensive treatments of the bigger picture go, this is a great place to start, as long as you're fine with not needing to grasp every detail when the information gets more dense. Definitely not a book I could answer a quiz on, but I have a better idea of things overall.
As a first foray into the subject in your leisure time, however, it can seem overwhelming or like too much information. Even relatively minor concepts tend to be explained in great detail. In the end I felt like I had already forgotten many of the major points in this sea of information. Also, the whole "And Why It Still Matters" part is rather understated – if only because our entire Western civilization is a product of Enlightenment philosophy. So basically, every line in this book is why it still matters. It just doesn't draw all too many explicit connections between the Age of Enlightenment and modern phenomena.
Are there easier, more succinct ways to get into individual concepts or thinkers of the Enlightenment age? Sure. But as far as comprehensive treatments of the bigger picture go, this is a great place to start, as long as you're fine with not needing to grasp every detail when the information gets more dense. Definitely not a book I could answer a quiz on, but I have a better idea of things overall.
July 8, 2021
Straight hagiography. For how contemptuous this guy is of religion, he knows how to whitewash history for his ideology.
No, my dude, you can’t justify your pals by saying they merely *weren’t enlightened enough* on race, gender and the like’ when core features of their work legitimated the racism, misogyny and colonialism of the 19th and 20th centuries.
They may have invented your concept of human rights but don’t look at me with a straight face and tell me they intended those rights to be received by anyone other than white European males. Be honest with yourself. Confess your sins. Don’t make up the history you wish was true.
No, my dude, you can’t justify your pals by saying they merely *weren’t enlightened enough* on race, gender and the like’ when core features of their work legitimated the racism, misogyny and colonialism of the 19th and 20th centuries.
They may have invented your concept of human rights but don’t look at me with a straight face and tell me they intended those rights to be received by anyone other than white European males. Be honest with yourself. Confess your sins. Don’t make up the history you wish was true.
February 8, 2014
Sorry to disagree with most of the other reviews, but I found this book unreadable. I gave it 2 stars instead of the 1 I think it deserves, since the author packed it with an excessive amount of detail. But the end result was a book extremely boring and dry to read. Each page is full of philosophers so it was impossible to keep them separate. Some examples at random:
Page 29 mentions Grotius, Spinosa, Malebranche, Bayle, D'Alembert.
Page 39 mentions Pomponazzi, Aristotle, Averroes, St. Augustine, Pigafetta, Magellan, Galileo, Demosthenes.
Page 56 mentions Hobbes, Grotius, Locke, Rousseau, Tacitus, Plutarch.
Page 81 was better. It only mentions Newton, Locke, Leibniz.
That's 19 already on only 4 pages. By Zipf's Law this can't continue for the full 415 pages of the book, but there sure are a lot of names.
In addition, the author continually skips around to the Greeks of 2300 years ago, the Reformation of the 1600s and the enlightenment of the 1700s. In order to understand this book, I believe you have to know all of these philosophical theories. If you already know that, why read this book? I would call this book a PhD exam refresher book in philosophical theories of the Enlightenment. What I would like is a "Cliff Notes" version of the book that I can understand.
In addition, the book subtitle includes the phrase "And why it still matters." So far the author doesn't seem to address any of that, and after half the book, I simply give up. I can't afford any more time trying to read this tome.
Page 29 mentions Grotius, Spinosa, Malebranche, Bayle, D'Alembert.
Page 39 mentions Pomponazzi, Aristotle, Averroes, St. Augustine, Pigafetta, Magellan, Galileo, Demosthenes.
Page 56 mentions Hobbes, Grotius, Locke, Rousseau, Tacitus, Plutarch.
Page 81 was better. It only mentions Newton, Locke, Leibniz.
That's 19 already on only 4 pages. By Zipf's Law this can't continue for the full 415 pages of the book, but there sure are a lot of names.
In addition, the author continually skips around to the Greeks of 2300 years ago, the Reformation of the 1600s and the enlightenment of the 1700s. In order to understand this book, I believe you have to know all of these philosophical theories. If you already know that, why read this book? I would call this book a PhD exam refresher book in philosophical theories of the Enlightenment. What I would like is a "Cliff Notes" version of the book that I can understand.
In addition, the book subtitle includes the phrase "And why it still matters." So far the author doesn't seem to address any of that, and after half the book, I simply give up. I can't afford any more time trying to read this tome.
June 2, 2020
Pagden's book "The Enlightenment" is intellectual history, rather than the history of politicians, scientists, or merchants. And that's OK, since the Enlightenment started with and was driven by thinkers and writers. Because people today, wherever they live, are all children of this watershed movement in human thought, we need to know who those people were, what arguments they had with each other and with their opponents, how they influenced their societies, how they still influence society today.
So, despite an intriguing discussion of Napoleon as an enlightened ruler gone wrong, Pagden spends little time on the other big names of enlightenment politics, whether enlightened despots like the Greats (Frederick and Catherine) or republican icons like Franklin, Washington and Jefferson. This book spends even less time on the inventors and early industrialists who turned enlightenment ideals into the Industrial Revolution. But there are plenty of other books that do.
The point of this book is to demonstrate the promise of the book's subtitle, to show why the Enlightenment still matters, by defending it against the critics who have unfairly turned modern thought against its own Enlightenment origins. Padgen is correct that such philosophers as Montesquieu, Diderot, Rousseau, Voltaire, Hume, Adam Smith, Locke, and Kant have contributed more to the modern world than we recognize. Pagden is also right that these humane and ingenious thinkers have valuable insights to offer us today.
Against liberal postmodernists and multiculturalists on the one hand and conservatives on the other who yearn for a return of religion and localism, Pagden defends the Enlightenment against charges that its focus on reason was, well, unreasonable, and that its ideal of world peace and cosmopolitanism that made all people brothers was unachievable.
Pagden succeeds in showing that the Enlightenment was more complex than its critics give it credit for. Yes, Enlightenment philosophes supported reason but they also had a place for sensibility and thought that humans were naturally affectionate towards each other. This affection was the only just basis for building a society where citizens could live in freedom and with dignity. Through reasonable discussion, the enlighteners hoped to help this affection spread across the globe and win the day over the war, prejudice and oppression that had darkened history since the first priest crowned the first king.
As to cosmopolitanism, though the world is still made up of nation-states that still fight wars against each other (and their own people), yet all nations have come to accept that world peace is a goal worth striving for and that all people deserve basic rights and respect. This is the basis for international law and such international institutions like the UN, the World Court and the European Union, all of which 18th century philosophes called for and predicted would come about in a more enlightened future. As imperfect as these global structures are, they show that the nations of the world are still committed to the Enlightenment project of world peace.
