Reassessing the Radical Enlightenment

List of figures

Notes on contributors

Introduction

PART I THE BIG PICTURE

1. ‘Radical Enlightenment’ – A Game-Changing Concept

2. The Radical Enlightenment: A Heavenly City with Many Mansions

3. Of Radical and Moderate Enlightenment

4. The Emergence of the ‘Radical Enlightenment’ in Humanist Scholarship

PART II ORIGINS AND FATE OF THE RADICAL ENLIGHTENMENT, CA. 1660–1720

5. Spinoza the Radical

6. Spinoza on Natural Inequality and the Fiction of Moral Equality

7. John Toland’s Origines Judaicae: Speaking for Spinoza?

8. Radical Atheism: Jean Meslier in Context

9. The Waning of the Radical Enlightenment in the Dutch Republic

PART III: THE RADICAL ENLIGHTENMENT IN EUROPE AND THE NEW WORLD AFTER CA. 1720

10. Less Radical Enlightenment: A Christian Wing of the French Enlightenment

11. Materialism at the University of Göttingen: Between Moderate and Radical Enlightenment

12. Radical Enlightenment and Revolution in Late Eighteenth-Century Ireland

13. De Sade – An Heir to the Radical Enlightenment?

14. Empathy, Equality, and the Radical Enlightenment

15. The Radical Enlightenment and Movements for Women’s Equality in Europe and the Americas (1715–1825)

Biography

Steffen Ducheyne is Research Professor at the Centre for Logic and Philosophy of Science at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel. He is the author of “The Main Business of Natural Philosophy”: Isaac Newton’s Natural-Philosophical Methodology (2012).

"The appearance of this volume is to be welcomed because it brings together a group of experts in order to offer an overview of the current state of the debate and to look in detail at areas of contention. Collections of essays are notoriously something of a curate’s egg, but Steffen Ducheyne is to be congratulated for assembling a distinguished and interdisciplinary team of historians and philosophers and, more importantly, for persuading them to keep to their brief. (...) this volume will, at least, give both professional scholars and students a valuable introduction to a complex and contentious field."

- Julian Swann, Birkbeck College, University of London

"(...) it is an extremely important addition to any historical library, whether public or private. Its strength is that it evenhandedly presents numerous issues that truly engage the conceptualization of the Enlightenment, and it is unafraid of presenting views that conflict—sometimes starkly—with the field’s dominant historian. It is not, however, an introduction to the Enlightenment or even to the Radical Enlightenment. It is a rich and nuanced work aimed at students of the Enlightenment already familiar with fundamental interpretive and historiographical issues."

- John D. Eigenauer, Professor of Philosophy, Taft College

"This highly-readable, intelligently assembled collection of essays represents a significant, original, inspiring contribution to the study of the Enlightenment. This volume is indeed likely to become a standard book for all those interested in the Radical Enlightenment."

- Diego Lucci, American University in Bulgaria

"Ducheyne has put together a volume which achieves his aim of providing an introduction to the ‘Radical Enlightenment’ and the debates surrounding it. But this collection is much more than just a textbook on a historiographical debate- there is plenty here to interest the experts as well. The question of what constitutes the radicalism of the Enlightenment is not resolved, but there is much here to fuel discussion. That, to my mind, is a strength of the volume."

- Sarah Hutton, University of York

"...there can be no question that this companion volume accomplishes its twin aims: “to provisionally provide a (partial) synthesis of the state of the art and, second, to push forward research on the Radical Enlightenment by a series of new studies” (2). This edited volume is the best distillation presently available of work pertaining to the Radical Enlightenment for new researchers, graduate students preparing for qualifying examinations, and more seasoned researchers alike. Indeed, individual chapters could be useful for advanced undergraduates as well."

-Jeffrey D. Burson, Georgia Southern University