A Revolution of the Mind: Radical Enlightenment and the Intellectual Origins of Modern Democracy

Synopsis

"Originating as a clandestine movement of ideas that was almost entirely hidden from public view during its earliest phase, the Radical Enlightenment matured in opposition to the moderate mainstream Enlightenment dominant in Europe and America in the eighteenth century. During the revolutionary decades of the 1770s, 1780s, and 1790s, the Radical Enlightenment burst into the open, only to provoke a long and bitter backlash. A Revolution of the Mind shows that this vigorous opposition was mainly due to the powerful impulses in society to defend the principles of monarchy, aristocracy, empire, and racial hierarchy--principles linked to the upholding of censorship, church authority, social inequality, racial segregation, religious discrimination, and far-reaching privilege for ruling groups." [Amazon] "It places the same emphasis on the revolutionary nature of the change: ‘a vast turbulence in every sphere of knowledge and belief which shook European civilisation to its foundations.'" [Blanning: Pursuit of Glory, p. 474]

RefTags

Israel: A Revolution of the Mind

Released

2011

Location

North America

Setting