To their credit, Enlighteners denounced the imperialism and colonialism of their own European nations. Instead of the bonds of colonial subjection, philosophers called for a world united in voluntary relations of commerce. Boy, did they get what they wished for. Though it's hard to imagine that lovers of personal freedom like Voltaire and Locke would be impressed with today's regime of globalized trade dominated by large corporations and such oligarchic arrangements as NAFTA and the World Trade Organization.
It's a major fault of Pagden's text that, while he traces out the results of enlightenment ideals up to the present day in such areas as separation of church and state he says almost nothing about how the enlighteners' belief in the civilizing power of global trade led to today's world of consumerism and overconsumption for rich nations and poverty and exploitation for the nations of the global South.
Notably, I couldn't find the word "corporation" once in Pagden's 415-page text. His focus on the history of ideas and apparent disinterest in Marxist and other materialist approaches to history seems to blind him to the relation between ideas and the global realities of market economics and ecology.
Pagden makes a good case that critics of the Enlightenment are wrong to blame 18th-century thinkers for the horrors of the 19th and 20th centuries from colonialism to world wars to genocide. But he leaves the reader wondering if the enlighteners might still be to blame, at least partially, for a global market economy gone out of control.
In considering why the Enlightenment still matters, the question of trade is a crucial one. Since the twin evils of global poverty and economic inequality on the one hand and ecological overshoot (especially climate change) on the other are the biggest problems facing humanity today, and since both problems are connected to, or even caused by, runaway global trade, what does the Enlightenment have to say about that? Unfortunately, Pagden offers no guidance.
Overall, Pagden's book is a necessary corrective against critics on both the right and left who would throw out the Enlightenment and with it, some of the fundamental expectations of modern government worldwide, including democracy and human rights.
This book begs the question of the role of commerce and trade even in the 18th century itself (the text says little about the slave trade, for example). Pagden's narrative even more strongly begs the question of how the peoples of the world can get along today in a world where the enlighteners got their wish to kick to the curb both crown and mitre.
Thanks to the Enlightenment, the powers of religion and prejudice that ruled the Dark Ages have been definitively supplanted by the powers of global trade, for both good and ill. That definitely matters today, as Pagden argues, as theocrats and other religious conservatives have recently started to make louder and more impactful threats against the secular world order.
But Pagden's concern with political preachers and menacing mullahs seems to keep him from seeing the bigger threat posed by corporate CEOs and the global trade bureaucrats who are working hard to realize the Enlightement's goal of one-world government, but without all that pesky individual freedom and human dignity so valued by Montesquieu, Locke, and Jefferson.
So, despite an intriguing discussion of Napoleon as an enlightened ruler gone wrong, Pagden spends little time on the other big names of enlightenment politics, whether enlightened despots like the Greats (Frederick and Catherine) or republican icons like Franklin, Washington and Jefferson. This book spends even less time on the inventors and early industrialists who turned enlightenment ideals into the Industrial Revolution. But there are plenty of other books that do.
The point of this book is to demonstrate the promise of the book's subtitle, to show why the Enlightenment still matters, by defending it against the critics who have unfairly turned modern thought against its own Enlightenment origins. Padgen is correct that such philosophers as Montesquieu, Diderot, Rousseau, Voltaire, Hume, Adam Smith, Locke, and Kant have contributed more to the modern world than we recognize. Pagden is also right that these humane and ingenious thinkers have valuable insights to offer us today.
Against liberal postmodernists and multiculturalists on the one hand and conservatives on the other who yearn for a return of religion and localism, Pagden defends the Enlightenment against charges that its focus on reason was, well, unreasonable, and that its ideal of world peace and cosmopolitanism that made all people brothers was unachievable.
Pagden succeeds in showing that the Enlightenment was more complex than its critics give it credit for. Yes, Enlightenment philosophes supported reason but they also had a place for sensibility and thought that humans were naturally affectionate towards each other. This affection was the only just basis for building a society where citizens could live in freedom and with dignity. Through reasonable discussion, the enlighteners hoped to help this affection spread across the globe and win the day over the war, prejudice and oppression that had darkened history since the first priest crowned the first king.
As to cosmopolitanism, though the world is still made up of nation-states that still fight wars against each other (and their own people), yet all nations have come to accept that world peace is a goal worth striving for and that all people deserve basic rights and respect. This is the basis for international law and such international institutions like the UN, the World Court and the European Union, all of which 18th century philosophes called for and predicted would come about in a more enlightened future. As imperfect as these global structures are, they show that the nations of the world are still committed to the Enlightenment project of world peace.
To their credit, Enlighteners denounced the imperialism and colonialism of their own European nations. Instead of the bonds of colonial subjection, philosophers called for a world united in voluntary relations of commerce. Boy, did they get what they wished for. Though it's hard to imagine that lovers of personal freedom like Voltaire and Locke would be impressed with today's regime of globalized trade dominated by large corporations and such oligarchic arrangements as NAFTA and the World Trade Organization.
It's a major fault of Pagden's text that, while he traces out the results of enlightenment ideals up to the present day in such areas as separation of church and state he says almost nothing about how the enlighteners' belief in the civilizing power of global trade led to today's world of consumerism and overconsumption for rich nations and poverty and exploitation for the nations of the global South.
Notably, I couldn't find the word "corporation" once in Pagden's 415-page text. His focus on the history of ideas and apparent disinterest in Marxist and other materialist approaches to history seems to blind him to the relation between ideas and the global realities of market economics and ecology.
Pagden makes a good case that critics of the Enlightenment are wrong to blame 18th-century thinkers for the horrors of the 19th and 20th centuries from colonialism to world wars to genocide. But he leaves the reader wondering if the enlighteners might still be to blame, at least partially, for a global market economy gone out of control.
In considering why the Enlightenment still matters, the question of trade is a crucial one. Since the twin evils of global poverty and economic inequality on the one hand and ecological overshoot (especially climate change) on the other are the biggest problems facing humanity today, and since both problems are connected to, or even caused by, runaway global trade, what does the Enlightenment have to say about that? Unfortunately, Pagden offers no guidance.
Overall, Pagden's book is a necessary corrective against critics on both the right and left who would throw out the Enlightenment and with it, some of the fundamental expectations of modern government worldwide, including democracy and human rights.
This book begs the question of the role of commerce and trade even in the 18th century itself (the text says little about the slave trade, for example). Pagden's narrative even more strongly begs the question of how the peoples of the world can get along today in a world where the enlighteners got their wish to kick to the curb both crown and mitre.
Thanks to the Enlightenment, the powers of religion and prejudice that ruled the Dark Ages have been definitively supplanted by the powers of global trade, for both good and ill. That definitely matters today, as Pagden argues, as theocrats and other religious conservatives have recently started to make louder and more impactful threats against the secular world order.
