Radical Enlightenment: Philosophy and the Making of Modernity 1650-1750

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Summary: Modernity's seminal emergence
Review: We see the climactic moment of the Enlightenment,and the explosion at the end of the eighteenth century generating a new age and world, yet we often fail, save in the clearer case of science, to see the crucial lead-up to this passage. And behind many of the major figures there is a precursor, thus Petty before Adam Smith. The emergence of feminism, yes here the signs. And the list continues. This work systematically explores this aspect of modernity and the Enlightenment by tracing its roots back to the Radical Enlightenment of the seventeenth century, as Europe emerges from the chaos of the Thirty Years War. There Spinoza, beside a host of lesser known figures, and contrary to reputation, is a major underground influence, besides Newton and Descartes. Intimated by Hazard in his older La Crise de la conscience Europeene, this thesis is stretched backwards further from the 1680's by Israel, with a broader sweep transcending nationalism, even as he throws light on the insufficiently appreciated place of the Dutch culture in the rise of the modern. Especially striking in a fullsome banquet of historical detail is the portrait and treatment of the axial figure of Spinoza, and his relation to the birth of liberalism, Biblical criticism, and the characteristic philosophy of immanence that will echo all way through the chorus of modern philosophy. This book will remain a steady companion to the study of the Enlightenment. Tops.