The Enlightenment

This magisterial history—sure to become the definitive work on the subject—recasts the 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 Enlightenment is the fountainhead of modern secular Western values: religious...

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This magisterial history—sure to become the definitive work on the subject—recasts the 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 Enlightenment is the fountainhead of modern secular Western values: religious tolerance, freedom of thought, speech and the press, of rationality and evidence-based argument. Yet why, over three hundred years after it began, is the Enlightenment so profoundly misunderstood as controversial, the expression of soulless calculation? The answer may be that, to an extraordinary extent, we have accepted the account of the Enlightenment given by its conservative enemies. Ritchie Robertson goes back into the “long eighteenth century,” from approximately 1680 to 1790, to reveal what this much-debated period was really about.

Any account of the Enlightenment must be in large part a history of ideas. But Robertson argues that it is not solely a philosophical movement; the Enlightenment saw the publication of the Encyclopédie, which is not only a historical and philosophical compendium, but also an illustrated guide to all sorts of contemporary machinery, handicrafts, and trades aimed to improve people’s lives in immediate and practical ways. Robertson chronicles the campaigns mounted by some Enlightened figures against specific evils such as capital punishment, judicial torture, serfdom and witchcraft trials, featuring the experiences of major figures like Voltaire and Diderot with ordinary people who lived through this extraordinary moment. Robertson gives due attention to philosophical and theological debates, but also looks to literature, music, and the visual arts as prominent means of conveying enlightenment ideas.

In seeking to correct one-sided views of the Enlightenment, Robertson ultimately puts forward his own. He does not reduce this transformative period to a formula, but instead makes the claim that indeed the Enlightenment was an attempt to increase human happiness, and to claim that happiness was possible in this world, without needing any compensatory belief in a better one beyond the grave.

List of Illustrations xiii
Preface xv
Note on Translations xxiii
1 Happiness, Reason and Passion 1
Is Happiness Possible? 4
Freedom from Fear 9
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List of Illustrations xiii
Preface xv
Note on Translations xxiii
1 Happiness, Reason and Passion 1
Is Happiness Possible? 4
Freedom from Fear 9
The Witch Craze and its End 14
Reason 21
The Passions 32
Interpreting the Enlightenment 37
2 The Scientific Revolution 42
Bacon or Descartes? 44
Newton and Newtonianism 56
Experimental Philosophy 65
The Heavens and the Earth 71
Science and the Enlightenment Public 77
The Harmony of Science and Religion 82
3 Toleration 85
Against Toleration 87
Persecution in France 91
Toleration in the Dutch Republic 94
Britain: 'a Persecuting Society' 99
Toleration in the Holy Roman Empire 105
William Penn's Holy Experiment 108
Arguments for Toleration 111
Bayle 115
Voltaire 123
Lessing 126
Goethe 130
Beyond Toleration 133
4 The Religious Enlightenment 136
Optimism 137
Physico-Theology 147
Religious Moderation in England and Scotland 157
Theological Enlightenment in Germany 166
The Catholic Enlightenment 170
Enlightenment in the Orthodox World 176
The Jewish Enlightenment 179
The Study of the Bible 182
The New Testament 191
5 Unbelief and Speculation 199
The Disenchantment of the World 200
Medicalization 206
Secularization? 210
The Fear of Hell 215
Natural Religion 220
Voltaire and the Bible 224
Atheism 232
An Evil God? 241
New Religious Speculations 245
The Power of Feeling 249
Enlightened Dying 253
6 Science and Sensibility 261
Self-Love and Sympathy 262
The Science of Man: Hume's Treatise 274
Anthropologies 282
The Science of Woman 293
Sexual Relations without Sin 301
Classifying Humanity 307
Diderot and the Grey Areas of Humanity 317
Empathetic Fiction 323
Sentiment and Society 340
7 Sociability 351
Politeness 353
The Public Sphere 358
Societies 365
The Republic of Letters 373
The Ethos of Scholarship 377
The Virtual Public Sphere 382
Censorship 389
Unsociability: Hume vs Rousseau 395
8 Practical Enlightenment 401
Police 401
The Encyclopédie 412
Agriculture 420
Medicine 427
Bringing up Children 434
Schools and Universities 445
Punishment 450
9 Aesthetics 464
Arts, Art, Aesthetics 465
Cartesian Aesthetics: Neoclassicism 468
Taste 474
Genius 483
Art and Morality 490
Imitation 493
Tragedy 500
The Sublime 506
10 The Science of Society 512
Montesquieu: The Spirit of the Laws 513
Commerce 521
Political Economy 529
Adam Smith and The Wealth of Nations 535
Luxury 543
11 Philosophical History 555
Writing Secular History 555
Two Centres of History: Göttingen and Edinburgh 562
Two Histories of England: David Hume and Catharine Macaulay 572
Gibbon's Decline and Fall 582
The Future 595
12 Cosmopolitanism 600
Citizens of the World 600
Travel and Travel Writers 606
Myths of China 621
Empire 626
The Histoire des deux Indes 631
The Discovery of Asia 637
The Primitive 642
Cultural Cosmopolitanism: Forster and Herder 648
13 Forms of Government 655
Monarchy 656
Enlightened Absolutism 662
Republics 683
Rousseau and the Social Contract 692
14 Revolutions 706
The American Revolution 707
The French Revolution 717
At Long Last, an English Enlightenment 735
Some Enlightenment Legacies 745
Conclusion: The Battle over the Enlightenment 769
References 781
Select Bibliography 893
Index 927
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