But Pagden's concern with political preachers and menacing mullahs seems to keep him from seeing the bigger threat posed by corporate CEOs and the global trade bureaucrats who are working hard to realize the Enlightement's goal of one-world government, but without all that pesky individual freedom and human dignity so valued by Montesquieu, Locke, and Jefferson.
March 29, 2020
I picked this book up on Audible as I was delving into the Enlightenment for a project. In general, this book was a disappointment, but that might possibly be attributed to the medium of audiobooks, and not the book itself. What I looked for was a simple and general narrative of the Enlightenment, focusing on the most famous thinkers, ideas and underlying tendencies. Previously I had mostly delved into the period through references in other books and through more specific periods, people and analyzes. Now, I wanted a general overview. However, in that regard, this book was way to dense and filled with persons and ideas to really constitute such an overview. I listened to the whole thing, but did not feel like I got a much better understanding of the period than I already had, nor did much of the new information really stick. This might somewhat be attributed to the style and writing in the book, but it might also be because of the medium. Such a dense book simply isn't well suited to an audiobook.
In general, this is a book which deserves, and probably necessitates multiple readings and reflections. It is not a book which you can listen to while doing menial tasks or taking the bus, not if you want to get something out of it.
In general, this is a book which deserves, and probably necessitates multiple readings and reflections. It is not a book which you can listen to while doing menial tasks or taking the bus, not if you want to get something out of it.
March 25, 2021
“The Enlightenment” is different in style/structure from many other science or history of thought texts I’ve read recently. Instead of approaching it’s subject in the factual-frame, i.e. summary of cultural background for a thinker / idea, then a series of facts / dates relevant to the cultural milieu for that idea, then an analysis of that idea, and possibly a formal deconstruction, this book approaches it’s subject in a somewhat metaphysical manner. The book’s frame is almost like being in the middle of a conversation with a room full of the great European philosophers of the 1700/early-1800s as a hangers-on/silent spectator.
This style is effective in imbibing in the reader the general evolution of thought/ideas from this cohort of thinkers throughout those decades that they were generating these notions. Unfortunately, similar to the feeling of being in the middle of a vigorous conversation among a group of friends at a dinner party, where you’re the odd-man out, “The Enlightenment'' requires that the reader has some decent familiarity with the thinkers prior to engaging this text. Otherwise, the ideas, names, and motifs-on-thought all jumble in one’s mind, and understanding the nature of the dialogue in detail becomes increasingly intractable.
Though one of the greatest manifestations of the enlightenment is the emergence of the natural philosopher, the areas of proto-science touched by enlightenment thinkers is mostly kept at a minimum % of the overall content. Newton and Leibniz are mentioned, though only briefly, and although Leibniz factors in a bit more, it’s mostly on his theories on linguistics and the functioning of good-governance that makes it through here, which is interesting, especially in relation to early European thought on China.
This book is mostly focused on the enlightenment as it informed early European ideas on the nature of humans, society, governance, the relationship those facets had with each other, and more broadly, the nature of Europe’s relationship to the rest of the world. This is an era that sees the foundation of democratic principles of governance flourish. However, as the author points out, it is also the birth of the modern nation-state as an aftermath of the Peace of Westphalia, which will ultimately lead the darker nationalism that arose a hundred years later, that would ultimately consume Europe in self-destruction, as well as the rest of the world.
Much of these ideas are inherently optimistic, and for those who wish to understand the inherent optimism of the founding principles of the United States say(which is very much a direct product of enlightenment thinking and people), this book will provide a more-than-adequate primer for that objective. As a book within the history of ideas it’s deeply fascinating as one cannot understand the nature of the modern world, both within and outside of Europe, without understanding how Europe understood itself and the world, which is almost entirely founded from this era.
The roots of the colonial mentality, and the scientific racism that would emerge in the era of social Darwinism of the mid and late 1800s have roots in the conversations/thinkings of Montesquieu, Locke, and Hume. In this respect, it’s very informative to see how those ideas originally arose, and they did not arise out of pre-formed hatreds of European peoples in the rest of the world. Like many things, these ideas arose initially out of curiosity, then an imperfect application of an imperfect tool (the logic of natural philosophy deployed to man), and the building of layers-upon-layers of imperfect ideas over the decades until we arose at the bigotry that enabled the social Darwinism and the subsequent monstrosities unleashed by the inheritors of these notions onto the colonial subjects at that time.
In some ways the genesis of these ideas will be familiar to anyone who’s naively hypothesized about anything as a child. The Europeans upon encountering many different kinds of peoples during their age of exploration started to accumulate datum of these peoples and their milieu. They noticed many peoples were not as materially advanced as they were, and they began to hypothesize why that may be. Initially, these hypotheses had very little to do with the “inherent” nature of these other peoples. Since Europe was just recently emerging from religious domination of society, they were still heavily influenced by equality of all men under God, a kind of egalitarianism that posited that all peoples were effectively brothers under Christianity, whether they accepted it or not.
Thus, these early theories revolved around local climates, perhaps peoples who lived in warmer climes vis-a-vis colders oneso had certain behavioral propensities etc. This kind of geographical/local determinism still persists to our modern day, including works of noted researchers like Jared Diamond, albeit nowhere near as simplistic/blunt as these early attempts at theorizing humanity. This also leads into the origins of orientalism / occidentalism, as many of these early European philosophers viewed China as a kind of ‘corner-case’/exception to what they viewed everywhere as less-advanced materially to themselves, except ‘in the east’. Here within a span of a generation of thinkers we see two diametrically opposed views of China and “the east”. On one end, we see the famed Leibniz, father of the calculus (I consider Leibniz’s contributions primal to Newton’s of the calculus, since it’s practice, is much closer to his conception than it was to Newton’s), and innovator in logic and other philosophies, viewed China as a potential “missing link” within his theory of language, as well as a potential paragon of good/stable governance. You can say Leibniz was one of the early “pro-Orientalist”.
Opposed to these notions was Montesque, who viewed the nature of China (the recently installed Qing dynasty) as a kind of backwards despotism, and is the originator of the term “Oriental despotism”. His analysis stated that China’s drive to promote stability made their society stale, and this staleness accounts for the lack of progress China experienced in the “sciences” (this is my term, as the notion of science was still a few years off, it’s effectively what he meant, I believe the book states he talks of the differential progress in the mathematics), which he observed to be inferior to the natural philosophy emerging from Europe at that time. It is unclear how true Montesque’s observations are, there are some anecdotes which corroborate with these observations, though not from Qing China, but from the original Qin dynasty, or the first dynasty of China, who’s emperor forbade the teaching of Mohist, a sect of logicians which were experimenting with syllogism and word games, that had some affinity to the kinds of notions that took hold in Western philosophy and mathematics.
