Is the world really falling apart? Is the ideal of progress obsolete? Cognitive scientist Steven Pinker urges us to step back from the gory headlines and prophecies of doom, which play to our psychological biases. Instead, follow the data. In seventy-five graphs, Pinker shows that life, health, prosperity, safety, peace, knowledge, and happiness are on the rise, not just in the West, but worldwide. This progress is not the result of some cosmic force. It is a gift of the Enlightenment: the conviction that reason and science can enhance human flourishing. Far from being a naïve hope, the Enlightenment, we now know, has worked. But more than ever, it needs a vigorous defense. The Enlightenment project swims against currents of human nature -- tribalism, authoritarianism, demonization, magical thinking -- which demagogues are all too willing to exploit. Many commentators, committed to political, religious, or romantic ideologies, fight a rearguard action against it. The result is a corrosive fatalism and a willingness to wreck the precious institutions of liberal democracy and global cooperation. Pinker makes the case for reason, science, and humanism: the ideals we need to confront our problems and continue our progress.

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 this stimulating volume, Sir Isaiah Berlin lucidy and succinctly presents commentaries on, and selections from, the basic writings of the brilliant philosophers Berkeley, Locke, Hume, and others - men who believed that science's achievements in the material world could be translated into philosphical terms. The challenging ideas of these great thinkers - and their equally great critics - remain the classical foundation of liberal humanism and rationalism in the West, so unparalleled for their lucidity, courage, hatred of darkness, and love of truth that they are of vital interest to men and women today.

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.

This is a study of the transmission of political ideas across languages and cultures, and in particular of a notably fruitful encounter between two distinct branches of eighteenth-century political discourse: the reception of Scottish civic ideas, developed most powerfully in the works of theEdinburgh historian-philosopher Adam Ferguson, by Geman intellectuals of the Enlightenment and Romantic eras.Fania Oz-Salzberger's detailed and challenging analysis places Ferguson in the context of the Scottish Enlightenment, and explores the impact of his theories on German Enlightenment thinkers. She traces the passage of Ferguson's civic humanism across linguistic and cultural borders, and highlightsthe linguistic stumbling-blocks and conceptual tensions that resulted. Dr Oz-Salzberger argues that there resulted a complex and largely unintentional shift of Scottish civic concepts into a German vocabulary of spiritual perfection and inner life, and that the misreading of Ferguson and otherScottish thinkers contributed much to the richness of German intellectual life in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.