The Enlightenment shaped modernity. Western values of representative democracy and basic human rights and freedoms form an interlocking system that derives directly from the Enlightenment's philosophical revolution. This is uncontested--yet remarkably few historians or philosophers have attempted to trace the process of ideas from the political and social turmoil of the late eighteenth century to the present day. This is precisely what Jonathan Israel does in the third part of his revisionist series. He demonstrates that the Enlightenment was an essentially revolutionary process, driven by philosophical debate. From 1789, its impetus came from a small group of philosophe-revolutionnaires. Not aligned to any of the social groups represented in the French National Assembly, they nonetheless forged "la philosophie moderne"--in effect Radical Enlightenment ideas--into a world-transforming ideology that had a lasting impact in Latin America, Canada and eastern Europe as well as the countries from which it sprang. --

The Enlightenment shaped modernity. Western values of representative democracy and basic human rights and freedoms form an interlocking system that derives directly from the Enlightenment's philosophical revolution. This is uncontested--yet remarkably few historians or philosophers have attempted to trace the process of ideas from the political and social turmoil of the late eighteenth century to the present day. This is precisely what Jonathan Israel does in the third part of his revisionist series. He demonstrates that the Enlightenment was an essentially revolutionary process, driven by philosophical debate. From 1789, its impetus came from a small group of philosophe-revolutionnaires. Not aligned to any of the social groups represented in the French National Assembly, they nonetheless forged "la philosophie moderne"--in effect Radical Enlightenment ideas--into a world-transforming ideology that had a lasting impact in Latin America, Canada and eastern Europe as well as the countries from which it sprang. --

A leading historian reveals the radical origins of humanity's most cherished secular values Democracy, free thought and expression, religious tolerance, individual liberty, political self-determination of peoples, sexual and racial equality—these values have firmly entered the mainstream in the decades since they were enshrined in the 1948 U.N. Declaration of Human Rights. But if these ideals no longer seem radical today, their origin was very radical indeed—far more so than most historians have been willing to recognize. In A Revolution of the Mind , Jonathan Israel, one of the world's leading historians of the Enlightenment, traces the philosophical roots of these ideas to what were the least respectable strata of Enlightenment thought—what he calls the Radical Enlightenment. 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. In telling this fascinating history, A Revolution of the Mind reveals the surprising origin of our most cherished values—and helps explain why in certain circles they are frequently disapproved of and attacked even today.

"In the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries a small but conspicuous fringe of the Jewish population became the world's most resolute, intellectually driven, and philosophical revolutionaries, among them the pre-Marxist Karl Marx. Yet the roots of their alienation from existing society and determination to change it extend back to the very heart of the Enlightenment, when Spinoza and other philosophers living in a rigid, hierarchical society colored by a deeply hostile theology first developed a modern revolutionary consciousness. Leading intellectual historian Jonathan Israel shows how the radical ideas in the early Marx's writings were influenced by this legacy, which, he argues, must be understood as part of the Radical Enlightenment. He traces the rise of a Jewish revolutionary tendency demanding social equality and universal human rights throughout the Western world. Israel considers how these writers understood Jewish marginalization and ghettoization and the edifice of superstition, prejudice, and ignorance that sustained them. He investigates how the quest for Jewish emancipation led these thinkers to formulate sweeping theories of social and legal reform that paved the way for revolutionary actions that helped change the world from 1789 onward-but hardly as they intended"--