However, within the broader observations of mathematics, this was almost a blunt simplification especially just a few decades after the founding of calculus. Although it final synthesis of the calculus is unique Newton (which is the fundamental theorem of calculus), many notions like formulae/algorithms for fairly general area/volume integration, and closed-form expressions for fintary and infantry series were well known throughout the ‘Eurasian’ world, especially in India, which were almost surely known to the Chinese who shared knowledge with their neighbors and also received generous learnings from them. It’s unclear how much enlightenment thinking had to do with the birth of calculus and/or the physics, especially at least for Newton, many of his motivations hinge on demonstrably pre-scientific/pre-enlightenment quasi-superstitious beliefs, especially his conception of force.
Though, unfortunately, this is not covered much in Pagden’s book. For what Pagden covers, I felt this book was above satisfactory. It is a great primer on the history of European philosophy and serves as a great prerequisite reading to further reading in Western history and/or the general history of philosophy, especially focused on political and humanistic thought. I would have liked a more ‘classical’ organization of the material, for knowledge retention, but I think I got the gist of it, and this book should pair with a more methodical writing on this topic like Robertson’s recent tome on the subject (though I’ve only read a bit of a sample chapter on this, will have to update this opinion after I’ve read more of the book proper). Recommended.
This style is effective in imbibing in the reader the general evolution of thought/ideas from this cohort of thinkers throughout those decades that they were generating these notions. Unfortunately, similar to the feeling of being in the middle of a vigorous conversation among a group of friends at a dinner party, where you’re the odd-man out, “The Enlightenment'' requires that the reader has some decent familiarity with the thinkers prior to engaging this text. Otherwise, the ideas, names, and motifs-on-thought all jumble in one’s mind, and understanding the nature of the dialogue in detail becomes increasingly intractable.
Though one of the greatest manifestations of the enlightenment is the emergence of the natural philosopher, the areas of proto-science touched by enlightenment thinkers is mostly kept at a minimum % of the overall content. Newton and Leibniz are mentioned, though only briefly, and although Leibniz factors in a bit more, it’s mostly on his theories on linguistics and the functioning of good-governance that makes it through here, which is interesting, especially in relation to early European thought on China.
This book is mostly focused on the enlightenment as it informed early European ideas on the nature of humans, society, governance, the relationship those facets had with each other, and more broadly, the nature of Europe’s relationship to the rest of the world. This is an era that sees the foundation of democratic principles of governance flourish. However, as the author points out, it is also the birth of the modern nation-state as an aftermath of the Peace of Westphalia, which will ultimately lead the darker nationalism that arose a hundred years later, that would ultimately consume Europe in self-destruction, as well as the rest of the world.
Much of these ideas are inherently optimistic, and for those who wish to understand the inherent optimism of the founding principles of the United States say(which is very much a direct product of enlightenment thinking and people), this book will provide a more-than-adequate primer for that objective. As a book within the history of ideas it’s deeply fascinating as one cannot understand the nature of the modern world, both within and outside of Europe, without understanding how Europe understood itself and the world, which is almost entirely founded from this era.
The roots of the colonial mentality, and the scientific racism that would emerge in the era of social Darwinism of the mid and late 1800s have roots in the conversations/thinkings of Montesquieu, Locke, and Hume. In this respect, it’s very informative to see how those ideas originally arose, and they did not arise out of pre-formed hatreds of European peoples in the rest of the world. Like many things, these ideas arose initially out of curiosity, then an imperfect application of an imperfect tool (the logic of natural philosophy deployed to man), and the building of layers-upon-layers of imperfect ideas over the decades until we arose at the bigotry that enabled the social Darwinism and the subsequent monstrosities unleashed by the inheritors of these notions onto the colonial subjects at that time.
In some ways the genesis of these ideas will be familiar to anyone who’s naively hypothesized about anything as a child. The Europeans upon encountering many different kinds of peoples during their age of exploration started to accumulate datum of these peoples and their milieu. They noticed many peoples were not as materially advanced as they were, and they began to hypothesize why that may be. Initially, these hypotheses had very little to do with the “inherent” nature of these other peoples. Since Europe was just recently emerging from religious domination of society, they were still heavily influenced by equality of all men under God, a kind of egalitarianism that posited that all peoples were effectively brothers under Christianity, whether they accepted it or not.
Thus, these early theories revolved around local climates, perhaps peoples who lived in warmer climes vis-a-vis colders oneso had certain behavioral propensities etc. This kind of geographical/local determinism still persists to our modern day, including works of noted researchers like Jared Diamond, albeit nowhere near as simplistic/blunt as these early attempts at theorizing humanity. This also leads into the origins of orientalism / occidentalism, as many of these early European philosophers viewed China as a kind of ‘corner-case’/exception to what they viewed everywhere as less-advanced materially to themselves, except ‘in the east’. Here within a span of a generation of thinkers we see two diametrically opposed views of China and “the east”. On one end, we see the famed Leibniz, father of the calculus (I consider Leibniz’s contributions primal to Newton’s of the calculus, since it’s practice, is much closer to his conception than it was to Newton’s), and innovator in logic and other philosophies, viewed China as a potential “missing link” within his theory of language, as well as a potential paragon of good/stable governance. You can say Leibniz was one of the early “pro-Orientalist”.
Opposed to these notions was Montesque, who viewed the nature of China (the recently installed Qing dynasty) as a kind of backwards despotism, and is the originator of the term “Oriental despotism”. His analysis stated that China’s drive to promote stability made their society stale, and this staleness accounts for the lack of progress China experienced in the “sciences” (this is my term, as the notion of science was still a few years off, it’s effectively what he meant, I believe the book states he talks of the differential progress in the mathematics), which he observed to be inferior to the natural philosophy emerging from Europe at that time. It is unclear how true Montesque’s observations are, there are some anecdotes which corroborate with these observations, though not from Qing China, but from the original Qin dynasty, or the first dynasty of China, who’s emperor forbade the teaching of Mohist, a sect of logicians which were experimenting with syllogism and word games, that had some affinity to the kinds of notions that took hold in Western philosophy and mathematics.
However, within the broader observations of mathematics, this was almost a blunt simplification especially just a few decades after the founding of calculus. Although it final synthesis of the calculus is unique Newton (which is the fundamental theorem of calculus), many notions like formulae/algorithms for fairly general area/volume integration, and closed-form expressions for fintary and infantry series were well known throughout the ‘Eurasian’ world, especially in India, which were almost surely known to the Chinese who shared knowledge with their neighbors and also received generous learnings from them. It’s unclear how much enlightenment thinking had to do with the birth of calculus and/or the physics, especially at least for Newton, many of his motivations hinge on demonstrably pre-scientific/pre-enlightenment quasi-superstitious beliefs, especially his conception of force.
