This is not light reading for your weekend at the beach; it covers a lot of history and philosophy, explaining the Enlightenment and the individuals (philosophes) involved. My main complaint, which lost it a star, is that it never really does a good job of addressing the subtitle. It does a good, thorough job of discussing the Enlightenment, then talks about the enemies of the Enlightenment, but not much about why it still matters. It is also unfortunate, at least to me, that he did not discuss the modern enemies of the Enlightenment, and why we need to keep fighting these battles for reason and knowledge. Overall, a useful informative book and well written; you'll have to form your own opinions on why it still matters. ( )

This is a very readable account of a complex period in history. It covered the material well and presented various points of view dispassionately I thought though other reviewers seem to detect a lot of bias. ( )

A cogent, accessible, sweeping work of intellectual history. ( )

The precise meaning of the term The Enlightenment has been the subject of furious debate ever since the eighteenth century, the period in which whatever it was grew to fruition. It was a time when philosophers in France, England, Scotland, and Germany trained the powers of reason on ancient beliefs and cast substantial doubts on the truth of, or even the possibility of, “revealed” religion. It resulted a wholly new conception of man.

But, Anthony Pagden argues, it was more than the sum of the philosophical doctrines enunciated by the leading thinkers of that age. It was a continuing process of intellectual activity in general.

Not all serious modern philosophers view the Enlightenment as an unmitigated good. Scottish philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre contends that all the insistence on the primacy of reason and rational debate ever accomplished was to erase from men’s minds what had been the main support for their entire moral, intellectual, and political lives: the concept of virtue. Pagden disagrees with that assessment, and goes on to demonstrate how the writings of Condorcet, Voltaire, Hobbes, Locke, Hume, and Kant, among others, led to an enhanced understanding of human nature.

Some Enlightenment writers (notably Locke, Descartes, and Bacon) tried to salvage traditional Christianity from attack, but most of the major thinkers of the era rejected the very idea of a deity, or at least a deity who at some ancient time revealed his intentions to man or who was prepared to intervene on man’s behalf.

Starting from what they conceived as man in a “state of nature,” i.e., before the formation of civilized societies, Hobbes, Locke, and Hume developed sophisticated concepts of government. Other Enlightenment thinkers developed forms of morality from concepts similar to Aquinas’s natural law. To them, morality came from within, not from (as MacIntyre would argue) from an external source. As Kant reasoned, the only truly human world is one that every individual would choose to create from himself if he did not know beforehand what position he would occupy within it.

Pagden contrasts the intellectual history of the West with that of the Islamic world, which, he contends, never experienced an enlightenment. Little of importance separated its view of the world in the 17th century from what it knew in the 12th. One might observe that many of its 21st century adherents want to return to their 7th century understanding of the world, shutting out any offending ideas beyond what appears in the Quran. But in the post-Enlightenment West we are able to frame our understanding of the world in terms of something larger than our own small patch of ground and culture, an ability Pagden asserts, we owe to the Enlightenment.

Why did the Enlightenment happen? Pagden argues that it was not merely a conflict between reason and belief or science and religion, but because of “the historical failure of Christianity to continue to provide the kind of intellectual, and consequently moral, certainty that it had once done.” The Enlightenment was more than an effort to promote reason to a privileged status in relation to all other forms of understanding. It was about creating a field of values based on a scrupulous understanding of what it means to be human.

Pagden’s book is immensely learned, covering the thought of some of the most interesting, original, and courageous thinkers of the Western Canon. I highly recommend it to readers with an interest in things philosophical.

(JAB) ( )

This is a good book, in spite of the author's attempt to hijack it for his own anti-Christian rant. Anthony Pagden has produced a book that puts the Enlightenment into historical context. He creates a compelling case for the split within the early church into catholic and protestant wings as being the schism that allowed fresh thinking and scientific breakthrough. He also makes some good points as to the benefits that we have received from the Enlightenment, and why we should be careful not to turn away from these gains. If only he had stopped there.

Professor Pagden is entitled to his own views upon religion and I would be the last person to suggest that he should be prevented from airing them, but such an exposition should not be stuck in the middle of a factual history. I would not pretend to know as much about the Enlightenment as he does, but he does appear to be almost putting words into the mouths of certain historic characters. Authors in the eighteenth century may have thought that religion was bunkum, but the punishment for so saying was severe enough to ensure that most did not so do.

The books conclusion is another passage which is exclusively the author's view, rather than a rounding up of the evidence produced in the main body of the work. Too strong a personal rant is in danger of leaving the audience behind and, whilst we are on the subject of niggles, I would suggest that the person who checked this book for small grammatical and typographic errors be shot. There were numerous omissions, or double entries of the definite, or indefinite article and similar basic mistakes which, whilst not altering the meaning of a passage, did interrupt the flow of a reading.

These grouses are a pity because the book is well worth reading. I learned an immense amount about the Enlightenment and the significance of Kant, Voltaire, Rousseau and Montesquieu in particular. To repeat my opening remarks, this is a good book: it is a pity that the many religious characters who did feature in the Enlightenment and especially, the rise of science, were frozen out. Definitely a book to read but, be prepared for the odd lecture. ( )