The Enlightenment
The Pursuit of Happiness 1680-1790
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The Enlightenment
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Narrated by:
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Jonathan Keeble
About this listen
Brought to you by Penguin.
The Enlightenment is one of the formative periods of Western history, yet more than 300 years after it began, it remains controversial. It is often seen as the fountainhead of modern values such as human rights, religious toleration, freedom of thought, scientific thought as an exemplary form of reasoning and rationality and evidence-based argument. Others accuse the Enlightenment of putting forward a scientific rationality which ignores the complexity and variety of human beings, propagates shallow atheism and aims to subjugate nature to so-called technical progress.
Ritchie Robertson engages with all these views to show that the Enlightenment sought above all to increase human happiness in this world by promoting scientific inquiry and reasoned argument and by challenging the authority traditionally assumed by the churches. His book presents illuminating readings of many key Enlightenment texts and overturns many received opinions - for example, that enlightenment necessarily implied hostility to religion. Answering the question 'what is Enlightenment?' Kant famously urged men and women above all to use their own understanding. Robertson shows how the thinkers of the Enlightenment did just that, seeking a rounded understanding of humanity in which reason was balanced with emotion and sensibility. It is a master-class in 'big picture' history, about one of the foundational epochs of modern times.
©2020 Ritchie Robertson (P)2020 Penguin AudioListeners also enjoyed...
What listeners say about The Enlightenment
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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- james martin
- 21-10-24
research and detail
This book doesn't preach .
Solid information delivered well.
Could have been a snooze but so wasn't.
A complicated and broad reaching subject which I felt was covered very well . With just the right amount of editorial input .
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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- Toby
- 05-10-22
Fantastic listen
I thoroughly enjoyed this journey through the thinking in the 18th century. It is long and detailed, and all the better for that.
No off to read some Voltaire, Montesquieu, Schiller and Lessing.
Thanks. This book in of itself is enlightening!
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1 person found this helpful
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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- S. Moorcroft
- 05-01-21
Superb Overview
An excellent overview of a hertogeneous and complex multi-faceted and international movement whose sole common factor was an engagement with the affairs of men, -and to a lesser extent women. It is difficult to imagine a more comprehensive overview. Even when disagreeing with the arguments presented here one develops a greater understanding of the subject. I would have liked more on enlightened reactions to the slave trade, -he does cover this, but I would have liked more. Fully merits five stars.
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5 people found this helpful
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Overall4 out of 5 stars
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- T Bailey
- 10-02-21
Comprehensive
Fascinating, wide-ranging and erudite. I stuck with it to the end, and I am glad I did.
But the author is no stylist and it is very long.
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3 people found this helpful
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- Colin H
- 04-01-23
Another tour de force from Jonathan Keeble
I can't get enough of Jonathan Keeble audio books, he has the perfect, commanding voice for grand historical narrative sweeps. Superb.
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- John-Paul McMahon
- 12-04-21
Great listen
Really enjoyed listening to this book. Narrator is excellent. Would recommend it for anyone interested in the history of ideas.
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- JCM
- 08-07-23
This is the book I needed thirty years ago
My initial assumption was that - despite very positive reviews - this book would be another oversimplified overview. The reductionary subtitle "the pursuit of happiness" felt a bit too trite, like it was buying into the clichéd naïvety of assuming the American declaration of independence and constitution were somehow high water marks of social and philosophical evolution. The thematic chapters, culminating on one titled simply "Revolution" added to that impression.
Thankfully I was totally wrong. This is an amazing achievement - the first book I've encountered that makes the Enlightenment fully comprehensible in all its complexity and contradictions, contextualising it across multiple countries and right up to the ongoing conversations and controversies over its impact and legacies. The thematic approach means I've come away with a far clearer grasp of the key Enlightenment ideas, people, and their interrelationships than I've ever managed before.
This is particularly impressive in that I've always found the Enlightenment to be such a vast, daunting concept to get one's head around in anything more than a superficial way that I've been trying to learn more about it with varying degrees of failure for getting on for thirty years. It was too big to dare taking on when studying history at university, with so many big names and complex ideas, so many events, so much to read, so much backstory, and all - seemingly - building up to the near-incomprehensible chaos of the French Revolution, which then led to reactions and responses and further areas in which to get bogged down in details. Pretty much every other aspect of philosophy has seemed easier to grasp - even the likes of the deconstructionists. (This is part of the reason why Jonathan Israel's vast series of chunky books on the Enlightenment have been sitting unread on my shelves for years - and why I never took one of his courses when he was a professor at my old university...)
If there's a flaw in the book's approach it's that the relative chronology of ideas and events that fall outside the broad themes of each chapter can be slightly hard to follow at times. This is made a little worse in the audiobook as the sub-chapters don't bother to borrow the section subheaders from the print edition, which help the logic of the approach become more apparent. But the narrator is excellent - albeit the voices he uses for quotes, especially one by women, become quite funny after a while, and some of his pronunciation is off on some of the names.
But for a long book on such a complex topic, small subjective flaws can be easily forgiven. Most importantly, I now - finally - feel like I have a good enough base understanding to dive properly into Jonathan Israel, Kant, and other more complex works.
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3 people found this helpful