The
Enlightenment of the 18th century was not
only a crucial epoch, a sea-change in human
history - it was also a vast moral, scientific
and political movement. Intellectuals across
Europe and the New World linked up in networks
of friendship, projects and debates, and began
to free themselves of the authority of the
Church and find a sense of their own vocation,
a calling to rethink the world in secular
terms.
Introducing
the Enlightenment shows how the leading thinkers
of the movement believed that by means of
scientific endeavour the essential order of
Nature could be systematically explained,
its processes could be mastered and all of
its secrets revealed. The book focuses on
three of the giants of the Enlightenment -
Voltaire, Diderot and Rousseau - but also
in the cast are David Hume, Adam Smith, Samuel
Johnson, Immanuel Kant, Benjamin Franklin
and Thomas Jefferson.
This is the perfect introduction to the period
in human history which laid the foundations
for modern thought.
***
Lloyd
Spencer is Senior Lecturer in the School of
Media at Trinity and All Saints, a college
of the University of Leeds. He has written
Introducing Hegel and a biographical study
of Walter Benjamin.
Andrzej
Krauze is a cartoonist and illustrator whose
work is published regularly in the Guardian,
the New Statesman and the Sunday Telegraph.
He is also the illustrator of Introducing
Hegel.
