European Intellectual History from Rousseau to Nietzsche

by Frank M. Turner, Richard A. Lofthouse (Editor)

One of the most distinguished cultural and intellectual historians of our time, Frank Turner taught a landmark Yale University lecture course on European intellectual history that drew scores of students over many years. His lectures—lucid, accessible, beautifully written, and delivered with a notable lack of jargon—distilled modern European history from the Enlightenment to the dawn of the twentieth century and conveyed the turbulence of a rapidly changing era in European history through its ideas and leading figures. 
 
Richard A. Lofthouse, one of Turner’s former students, has now edited the lectures into a single volume that outlines the thoughts of a great historian on the forging of modern European ideas. Moreover, it offers a fine example of how intellectual history should be rooted firmly in historical and biographical evidence.

Genres: Philosophy, History, Nonfiction, Sociology, European History, Cultural, Modern

320 pages, Hardcover

First published February 12, 2015

About the author

Frank M. Turner was a distinguished intellectual historian who forged his entire career at Yale, making a distinctive mark as scholar, teacher, mentor and senior administrator. He rose from being a teaching assistant in the History department to serving as Provost, the second-highest office in the University, from 1988 to 1992. In 1993 he became the John Hay Whitney Professor of History. In 2010 he was appointed Yale University Librarian, overseeing one of the largest academic library systems in the world: 18 libraries and special collections of primary source material. Turner had been director of one of those units, the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, from 2003. He died only two months into his five-year term.

Reviews

[Avinesh Shankar · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a really nice concise collection of late Frank Turner's lectures at Yale that have been collected by his peers and students and topics include Rousseau, Nietzsche, Nationalism, liberty, Darwin, Marx, Race etc. This is still an intense yet introductory read and highly enjoyable for students and lovers of history, philosophy, politics etc,.

[Laurent · Rating 4 out of 5]

Excellent survey of the general currents in modern European intellectual history.

[Scott · Rating 4 out of 5]

A nice, clear overview of major European thinkers and intellectual trends during this time, in less than 300 pages. It's a reproduction of Turner's lectures from his Yale course, put together after his death. One of the best features is how well the lectures show the connections and influences between different thinkers, ideas, and Western society from about 1750-1900. So, for example, the lecture on Richard Wagner illustrates how many of these trends came together in the composer's life.

The lecture "Race and Anti-Semitism" included a wise reminder. Turner notes that racial thought had connections with many of the leading intellectual trends of the 1800s, such as "opposition to the unbridled advance of capitalism," imperialism, nationalism, and "the new sciences of anthropology, philology, evolution, eugenics, and public health. Racial thinking rose to the crest of this apparently and so-called progressionist wave. The forms of mass murder and mass degradation in Europe and within the various colonial empires brought about by such thinking -- murder and degradation carried out for allegedly high principle and with sincere, educated conviction -- should encourage all of us to show more scepticism toward embracing any set of ideas simply because they are called new, advanced, scientific, or progressive" (191).

[Tim · Rating 5 out of 5]

Finishing a stressful year with some food for the mind: a collection of lectures from a former Yale professor, Mr Frank M. Turner. I had seen this book several years ago, yet was a little reluctant to purchase it, fearing it would be too complex for me to understand. Hence having taken my time before diving into this work.

In "short" chapters/lectures - not essays, as someone else mentioned here on Goodreads - Mr Turner offers a pretty varied range of topics, as the table of contents shows. While each lecture can be read on its own, they do follow a sort of chronological order and some of are linked of cross-reference each other in terms of period, themes, philosophers, political figures, ...

At the end, Mr Turner explained why he chose to start with Rousseau and to end with Nietzsche: They were each others opposite's. Also worth noting: Much of Nietzsche's works were apparently edited by his sister, who had more extreme views on the world than him.

Table of contents:
1) Rousseau's Challenge to Modernity (Wikipedia)
2) Tocqueville and Liberty (Wikipedia)
3) J.S. Mill and the Nineteenth Century (Wikipedia)
4) The Turn to Subjectivity (Wikipedia)
5) Medievalism and the Invention of the Renaissance (Wikipedia, Wikipedia)
6) Nature Historicised
7) Darwin and Creation (Wikipedia, Wikipedia)
8) Marx and the Transcendent Working Class (Wikipedia)
9) The Cult of the Artist (this chapter contains a selection of relevant paintings, printed on glossy paper); this reminded me of a chapter in 'Fantasy et Féminismes': Héroïnes antiques et émancipation féminine dans la peinture victorienne: les origines d'un archétype de la fantasy - Yannick Le Pape; my review)
10) Nationalism (Wikipedia)
11) Race and Anti-Semitism (Wikipedia, Wikipedia)
12) Wagner (Wikipedia)
13) The Ideology of Separate Gender Spheres (Wikipedia)
14) Old Faiths and New (Wikipedia)
15) Nietzsche (Wikipedia)

