Enlightenment : The Pursuit of Happiness, 1680-1790

Omtale

A magisterial history that recaststhe Enlightenment as a period not solely consumed with rationale and reason,but rather as a pursuit of practical means to achieve greater human happiness.One of the formative periods of European and world history, the Enlightenmentis the fountainhead of modern secular Western values: religious tolerance, freedomof thought, speech and the press, of rationality and evidence-based argument.Yet why, over three hundred years after it began, is the Enlightenment soprofoundly misunderstood as controversial, the expression of soullesscalculation? The answer may be that, to an extraordinary extent, we haveaccepted the account of the Enlightenment given by its conservative enemies: thatenlightenment necessarily implied hostility to religion or support for anunfettered free market, or that this was the best of all possible worlds.Ritchie Robertson goes back into the long eighteenth century, fromapproximately 1680 to 1790, to reveal what this much-debated period was reallyabout. Robertson returns to the erasoriginal texts to show that above all, the Enlightenment was really aboutincreasing human happiness in this world rather than the next by promotingscientific inquiry and reasoned argument. In so doing Robertson chronicles thecampaigns mounted by some Enlightened figures against evils like capitalpunishment, judicial torture, serfdom and witchcraft trials, featuring theexperiences of major figures like Voltaire and Diderot alongside ordinary peoplewho lived through this extraordinary moment.In answering the question 'What isEnlightenment?' in 1784, Kant famously urged men and women above all to havethe courage to use your own intellect. Robertson shows how the thinkers of theEnlightenment did just that, seeking a well-rounded understanding of humanityin which reason was balanced with emotion and sensibility. Drawing onphilosophy, theology, historiography and literature across the major westernEuropean languages, The Enlightenment is a master-class in big picturehistory about the foundational epoch of modern times.