Book Description
The 18th-century Enlightenment was one of the most exciting and significant currents of European culture. Battling against tyranny, ignorance, and superstition, it formulated the ideals of thought, religion, and expression, the value of science, and 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 comments
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
'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
