A01=Dan Edelstein
art
Author_Dan Edelstein
Category=DSB
Category=JBCC9
Category=NHD
censorship
dutch republic
england
enlightenment
eq_bestseller
eq_biography-true-stories
eq_history
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
eq_society-politics
esprit philosophique
france
freedom
french academies
history
humanism
liberty
literature
nonfiction
orient
perspective
philosophy
politeness
politics
public instruction
quarrel of the ancients and moderns
radical
resistance
revolution
rights
science
universities
worldliness
Product details
- ISBN 9780226184470
- Weight: 425g
- Dimensions: 17 x 22mm
- Publication Date: 15 Dec 2010
- Publisher: The University of Chicago Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Hardback
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What was the Enlightenment? Though many scholars have attempted to solve this riddle, none has made as much use of contemporary answers as Dan Edelstein does here. In seeking to recover where, when, and how the concept of 'the Enlightenment' first emerged, Edelstein departs from genealogies that trace it back to political and philosophical developments in England and the Dutch Republic. According to Edelstein, by the 1720s scholars and authors in France were already employing a constellation of terms - such as l'esprit philosophique - to describe what we would today call the Enlightenment. But Edelstein argues that it was within the French Academies, and in the context of the "Quarrel of the Ancients and the Moderns", that the key definition, concepts, and historical narratives of the Enlightenment were crafted. A necessary corrective to many of our contemporary ideas about the Enlightenment, Edelstein's book turns conventional thinking about the period on its head. Concise, clear, and contrarian, "The Enlightenment" will be welcomed by all teachers and students of the period.
Dan Edelstein is assistant professor of French at Stanford University and the author of The Terror of Natural Right: Republicanism, the Cult of Nature, and the French Revolution.
