Individuals & Societies

This title is now available in a new format. Refer to The Enlightenment: A Graphic Guide 9781848311794.

This volume takes the reader from the ancient regime via the catalysts of the Enlightenment and the French Revolution to a world where artists like Beethoven, Byron and Turner were increasingly autonomous.

In a recreation of the epoch between the 1770s and the 1820s, Emma Rothschild reinterprets the ideas of the great revolutionary political economists to show us the true landscape of economic and political thought in their day, with important consequences for our own. Her work alters the readings of Adam Smith and Condorcet - and of ideas of enlightenment - that underlie much contemporary political thought. This text takes up late-18th-century disputes over the political economy of an enlightened, commercial society to show us how the political and the economic were intricately related to each other and to philosophical reflection. Rothschild examines theories of economic and political sentiments, and the reflection of these theories in the politics of enlightenment.

One of the most profound thinkers of modern history, Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-78) was a central figure of the European Enlightenment. He was also its most formidable critic, condemning the political, economic, theological, and sexual trappings of civilization along lines that would excitethe enthusiasm of romantic individualists and radical revolutionaries alike.In this study of Rousseau's life and works Robert Wokler shows how his philosophy of history, his theories of music and politics, his fiction, educational and religious writings, and even his botany, were all inspired by visionary ideals of mankind's self-realization in a condition of unfetteredfreedom. He explains how, in regressing to classical republicanism, ancient mythology, direct communion with God, and solitude, Rousseau anticipated some post-modernist rejections of the Enlightenment as well.