Though, unfortunately, this is not covered much in Pagden’s book. For what Pagden covers, I felt this book was above satisfactory. It is a great primer on the history of European philosophy and serves as a great prerequisite reading to further reading in Western history and/or the general history of philosophy, especially focused on political and humanistic thought. I would have liked a more ‘classical’ organization of the material, for knowledge retention, but I think I got the gist of it, and this book should pair with a more methodical writing on this topic like Robertson’s recent tome on the subject (though I’ve only read a bit of a sample chapter on this, will have to update this opinion after I’ve read more of the book proper). Recommended.
April 15, 2013
I was looking forward to this book, but unfortunately, my hopes were not rewarded.
I've read a few really engaging non-fiction history books lately and I hoped this would be of the same ilk, especially since the Enlightenment is a period that does interest me.
However, for the most part, this book was dry - really dry. There'd be passages that were interesting and which would pull my attention back, but the rest was very heavy going and felt like a lecture.
I would not recommend this book for the casual reader, but if you are researching the period in a more serious way, I believe this would be a useful resource as it was packed with facts and excellent references.
I received this book as an e-book ARC via NetGalley.
I've read a few really engaging non-fiction history books lately and I hoped this would be of the same ilk, especially since the Enlightenment is a period that does interest me.
However, for the most part, this book was dry - really dry. There'd be passages that were interesting and which would pull my attention back, but the rest was very heavy going and felt like a lecture.
I would not recommend this book for the casual reader, but if you are researching the period in a more serious way, I believe this would be a useful resource as it was packed with facts and excellent references.
I received this book as an e-book ARC via NetGalley.
November 30, 2020
This is a decent overview of the main threads of thoughts of the Enlightenment men of letters. This is not a compendium of European thoughts of the 18th century Europe, but it traces the thread of thoughts of the Enlightenment, citing this or that author here and there.
That being said, the read can be boring for people who are not that interested in intellectual history. This is NOT a political theory book, but a history book.
That being said, the read can be boring for people who are not that interested in intellectual history. This is NOT a political theory book, but a history book.
October 17, 2017
I hoped this would be a book about Enlightenment *government*, involving human rights, freedom of speech, fair trials, honest and efficient administration and improving the lot of the the poor. Kaunitz, the birth of the USA, stuff like that. But no. It's a mere philosophy book.
February 7, 2017
I will continue referring to this excellent work. It is rich and wise.
February 18, 2018
Review in English (not my mother tongue) and Spanish (below)
This book analyzes the intellectual history of the Enlightenment. It is not ordered chronologically, nor does it narrate too many things about the life of the enlightened philosophers. It is divided by themes:
Preface
Introduction
All coherence gone: the intellectual shocks caused by Protestantism, the Wars of Religion, the discovery of America, the Scientific Revolution, etc.
Bringing pity back in: defense of Reason, yes; but also of sympathy.
The fatherless world: the attack on religious dogmatic thinking
The science of man
Discovering man in nature
The defense of civilization (these three chapters deal with human nature and the social contract, grosso modo)
The great society of mankind
The vast commonwealth of nature (these two deal with cosmopolitanism, roughly)
Conclusion
The writing is irregular. To begin with, the edition is really disastrous, considering the importance of the book. In my edition (on paper) there were many commas and periods that were missing. There were phrases with no grammatical meaning, and comic typographical errors, such as "scared text" instead of "sacred text" (p.240). Even in a section it seems that the author makes a mess with his own notes and repeats almost all the content of a paragraph twice (p 175).
I also believe that Pagden suffers "the curse of knowledge". He knows so much that sometimes he does not put himself in the place of the reader who knows far less than he does. There are whole passages that go round without knowing very well where they lead. And the prose is convoluted inside the paragraps, too. He discusses the great ideas, without infusing too much life to the historical figures. However, in my opinion the prose improves towards the end. The last chapter is very good. And the conclusion is an amazing, wonderful text, a very well reasoned and emotional defense of the Enlightenment against its past and present enemies. It is worth having had to read the less good parts to find this wonderful conclusion.
I liked it, but I could have lived without reading it ... Three stars.
Este libro analiza la historia intelectual de la ilustración. No está ordenado cronológicamente, ni narra demasiadas cosas sobre la vida de los filósofos ilustrados. Está dividido por temas:
Preface
Introduction
All coherence gone: los shocks intelectuales que causados por el Protestantismo, las Guerras de Religión, el descubrimiento de América, la Revolución Científica, etc
Bringing pity back in: defensa de la Razón, sí; pero también de la simpatía.
The fatherless world: el ataque al pensamiento dogmático religioso
The science of man
Discovering man in nature
The defense of civilization (estos tres capítulos tratan de la naturaleza humana y del contrato social, grosso modo)
The great society of mankind
The vast commonwealth of nature (estos dos tratan del cosmopolitismo, grosso modo)
Conclusion
La escritura es irregular. Para empezar, la edición es realmente nefasta, considerando la importancia del libro. En mi edición (en papel) había muchas comas y puntos seguidos que faltaban. Había frases sin sentido gramatical, y errores tipográficos cómicos, como "scared text" en lugar de "sacred text" (p. 240). Incluso en un apartado parece que el autor se hace un lío con sus propias notas y repite casi todo el contenido de un párrafo dos veces (p. 175).
Creo además que Pagden padece "la maldición del conocimiento". Sabe tantísimo que a veces no se pone en el lugar del lector que sabe bastante menos que él. Hay pasajes enteros que dan vueltas sin saberse muy bien a dónde conducen. Y la prosa es retorcida incluso dentro de los párrafos. Discute las grandes ideas, sin infundir demasiada vida a los personajes históricos. Sin embargo, en mi opinión va mejorando bastante hacia el final. El último capítulo es muy bueno. Y la conclusión es un texto asombroso, maravilloso, una muy bien razonada y emotiva defensa de la Ilustración frente a sus enemigos pasados y presentes. Merece la pena haber tenido que leer las partes menos buenas para encontrarse con esta maravilla de conclusión.
Me ha gustado, pero podría haber vivido sin leerlo... Tres estrellas.
This book analyzes the intellectual history of the Enlightenment. It is not ordered chronologically, nor does it narrate too many things about the life of the enlightened philosophers. It is divided by themes:
Preface
Introduction
All coherence gone: the intellectual shocks caused by Protestantism, the Wars of Religion, the discovery of America, the Scientific Revolution, etc.
Bringing pity back in: defense of Reason, yes; but also of sympathy.
The fatherless world: the attack on religious dogmatic thinking
The science of man
Discovering man in nature
The defense of civilization (these three chapters deal with human nature and the social contract, grosso modo)
The great society of mankind
The vast commonwealth of nature (these two deal with cosmopolitanism, roughly)
Conclusion
The writing is irregular. To begin with, the edition is really disastrous, considering the importance of the book. In my edition (on paper) there were many commas and periods that were missing. There were phrases with no grammatical meaning, and comic typographical errors, such as "scared text" instead of "sacred text" (p.240). Even in a section it seems that the author makes a mess with his own notes and repeats almost all the content of a paragraph twice (p 175).
