The Enlightenment that Failed

The Enlightenment that Failed
Author :
Publisher : Oxford University Press
Total Pages : 988
Release :
ISBN-10 : 9780191058257
ISBN-13 : 0191058254
Rating : 4/5 (57 Downloads)

Book Synopsis The Enlightenment that Failed by : Jonathan I. Israel

Download or read book The Enlightenment that Failed written by Jonathan I. Israel and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2019-11-28 with total page 988 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Enlightenment that Failed explores the growing rift between those Enlightenment trends and initiatives that appealed exclusively to elites and those aspiring to enlighten all of society by raising mankind's awareness, freedoms, and educational level generally. Jonathan I. Israel explains why the democratic and radical secularizing tendency of the Western Enlightenment, after gaining some notable successes during the revolutionary era (1775-1820) in numerous countries, especially in Europe, North America, and Spanish America, ultimately failed. He argues that a populist, Robespierriste tendency, sharply at odds with democratic values and freedom of expression, gained an ideological advantage in France, and that the negative reaction this generally provoked caused a more general anti-Enlightenment reaction, a surging anti-intellectualism combined with forms of religious revival that largely undermined the longings of the deprived, underprivileged, and disadvantaged, and ended by helping, albeit often unwittingly, conservative anti-Enlightenment ideologies to dominate the scene. The Enlightenment that Failed relates both the American and the French revolutions to the Enlightenment in a markedly different fashion from how this is usually done, showing how both great revolutions were fundamentally split between bitterly opposed and utterly incompatible ideological tendencies. Radical Enlightenment, which had been an effective ideological challenge to the prevailing monarchical-aristocratic status quo, was weakened, then almost entirely derailed and displaced from the Western consciousness, in the 1830s and 1840s by the rise of Marxism and other forms of socialism.


The Enlightenment that Failed Related Books

The Enlightenment that Failed
Language: en
Pages: 988
Authors: Jonathan I. Israel
Categories: History
Type: BOOK - Published: 2019-11-28 - Publisher: Oxford University Press

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

The Enlightenment that Failed explores the growing rift between those Enlightenment trends and initiatives that appealed exclusively to elites and those aspirin
A Revolution of the Mind
Language: en
Pages: 294
Authors: Jonathan Israel
Categories: History
Type: BOOK - Published: 2010 - Publisher: Princeton University Press

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Declaration of Human Rights.
Radical Enlightenment
Language: en
Pages: 5167
Authors: Jonathan I. Israel
Categories: History
Type: BOOK - Published: 2002-07-18 - Publisher: OUP Oxford

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Arguably the most decisive shift in the history of ideas in modern times was the complete demolition during the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries - in t
Democratic Enlightenment
Language: en
Pages: 1083
Authors: Jonathan Israel
Categories: History
Type: BOOK - Published: 2013-01-17 - Publisher: Oxford University Press

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Jonathan Israel's radical new account of the late Enlightenment highlights forgotten currents and figures. Running counter to mainstream thinking, he demonstrat
Enlightenment Contested
Language: en
Pages: 1025
Authors: Jonathan I. Israel
Categories: History
Type: BOOK - Published: 2006-10-12 - Publisher: Oxford University Press

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

This is a managerial survey and reinterpretation of the Enlightenment. The text offers an assessment of the nature and development of the important currents in