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It was eye-opening and (not always) surprising to read how the 18th and 19th centuries have influenced and still influence many people to this day (psychologically, economically, politically, religiously, ...). Many of our ways of thinking, of living, of doing business, ... are perfectly inline with those of a few centuries ago, despite the changes of the last few decades. It's therefore important to know where we come from and how it's all evolving.

You don't slide through this collection of lectures like you do when reading a novel. This is due to the subjects of the lectures themselves, but also the exquisite style in which these were written.

I do admit that not every lecture was as accessible as the other, as I don't often read such a kind of work, but I could grasp the essence in those cases. Mr Turner managed to clearly explain each subject, with the subtle encouragement to the reader to continue his/her journey via the list of works at the end. Of course, for reasons of clarity, he also added a list of the various persons mentioned in the book, from literary critics over philosophers to historians and sociologists. A necessary list, as not everyone's importance was explained in the respective lectures.

'European Intellectual History from Rousseau to Nietzsche' is a more than recommended (selected) overview of, as written in the blurb, "modern European history from the Enlightenment to the dawn of the twentieth century and conveyed the turbulence of a rapidly changing era in European history through its ideas and leading figures".

It allows for a better understanding of other history books I've read so far and a nice bridge to those I've yet to read (if circumstances allow it):

* De verbeelding van het denken: Geschiedenis van de westerse en oosterse filosofie (Jan Bor, Errit Petersma)
* Geschiedenis der Westerse Filosofie : in samenhang met politieke en sociale omstandigheden van de oudste tijden tot heden (Eng.: A History of Western Philosophy) (Bertrand Russell)
* Greek and Roman Political Ideas: A Pelican Introduction (Melissa Lane) (my review)
* Duitsland, een natie en haar geschiedenis (Helmut Walser Smith)
* Europe: The Struggle for Supremacy, 1453 to the Present (Brendan Simms)
* 21 Lessons for the 21st Century (Yuval Noah Harari) (my review)

[Peter · Rating 4 out of 5]

The book is a compilation of the late Professor Frank Turner’s lectures at Yale.

A very well written overview of key ideas in late eighteenth and nineteenth century thought. It is deeply disturbing to see the catastrophes wrought from the ideas of Rousseau, Marx, Spencer (Social Darwinism), Chamberlain (!), political utopianism, etc. etc.

The lectures presented in this book serve as a welcome reminder to an increasingly ahistorical West of the need to critically examine the ideas that are now being touted in twenty first century politics and economics.

The book is highly recommended, especially for students new to the study of modern intellectual history. There are plenty of invitations to dig deeper based on the landscape presented.

[Alex · Rating 3 out of 5]

Passionate history in separate and digestible sections.

[Nilendu Misra · Rating 5 out of 5]

Concise, accessible and supremely insightful collection of a set of Yale lectures on how ideas evolved, mutated and influenced each other in the Western world between 1700s and 1900s.

[Finn Vyrn]

Wordy. Marxism.

[Odile · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fascinating review of the 18th and 19th century thinkers and how they influence the way we still think today. Academic and deep but definitely thought provoking. So many things I didn't know. Will need to read it again soon to really get it.

[Supriyo Chaudhuri · Rating 5 out of 5]

As I just finished reading the book, I have already started missing it. It took a long time for me to read its 265 pages, not because it was difficult to read, but because it presented such a vast complex of ideas in so beautiful a language.

These were really lectures, rather than essays, and meant to be introduction to enlightenment ideas. It touches important thinkers and ideas, and covers an enormous space between medievalism to anti-Semitism to nationalism and early feminism. However, even with such complex subjects, the presentation is engaging and deeply insightful, and brings history to life. Thinkers from the past stand out - my favourite one to discover was Lord Acton, of the Power Corrupts fame, and his sharp and incisive observations about nations and states.

I shall recommend the book wholeheartedly to anyone interested in the history of ideas or of modern age.

[Andy · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is an excellent book that collects the lectures of Turner. It provides all students of history and philosophy a great way to access those thinkers.