I also believe that Pagden suffers "the curse of knowledge". He knows so much that sometimes he does not put himself in the place of the reader who knows far less than he does. There are whole passages that go round without knowing very well where they lead. And the prose is convoluted inside the paragraps, too. He discusses the great ideas, without infusing too much life to the historical figures. However, in my opinion the prose improves towards the end. The last chapter is very good. And the conclusion is an amazing, wonderful text, a very well reasoned and emotional defense of the Enlightenment against its past and present enemies. It is worth having had to read the less good parts to find this wonderful conclusion.
I liked it, but I could have lived without reading it ... Three stars.
Este libro analiza la historia intelectual de la ilustración. No está ordenado cronológicamente, ni narra demasiadas cosas sobre la vida de los filósofos ilustrados. Está dividido por temas:
Preface
Introduction
All coherence gone: los shocks intelectuales que causados por el Protestantismo, las Guerras de Religión, el descubrimiento de América, la Revolución Científica, etc
Bringing pity back in: defensa de la Razón, sí; pero también de la simpatía.
The fatherless world: el ataque al pensamiento dogmático religioso
The science of man
Discovering man in nature
The defense of civilization (estos tres capítulos tratan de la naturaleza humana y del contrato social, grosso modo)
The great society of mankind
The vast commonwealth of nature (estos dos tratan del cosmopolitismo, grosso modo)
Conclusion
La escritura es irregular. Para empezar, la edición es realmente nefasta, considerando la importancia del libro. En mi edición (en papel) había muchas comas y puntos seguidos que faltaban. Había frases sin sentido gramatical, y errores tipográficos cómicos, como "scared text" en lugar de "sacred text" (p. 240). Incluso en un apartado parece que el autor se hace un lío con sus propias notas y repite casi todo el contenido de un párrafo dos veces (p. 175).
Creo además que Pagden padece "la maldición del conocimiento". Sabe tantísimo que a veces no se pone en el lugar del lector que sabe bastante menos que él. Hay pasajes enteros que dan vueltas sin saberse muy bien a dónde conducen. Y la prosa es retorcida incluso dentro de los párrafos. Discute las grandes ideas, sin infundir demasiada vida a los personajes históricos. Sin embargo, en mi opinión va mejorando bastante hacia el final. El último capítulo es muy bueno. Y la conclusión es un texto asombroso, maravilloso, una muy bien razonada y emotiva defensa de la Ilustración frente a sus enemigos pasados y presentes. Merece la pena haber tenido que leer las partes menos buenas para encontrarse con esta maravilla de conclusión.
Me ha gustado, pero podría haber vivido sin leerlo... Tres estrellas.
September 24, 2021
Liberalism, and its most cherished product, liberal democracy has been under serious assault lately in some quarters.There are some who feel it has not delivered on its promises, that the world is no more just, or friendly, or easier to live in than it ever was and that the reason it isn’t is because the ideas that came to us in the Enlightenment are inherently flawed. These shortcomings are often laid at the door of the men deemed most responsible for that period of thinking (confined, at least in its infancy, to the eighteenth century); a loose coterie of philosophers and social critics who wanted nothing less than to change the underlying belief systems upon which Western civilization rested. They were modern men, with a modern view of the future, who saw the past as largely an obstruction to humanity’s future happiness.
Padgen’s book is an effort to show us who these people were, what they thought, and why they thought it. Much of it is a history of ideas taken largely from men like Kant, Hume, Voltaire, Montesquieu, Diderot and others. They were not working together but held similar convictions, the most salient being that their present societies was grossly unfair and exploitative to the common man and could only be made better by the sober application of reason. This meant it would ultimately have to be liberated from religion and the whims of an aristocracy that felt little compunction to serve anyone but themselves.
While their ideas may not see radical now they were then. Some of these men found themselves in jail for what they wrote, exiled, ostracized, or simply saw promising academic careers come to a halt. Yet even though democracy is often seen as the crown jewel of their thinking they were not necessarily advocates of it. They felt a king would do as long as he served the people and not himself. What they did insist upon, however, was some version of a people’s republic, where the ordinary man would have the final say over how his life was lived.
In the end, their views were so persuasive they permeated almost all Western societies to such an extent it’s hard to even see them. But if you believe in the separation of church and state and that all men are created equal and should be treated that way then you have been influenced by their thoughts.
Which is not to say they didn’t deserve their detractors—now or then. Enlightened thinkers dreamed of a cosmopolitan man, borderless and comfortable anywhere, free of cultural and religious prejudices—a citizen of the world. But how does such a person actually play out in practice? How many people are capable of living and thinking in such a way? In the vacuum left by the loss of religious authority in people’s lives could anyone really tell the difference between right and wrong?
These questions, hundreds of years later, are still with us. There is still a struggle going on in the Western soul between tradition, myth, and culture, on the one hand, and reason, science, and the empirical on the other. A question raised in Padgen’s book, though he doesn’t explicitly state it, is whether democracy is a genuinely tenable political state in any society in the long run. Is it in the human DNA to be democratic, to treat others as if they have the same rights as they and their tribe? Or is democracy truly an experiment which, though beautiful in its way, runs contrary to the natural order of things?
It’s clear in Padgen’s conclusion what he thinks. A world that would turn its back on the fundamental ideals of the Enlightenment would be a world diminished, less free, less modern, and with fewer possibilities available to the average person. This is something that can be easy to forget. The ideas of the Enlightenment have been with us for so long, in places like America and Western Europe in particular, that it’s hard for most of us to imagine what life would look like without them. But what these ideas really mean and how the should best be put into practice is a source of continuing and painful dispute.
Padgen’s book is an effort to show us who these people were, what they thought, and why they thought it. Much of it is a history of ideas taken largely from men like Kant, Hume, Voltaire, Montesquieu, Diderot and others. They were not working together but held similar convictions, the most salient being that their present societies was grossly unfair and exploitative to the common man and could only be made better by the sober application of reason. This meant it would ultimately have to be liberated from religion and the whims of an aristocracy that felt little compunction to serve anyone but themselves.
While their ideas may not see radical now they were then. Some of these men found themselves in jail for what they wrote, exiled, ostracized, or simply saw promising academic careers come to a halt. Yet even though democracy is often seen as the crown jewel of their thinking they were not necessarily advocates of it. They felt a king would do as long as he served the people and not himself. What they did insist upon, however, was some version of a people’s republic, where the ordinary man would have the final say over how his life was lived.
