The eighteenth-century Enlightenment was one of the most exciting and significant currents of European culture. Battling against tyranny, ignorance and superstition, it formulated the ideals which still inform our society today: a belief in reason, criticism, freedom of thought, religion and expression, the value of science, the pursuit of progress. Enlightenment thinkers undermined the ancien regime and provided the ideas for the French Revolution. Modern scholarship, however, has shown it was a more complex and ambiguous movement than commonly recognized. This book, now in a fully updated second edition, sympathetically explores the complexities of the Enlightenment. Synthesizing and evaluating the latest scholarship, it offers a new and comprehensive vision of this many-faceted movement.
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
ISBN: 9780333945056
Number of pages: 90
Weight: 148 g
Dimensions: 216 x 138 mm
Edition: 2nd ed. 2001
Reviews of the first edition: 'Roy Porter provides an entertaining, vigorous and accessible discussion of a concept that can easily appear hopelessly confusing, if not entirely elusive.' - Derek Beales, The Journal of Ecclesiastical History 'This volume may confidently be recommended to its intended audience. Books of this kind are the hardest of all to write, and not all experts wear their learning lightly enough to succeed. Roy Porter does, and is cordially to be thanked.' - Alan P.F. Sell, Aberystwyth and Lampeter University School of Theology
Please sign in to write a review
Would you like to proceed to the App store to download the Waterstones App?
