# Book on the Enlightenment



## OldSchoolPresbyterian (Jun 10, 2022)

Can anyone recommend a good book on the enlightenment? I'm looking for something that would summarize the basic ideas of the enlightenment and discuss their impact on society, including hopefully a summary of some of the major enlightenment thinkers. Thank you.


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## arapahoepark (Jun 10, 2022)

Not sure if it is what you are looking for but there is a book called The 40 Most Influential Christians by Daryl Aaron that touches on Enlightenment subjects.


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## RamistThomist (Jun 10, 2022)

It also depends on which angle of the Enlightenment we are talking about. The French Enlightenment was atheistic and revolutionary (but I repeat myself). The German Enlightenment, while skeptical, and if you can ignore some silly remarks by Kant on the need for democracy, was often conservative. The Scottish Enlightenment was hit-or-miss. Hume, while an agnostic, was probably a political conservative.

I recommend at least for starters Leo Damrosch's _The Club _and his bio on Rousseau.


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## jwright82 (Jun 10, 2022)

RamistThomist said:


> It also depends on which angle of the Enlightenment we are talking about. The French Enlightenment was atheistic and revolutionary (but I repeat myself). The German Enlightenment, while skeptical, and if you can ignore some silly remarks by Kant on the need for democracy, was often conservative. The Scottish Enlightenment was hit-or-miss. Hume, while an agnostic, was probably a political conservative.
> 
> I recommend at least for starters Leo Damrosch's _The Club _and his bio on Rousseau.


A little off subject but didn't Kant write an essay on the Enlightenment or something like "What Is Enlightenment"?


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## bookslover (Jun 11, 2022)

RamistThomist said:


> It also depends on which angle of the Enlightenment we are talking about. The French Enlightenment was atheistic and revolutionary (but I repeat myself). The German Enlightenment, while skeptical, and if you can ignore some silly remarks by Kant on the need for democracy, was often conservative. The Scottish Enlightenment was hit-or-miss. Hume, while an agnostic, was probably a political conservative.
> 
> I recommend at least for starters Leo Damrosch's _The Club _and his bio on Rousseau.



I read _The Club_ and thought it was terrific (being a Samuel Johnson fan anyway). I haven't read the Rousseau volume. Damrosch has a new biography, just out: _Adventurer: The Life and Times of Giacomo Casanova_ (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2022).

Reactions: Like 1


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## bookslover (Jun 11, 2022)

Here's a fairly recent book: _The Enlightenment & the Book: Scottish Authors & Their Publishers in Eighteenth-Century Britain, Ireland, & America_ by Richard B. Sher (Chicago; The University of Chicago Press, 2006). Possibly not exactly what you're looking for, but it might help anyway.


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## greenbaggins (Jun 13, 2022)

Ritchie Robertson's new history of the Enlightenment as the pursuit of happiness is well worth the read, secularist though he is.


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## Tychicus (Jun 13, 2022)

greenbaggins said:


> Ritchie Robertson's new history of the Enlightenment as the pursuit of happiness is well worth the read, secularist though he is.


Kevin DeYoung reviewed it sometime back:








In Defense of the Enlightenment (Sort Of)


The Enlightenment was just as much the age of feeling, sympathy, and sensibility as it was an age of reason.




www.thegospelcoalition.org





I have been listening to his lectures on the Enlightenment. It seems he taught a course on the Enlightenment and moral philosophy at RTS , lectures 10-20 were uploaded on YouTube(the first ten I couldn't find, seems like they weren't recorded at all):


https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLzxFiU8d7j_pubV_5YQKoN2jwV81Amcm_


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## LadyCalvinist (Jun 13, 2022)

Over 30 years ago, when I was a graduate student in history, I had Peter Gay's 2 volume work on the Enlightenment. He is not a Christian.


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## RamistThomist (Jun 18, 2022)

For original sources, the best early critique of the Enlightenment is by Johann Herder (linked below).








Another History of Philosophy (Herder)


Herder, Johann Gottfried. Another Philosophy of History and Selected Political Writings. Indianapolis, IN: Hackett, 2004. The English title is misleading. One expects that this will be …




tentsofshem.wordpress.com





A good study on the Enlightenment is Isaiah Berlin's _Three Critics of the Enlightenment_.

The classic exposition is, as noted above, Peter Gay's work.


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