In the end, their views were so persuasive they permeated almost all Western societies to such an extent it’s hard to even see them. But if you believe in the separation of church and state and that all men are created equal and should be treated that way then you have been influenced by their thoughts.
Which is not to say they didn’t deserve their detractors—now or then. Enlightened thinkers dreamed of a cosmopolitan man, borderless and comfortable anywhere, free of cultural and religious prejudices—a citizen of the world. But how does such a person actually play out in practice? How many people are capable of living and thinking in such a way? In the vacuum left by the loss of religious authority in people’s lives could anyone really tell the difference between right and wrong?
These questions, hundreds of years later, are still with us. There is still a struggle going on in the Western soul between tradition, myth, and culture, on the one hand, and reason, science, and the empirical on the other. A question raised in Padgen’s book, though he doesn’t explicitly state it, is whether democracy is a genuinely tenable political state in any society in the long run. Is it in the human DNA to be democratic, to treat others as if they have the same rights as they and their tribe? Or is democracy truly an experiment which, though beautiful in its way, runs contrary to the natural order of things?
It’s clear in Padgen’s conclusion what he thinks. A world that would turn its back on the fundamental ideals of the Enlightenment would be a world diminished, less free, less modern, and with fewer possibilities available to the average person. This is something that can be easy to forget. The ideas of the Enlightenment have been with us for so long, in places like America and Western Europe in particular, that it’s hard for most of us to imagine what life would look like without them. But what these ideas really mean and how the should best be put into practice is a source of continuing and painful dispute.
August 31, 2021
In my opinion, Tony Pagden has written a very good history of the Enlightenment and it is worth reading for that reason alone; he does a fine job of incorporating a wide variety of historical voices and deserves ample praise for it. I also found it readable and I enjoyed, for the most part, the dividing up of chapters into (almost) standalone essays about individual aspects of the Enlightenment. Good stuff.
However, again in my opinion, Pagden has not done a very good job explaining why the Enlightenment still matters; clearly he means it "matters" as a positive and not in some vague sense of us all simply being footnotes to its impacts (which we are). It's difficult to explain how he fails at this goal in a short review, but suffice it to say that while he does explain why the world is the way it is courtesy of the Enlightenment he doesn't really make the case that it's been a triumphant success, which it's clear he means to. If anything he paints a detailed portrait of the Enlightenment age and then points to the modern era as proof of its wild and unabashed success; success in some ways, to be sure, and a failure in others.
It's odd, really, because in the book's conclusion he "heads off at the pass" (so to speak) general problems that detractors of the Enlightenment have leveled at it and despite his attempt at putting them down, they make some eerily good and prescient points.* They almost seem to weather his blows without actually being knocked down. I think, for Pagden, he would have had a stronger thesis if he had not attempted to answer these detractors. But, I suppose that is the plight of trying to write an academic/popular history hybrid. Perhaps someday someone will luck upon the right mixture.
All in all this was an enjoyable and fairly engaging read and has me looking forward to his next work The Pursuit of Europe: A History which is due out sometime this year (2021). Pagden clearly knows his stuff and he has an excellent grip on the source material and has a solid understanding of a pretty massive list of historical figures, many who were completely unknown to me. He provided an extensive bibliography and I look forward to scouring it for future books to read.
Footnotes:
*Pagden's attempt here reminded me of the 2018 film Vice which was intended to be brutal, sarcastic take-down of former-VP Dick Cheney but came off as being an unconventional, if accidental, panegyric to the man it was trying to humiliate.
**Except for the chapter "The Vast Commonwealth of Nature" which is more or less the 'Immanuel Kant Power Hour' and which was boring and went on for too long.
However, again in my opinion, Pagden has not done a very good job explaining why the Enlightenment still matters; clearly he means it "matters" as a positive and not in some vague sense of us all simply being footnotes to its impacts (which we are). It's difficult to explain how he fails at this goal in a short review, but suffice it to say that while he does explain why the world is the way it is courtesy of the Enlightenment he doesn't really make the case that it's been a triumphant success, which it's clear he means to. If anything he paints a detailed portrait of the Enlightenment age and then points to the modern era as proof of its wild and unabashed success; success in some ways, to be sure, and a failure in others.
It's odd, really, because in the book's conclusion he "heads off at the pass" (so to speak) general problems that detractors of the Enlightenment have leveled at it and despite his attempt at putting them down, they make some eerily good and prescient points.* They almost seem to weather his blows without actually being knocked down. I think, for Pagden, he would have had a stronger thesis if he had not attempted to answer these detractors. But, I suppose that is the plight of trying to write an academic/popular history hybrid. Perhaps someday someone will luck upon the right mixture.
All in all this was an enjoyable and fairly engaging read and has me looking forward to his next work The Pursuit of Europe: A History which is due out sometime this year (2021). Pagden clearly knows his stuff and he has an excellent grip on the source material and has a solid understanding of a pretty massive list of historical figures, many who were completely unknown to me. He provided an extensive bibliography and I look forward to scouring it for future books to read.
Footnotes:
*Pagden's attempt here reminded me of the 2018 film Vice which was intended to be brutal, sarcastic take-down of former-VP Dick Cheney but came off as being an unconventional, if accidental, panegyric to the man it was trying to humiliate.
**Except for the chapter "The Vast Commonwealth of Nature" which is more or less the 'Immanuel Kant Power Hour' and which was boring and went on for too long.
July 6, 2018
The book does a very good job in summarizing what in short the Enlightenment movement (or movements) and its people were all about. But because of this period stretches from roughly 1650 till 1800 the book comes across as rather dense. The author obviously wanted to cram as many ideas in it as possible and that is perhaps also then the most regretful part as this period contain way too much interesting idea, people, concepts and events to discuss it in mere 500 pages. I think to that end the main philosophers discussed are all coming from the High Enlightenment and not so much from the Early Enlightenment.
Personally, I enjoyed Jonathan Israel's Trilogy on the Radial Enlightenment and Peter Gays two-volume work on the Enlightenment more. Cambridge History Of Philosophy or Political Thought discussing the 17th and 18th Century are some other works that will do good in giving you a thorough overview.
The book is also mainly or almost entirely only discussing the first part of the title but the second part 'and why it still matters' is as good as completely ignored. To me, that would mean that the author linked all these ideas with the present but that is actually only happening in the second last chapter where a link is established between their ideas and ours now and I believe that this could have been worked out in a lot of other places more detailed too.
As an introduction or as a continuation after you read the Oxford Very Short Introduction it is, however, standing its ground but if you want to get more detail I strongly advise you to go look elsewhere. And of course even better is to read the texts of that period yourself although it may be hard to find some of these texts in English.
