Democratic enlightenment: philosophy, revolution, and human rights, 1750 - 1790

The Enlightenment shaped modernity. Western values of representative democracy and basic human rights, gender and racial equality, individual liberty, and freedom of expression and the press, form an interlocking system that derives directly from the Enlightenment's philosophical revolution. This fact is uncontested - yet remarkably few historians or philosophers have attempted to trace the process of ideas from the political and social turmoil of the late eighteenth century to thepresent day. This is precisely what Jonathan Israel now does. He demonstrates that the Enlightenment was an essent

Pt. 1: The radical challenge. Nature and providence: earthquakes and the human condition -- The Encyclopédie suppressed (1752-1760) -- Rousseau against the Philosophes -- Voltaire, enlightenment, and the European courts -- Anti-philosophes -- Central Europe: Aufklärung divided -- Pt. 2: Rationalizing the Ancien Régime. Hume, scepticism, and moderation -- Scottish enlightenment and man's 'progress' -- Enlightened despotism -- Aufklärung and the fracturing of German protestant culture -- Catholic enlightenment: the papacy's retreat -- Society and the rise of the Italian revolutionary enlightenment -- Spain and the challenge of reform -- Pt. 3: Europe and the remaking of the world. The Histoire philosophique, or colonialism overturned -- The American revolution -- Europe and the Amerindians -- Philosophy and revolt in Ibero-America (1765-1792) -- Commercial despotism: Dutch colonialism in Asia -- China, Japan, and the West -- India and the two enlightenments -- Russia's Greeks, Poles, and Serfs -- Pt. 4: Spinoza controversies in the later enlightenment. Rousseau, Spinoza, and the 'general will' -- Radical breakthrough -- Pantheismusstreit (1780-1787) -- Kant and the radical challenge -- Goethe, Schiller, and the new 'Dutch Revolt' against Spain -- Pt. 5: Revolution. 1788-1789: the 'general revolution' begins -- The diffusion -- 'Philosophy' as a maker of revolutions -- Aufklärung and the secret societies (1776-1792) -- Small-state revolutions in the 1780s -- The Dutch democratic revolution of the 1780s -- The French revolution: from 'philosophy' to basic human rights (1788-1790) -- Epilogue: 1789 as an intellectual revolution

Jonathan Israel's radical new account of the late Enlightenment highlights forgotten currents and figures. Running counter to mainstream thinking, he demonstrates how a group of philosophe-revolutionnaires provided the intellectual powerhouse of the French Revolution, and how their ideas connect with modern Western democracy.