The World of the Enlightenment

Description

The Enlightenment was a laboratory of modernity that changed the history of the Western world, helping to bring about globalisation and the rise of a powerful intellectual class. It gave the scientific revolution new methods and a new purpose by ushering in the sciences of man. At the same time, it constantly interrogated these new sciences, wary of the possibility that they might lead to discrimination rather than emancipation. The late Enlightenment, the most mature and productive period, developed its values and political ideals, such as the concept of liberty and of a constitutional and “republican” government, through its confrontation with the Ancien régime, the slave trade and imperial colonialism, and the betrayal of the revolutionary ideals in the Americas. The World of the Enlightenment is a wide-ranging discussion of one of the most important cultural phenomena of the modern era. It covers topics from the scientific (such as the approaches of empiricism and humanism), the political (the rights of man, slavery and colonial independence) and the artistic (modern art and public opinion). The author discusses these topics thematically in ten chapters. This book will appeal to scholars and students alike studying the Enlightenment and the history of intellectualism, as well as all those interested in the history of modern science, politics and culture. Cover Half Title Series Page Title Page Copyright Page Table of Contents List of figures Introduction: The crisis of the humanities and the cultural history of the Enlightenment Chapter 1: The Enlightenment as a new humanism and a laboratory of modernity Notes Chapter 2: The Encyclopédie: Critiquing the seventeenth-century scientific revolution Notes Chapter 3: The foundations of a science for man: Empiricism and natura naturans Notes Chapter 4: Genius and imagination: The uchronies and popular sciences of the Late Enlightenment Notes Chapter 5: The Enlightenment and modern art in the age of public opinion Notes Chapter 6: The rise of intellectual power and the new politics: Imagination and experimentation in the republicanism of the moderns Notes Chapter 7: The political enigma of the global Enlightenment: The rights of man in the face of slavery Notes Chapter 8: From the science of man to the humanism of the moderns: The equality and universalism of rights and the transformation of values Notes Chapter 9: The Enlightenment and the Atlantic revolutions: The Haitian Revolution Notes Chapter 10: The legacy of the Enlightenment: How its project stalled amid new identities and Ancien régime metamorphoses Notes Bibliography Primary Works Secondary Works Index