List of Plates p. xviii List of Figures p. xx Abbreviations of Library and Archive Locations p. xxi Other Abbreviations p. xxiii Part I Introductory 1 Early Enlightenment, Revolution, and the Modern Age p. 3 1 Ancien Regime and Revolution p. 3 2 Historians and the Writing of 'Intellectual History' p. 15 3 L'Esprit philosophique p. 26 2 Philosophy and the Making of Modernity p. 43 1 Spinoza and Spinozism in the Radical Enlightenment p. 43 2 Locke, Hume, and the Making of Modernity p. 51 Part II The Crisis of Religious Authority 3 Faith and Reason: Bayle versus the Rationaux p. 63 1 Europe's Religious Crisis p. 63 2 Consensus gentium and the Philosophes p. 71 3 Voltaire and the Eclipse of Bayle p. 85 4 Demolishing Priesthood, Ancient and Modern p. 94 5 Socinianism and the Social, Psychological, and Cultural Roots of Enlightenment p. 115 6 Locke, Bayle, and Spinoza: A Contest of Three Toleration Doctrines p. 135 1 Toleration from Locke to Barbeyrac p. 135 2 Bayle's Freedom of Conscience p. 145 3 Spinoza's Liberty of Thought and Expression p. 155 7 Germany and the Baltic: Enlightenment, Society, and the Universities p. 164 1 The Problem of 'Atheism' p. 164 2 Academic Disputations and the Making of German Radical Thought p. 175 3 An Alternative Route? Johann Lorenz Schmidt and 'Left' Wolffian Radicalism p. 188 4 Natural Theology, Natural Law, and the Radical Challenge p. 194 8 Newtonianism and Anti-Newtonianism in the Early Enlightenment: Science, Philosophy, and Religion p. 201 1 English Physico-theology p. 201 2 From 's-Gravesande to d'Alembert (1720-1750) p. 215 Part III Political Emancipation 9 Anti-Hobbesianism and the Making of 'Modernity' p. 225 10 The Origins of Modern Democratic Republicanism p. 240 1 Classical Republicanism versus Democratic Republicanism p. 240 2 Democracy in Radical Thought p. 249 11 Bayle, Boulainvilliers, Montesquieu: Secular Monarchy versus the Aristocratic Republic p. 264 1 Bayle's Politics p. 264 2 Early Enlightenment French Political Thought p. 278 3 The Ideal of Mixed Monarchy p. 287 12 'Enlightened Despotism': Autocracy, Faith, and Enlightenment in Eastern and South-Eastern Europe (1689-1755) p. 295 1 Peter the Great's 'Revolution' (1689-1725) p. 295 2 Europe and the Russian Enlightenment (1725-1755) p. 309 3 Locke, Newton, and Leibniz in the Greek Cultural Diaspora p. 317 13 Popular Sovereignty, Resistance, and the 'Right to Revolution' p. 326 14 Anglomania, Anglicisme, and the 'British Model' p. 344 1 English Deism and the Recoil from Radicalism p. 344 2 French Anglicisme p. 356 3 Anglicisme and Anti-anglicisme in the Mid Eighteenth Century p. 364 15 The Triumph of the 'Moderate Enlightenment' in the United Provinces p. 372 1 The Defeat of Dutch Radical Thought: The Social Context p. 372 2 Intellectual Realignment within the Huguenot Diaspora p. 386 3 The Orangist Restoration (1747-1751) p. 396 Part IV Intellectual Emancipation 16 The Overthrow of Humanist Criticism p. 409 1 Ars critica p. 409 2 Secularization of the Sacred p. 421 3 Man and Myth p. 427 17 The Recovery of Greek Thought p. 436 1 'Rationalizing the Gods': Disputing Xenophanes p. 436 2 Strato, Spinoza, and the Philosophes p. 444 3 Spinozism: A Reworking of Greek Stoicism? p. 457 18 The Rise of 'History of Philosophy' p. 471 1 Pre-Enlightenment 'History of Philosophy' p. 471 2 German Eclecticism and the Rise of a New Discipline p. 476 3 'Radical Renaissance' p. 481 19 From 'History of Philosophy' to History of l'Esprit humain p. 496 1 Fontenelle, Boulainvilliers, and 'l'histoire de l'esprit humain' p. 496 2 Diderot and the History of Human Thought p. 504 20 Italy, the Two Enlightenments, and Vico's 'New Science' p. 513 1 Italy Embraces the Mainstream Enlightenment p. 513 2 Vico's 'Divine Providence' p. 528 3 A Restored Italo-Greek Wisdom? p. 537 Part V The Party of Humanity 21 The Problem of Equality p. 545 1 Enlightenment and Basic Equality p. 545 2 Aristocracy, Radical Thought, and Educational Reform p. 563 22 Sex, Marriage, and the Equality of Women p. 572 1 Cartesianism and Female Equality p. 572 2 Marriage, Chastity, and Prostitution p. 576 3 The Erotic Emancipation of Woman, and Man p. 582 23 Race, Radical Thought, and the Advent of Anti-colonialism p. 590 1 Enlightenment against Empire p. 590 2 Slavery and the Early Enlightenment p. 603 3 Empire and National Identity p. 609 24 Rethinking Islam: Philosophy and the 'Other' p. 615 1 Islam and Toleration p. 615 2 Bayle and Ibn Rushd (Averroes) p. 620 3 Ibn Tufayl and the Hidden Wisdom of the East p. 628 4 The Clandestine 'Enlightenment' of the Zindikites p. 631 25 Spinoza, Confucius, and Classical Chinese Philosophy p. 640 1 China and Spinozismus ante Spinozam p. 640 2 Leibniz, Wolff, and Chinese prisca theologia p. 652 3 Voltaire, Montesquieu, and China p. 657 26 Is Religion Needed for a Well-Ordered Society? p. 663 1 Separating Morality from Theology p. 663 2 'Moderate' Enlightenment Deist Morality p. 681 3 Radical Thought and the Construction of a Secular Morality p. 692 Part VI Radical Philosophes 27 The French Enlightenment Prior to Voltaire's Lettres philosophiques (1734) p. 699 1 The Post-1715 Reaction to Absolutism p. 699 2 The Materialist Challenge p. 712 3 Clandestinity p. 722 28 Men, Animals, Plants, and Fossils: French Hylozoic Materialisme before Diderot p. 733 29 Realigning the Parti philosophique: Voltaire, Voltairianisme, Antivoltairianisme (1732-1745) p. 751 1 Voltaire's Enlightenment p. 751 2 The Defeat of Voltaire and the French 'Newtonians' p. 762 3 Breakdown of the Lockean-Newtonian Synthesis p. 772 30 From Voltaire to Diderot p. 781 31 The 'Unvirtuous Atheist' p. 794 1 The 'Affaire La Mettrie' (1745-1752) p. 794 2 Atheistic Amoralism p. 803 32 The Parti philosophique Embraces the Radical Enlightenment p. 814 1 Radicalization of the Diderot Circle p. 814 2 The 'Quarrel' of the Esprit des lois (1748-1752) p. 824 33 The 'War of the Encyclopedie': The First Stage (1746-1752) p. 840 34 Postscript p. 863 Bibliography p. 872 Index p. 955.