Personally, I enjoyed Jonathan Israel's Trilogy on the Radial Enlightenment and Peter Gays two-volume work on the Enlightenment more. Cambridge History Of Philosophy or Political Thought discussing the 17th and 18th Century are some other works that will do good in giving you a thorough overview.
The book is also mainly or almost entirely only discussing the first part of the title but the second part 'and why it still matters' is as good as completely ignored. To me, that would mean that the author linked all these ideas with the present but that is actually only happening in the second last chapter where a link is established between their ideas and ours now and I believe that this could have been worked out in a lot of other places more detailed too.
As an introduction or as a continuation after you read the Oxford Very Short Introduction it is, however, standing its ground but if you want to get more detail I strongly advise you to go look elsewhere. And of course even better is to read the texts of that period yourself although it may be hard to find some of these texts in English.
December 7, 2017
This is a very scholarly work addressing one of the key eras of Western civilization, along with the earlier scientific revolution, reformation, and discovery of the New World. The first part of the book is a nice review of the key thinkers who helped break the intellectual strangle-hold of scholastic and religious authority over rational thought. This movement championed reason over dogma and empowered the notions of individual liberty, freedom and equality along with the rise of capitalism. He reviews such luminaries as Hobbes, Hume, Locke, Smith, Diderot, Voltaire, and Rousseau along with numerous lesser lights. After this he describes in detail the impact of science, rationalism and the age of exploration on European thought and action. The discovery of “primitive” societies in America and the South Pacific led to a lot of discussion of the history of mankind from the noble savage to civil society and what is the basis for law and morality. Was there a social contract? What is human nature? It is all very thought provoking, although in my opinion, the theory of evolution and modern anthropology makes a lot of this discussion look pretty outdated. Even so, it is fascinating home brilliant thinkers, like Hume, identified key issues that still resonate and how, even lacking the results of modern science, he was able to reason out how certain aspects of human behavior must be as they are.
November 22, 2021
This is a quite thorough and rather brilliant intellectual history and explanation of all the basics of the Englightenment. Obviously the author concentrates on the good side by and large but presents the case for writers such as de Maistre who were strongly anti-Enlightenment.
What I think he fails to do - and I don't think it matters (as it were) - is to show why it still matters. It (the Enlightenment) matters to me because of its historical importance, its influence on every field of thought and its literary developments. Should it matter to modern thinkers? Not in itself. Many of its best ideas are still, thankfully, with us, some are weakening. They matter as ideas and ethical precepts rather than parts of an Enlightement corpus.
Pagden makes the point, I suspect a very good one, that the Enlightenment did not significantly affect the French Revolution. That Robespierre was not the 'child' of Rousseau. Rather it was Romanticism. His thesis could be strong but was rather underargued. There is a magnificent presentation of Enlightenment ideas and then a meagre gallop through Romanticism. It would be fascinating to read Pagden on that.
What I think he fails to do - and I don't think it matters (as it were) - is to show why it still matters. It (the Enlightenment) matters to me because of its historical importance, its influence on every field of thought and its literary developments. Should it matter to modern thinkers? Not in itself. Many of its best ideas are still, thankfully, with us, some are weakening. They matter as ideas and ethical precepts rather than parts of an Enlightement corpus.
Pagden makes the point, I suspect a very good one, that the Enlightenment did not significantly affect the French Revolution. That Robespierre was not the 'child' of Rousseau. Rather it was Romanticism. His thesis could be strong but was rather underargued. There is a magnificent presentation of Enlightenment ideas and then a meagre gallop through Romanticism. It would be fascinating to read Pagden on that.
September 8, 2021
This is a pretty comprehensive looks at the various aspects of the people, events, and ideas of the Enlightenment.
Unfortunately, I found that the writing often fails to engage.
I'm glad that I read the book, and believe that the subject-matter is important, but you might be able to find a more enjoyable treatment.
The book was published in 2013; in 2021, the most important part of the entire book might be in the last few pages of "Why It Still Matters", where Pagden points out that the Arabic world experienced an intellectual Golden Age while Europe slept though its Middle Ages - until Islamic orthodoxy "began a concerted onslaught [...] against all froms of learning that did not derive from either the Qur'an itself or from the sayings of the Prophet". Today, anti-science American Evangelical Christians and the increasingly fascist Republican Party are clearly heading in the same direction.
Unfortunately, I found that the writing often fails to engage.
I'm glad that I read the book, and believe that the subject-matter is important, but you might be able to find a more enjoyable treatment.
The book was published in 2013; in 2021, the most important part of the entire book might be in the last few pages of "Why It Still Matters", where Pagden points out that the Arabic world experienced an intellectual Golden Age while Europe slept though its Middle Ages - until Islamic orthodoxy "began a concerted onslaught [...] against all froms of learning that did not derive from either the Qur'an itself or from the sayings of the Prophet". Today, anti-science American Evangelical Christians and the increasingly fascist Republican Party are clearly heading in the same direction.
March 29, 2025
If you heard a loud cheer this afternoon, it was because I finally finished reading “The Enlightenment and Why It Still Matters,” by Anthony Pagden. I started wading through the author’s description of the many actors connected to the Enlightenment and their views on March 12, and by sheer grit and determination persevered to the final period. Did I learn anything? Not much. I’m surprised that he didn’t spend more time praising the United States since it, I would think, would be the “poster boy” of success for Enlightenment ideas, but he seemed to spend an inordinate amount of time trying to find a silver lining to the death and destruction that followed in the wake of that other Son of the Enlightenment, the French Revolution. I finished this book for the same reason that I finished reading “A Tale of Two Cities”: I’m no quitter. (457 pages) Digitally I couldn't find a way to give it less than 1 star.
December 6, 2018
This book was published in 2013, and it would be interesting to get Professor Pagden to do an update on this book in the light of Trump's election and the assault on the Enlightenment by right wing ideologues such as Steve Bannon and the new European leaders.
Also, as I was reading the book, particularly chapter 7, I kept on thinking about Teresa May's quote about cosmopolitanism:
“If you believe you are a citizen of the world, you are a citizen of nowhere. You don’t understand what citizenship means.”
I think Ms May needs enlightening.
Also, as I was reading the book, particularly chapter 7, I kept on thinking about Teresa May's quote about cosmopolitanism:
“If you believe you are a citizen of the world, you are a citizen of nowhere. You don’t understand what citizenship means.”
I think Ms May needs enlightening.
September 29, 2021
Long and rather dense, this book is jammed with information about the Enlightenment. The author tends to drop names of (perhaps) obscure philosophers without much background,but this doesn’t purport to be a philosophy book. It’s a history of the ideas that rose from the Enlightenment, many with roots going back to Aristotle, and how those ideas changed western modes of thinking and living to the present day. I didn’t absorb it all on the first read, and may never tackle it again, but I learned a lot from this well written, heavily researched book.
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