Heavenly City of the Eighteenth-Century Philosophers (Yale Nota Bene)

Rating:
Summary: Loss of faith leads to boring book
Review: Carl Becker once unknown to me became the bane of an entire class of students as we explored in horrifying depth how Becker writes about the 18th and 19th centuries. In this book you are subjected to a historian who tries to catalogue philosophy and the philosophers of the 18th century in a poor blend of factual history and intepreted philosophy. The book is laced with so much cynicism that it becomes hard to scry which sections Becker stands behind and which he pokes fun at. After the unfortunate ordeal of reading this book you will see that Becker had a loss of faith at some point in his life and feels that everything around him is now meaningless, therefore he turns to the past to seek new meaning and redemption of his now useless life. What we find instead is a convoluted text which seems to be hailed as wonderful by religious zealots for its admonishments of science, philosophy, and history as empty in the grand scheme of the world. He contradicts himself so often that only after you pore over his text can you even decide what he supports. My opinion: skip the book and bash your head into the wall. You will get about as much satisfaction.

Rating:
Summary: Understanding the French Enlightenment Philosophers
Review: Carl Becker's work is a classic in the field whether or not one agrees with his thesis. He contends that the French Enlightenment thinkers tried unsuccessfully to distance themselves from the religious mileaux from which they came. Looking back from a vantage point nearly 150 years later, it is clear that while their ideas were advanced, the "utopia" they sought to establish was closer to the thinkers of the Reformation period 300 years earlier than to thinkers of the latter 19th and early 20th centuries. Any serious student of this period should at least scan this author's work as all subsequent scholarship has had to stake a stand for or against his position - thus to understand scholarship in the past 20 years - read this book.

Rating:
Summary: Understanding the French Enlightenment Philosophers
Review: Carl Becker's work is a classic in the field whether or not one agrees with his thesis. He contends that the French Enlightenment thinkers tried unsuccessfully to distance themselves from the religious mileaux from which they came. Looking back from a vantage point nearly 150 years later, it is clear that while their ideas were advanced, the "utopia" they sought to establish was closer to the thinkers of the Reformation period 300 years earlier than to thinkers of the latter 19th and early 20th centuries. Any serious student of this period should at least scan this author's work as all subsequent scholarship has had to stake a stand for or against his position - thus to understand scholarship in the past 20 years - read this book.

Rating:
Summary: A Must Read for Everyone Interested in that Period, and Ours
Review: I was prompted to write this review to give some balance to what a previous review stated. I encountered this book, for the first time, as an undergraduate in a history course. I was forever grateful to the professor for requiring its reading, and grateful to the author for his insightful and important work. I think this book should be mandatory reading in any history course emcompassing the period, and any course that looks to understand the genesis of the ideologies that permeate our period. I think the previous reviewer was very incorrect in her understanding of the issues and facts brought out by the book. I think the professor was serving his class, and profession, well by requiring the book. The book gives indispensable insights into the mind, and characters of the period. The thinking of that period still heavily influences contemporary American, European, and now global, political and social thought. Most readers will be very gratified having read the book, to see where their own thinking has been influenced and formed. The book is both scholarly and readable. There are great insights made that should not me be missed.