The Enlightenment and Why It Still Matters

For readers of big history and philosophy, from a renowned and brilliant historian, a surprising new look at the origins of the most potent intellectual movement the world has ever known-the Enlightenment.

Anthony Pagden, one of our most revered contemporary historians, shows how the Enlightenment laid the foundation for our world today-from government and philosophy, to science and society. The roots of our culture can be found in this seminal movement, when the superstitions of the past were overthrown and reason and equality came to the fore. Hume and Diderot, Smith and Condorcet, Vico and Voltaire, Rousseau and Kant-Pagden is comprehensive in his analysis of this heterogeneous group of scholars and their lasting impact on the world. He argues that Enlightenment ideas go beyond just the "empire of reason"-that the "human science" developed by these eminent thinkers led to a universalizing vision of the human world, to the beginnings of concepts like civilization and human nature. Pagden's The Enlightenment is a portrait of a period, a critical moment in history, and one that laid the groundwork for the secular, egalitarian democracy upon which America was founded. 

Author: Anthony Pagden 

Publisher: Random House 

Released Date: 2013

ISBN: 9781400060689