The Cambridge History Of Modern European Thought

Presents an authoritative and comprehensive survey of the major themes, thinkers, and movements in modern European intellectual history.

An authoritative and comprehensive survey of the major themes, thinkers, and movements in modern European intellectual history.

The Cambridge History of Modern European Thought is an authoritative and comprehensive exploration of the themes, thinkers and movements that shaped our intellectual world in the late-eighteenth and nineteenth century. Representing both individual figures and the contexts within which they developed their ideas, each essay is written in a clear accessible style by leading scholars in the field and offers both originality and interpretive insight. This first volume surveys late eighteenth- and nineteenth-century European intellectual history, focusing on the profound impact of the Enlightenment on European intellectual life. Spanning twenty chapters, it covers figures such as Kant, Hegel, Wollstonecraft, and Darwin, major political and intellectual movements such as Romanticism, Socialism, Liberalism and Feminism, and schools of thought such as Historicism, Philology, and Decadence. Renouncing a single 'master narrative' of European thought across the period, Warren Breckman and Peter E. Gordon establish a formidable new multi-faceted vision of European intellectual history for the global modern age.

"It is something of a truism that each age must work through the legacy of its predecessors. In the case of the nineteenth century, this obvious statement gains poignancy when one considers the novel challenges and possibilities of the eighteenth century, which was, after all, the age of the Enlightenment. In its many guises and national variations, the Enlightenment asserted provocative and epoch-making claims about the role of reason, science, and criticism vis a vis the traditional authority of religion, state, and received knowledge. It drew new roadmaps for the conscious and reflexive reform of society and the betterment of people. At its core, it articulated a new emancipatory project - at once philosophical and political - chiefly oriented toward the ideal of individual autonomy. The cultural, social and political configuration that shaped the Enlightenment came to something of an end in the closing decade of the eighteenth century, partly through processes of internal critique but also, spectacularly, through the political collapse of the Old Regime. In the changed circumstances of the early nineteenth century, the Enlightenment fragmented into a multitude of contests over the meaning of its legacy"--

This book, first published in 1992, presents a comprehensive scholarly account of the development of European political thinking through the Renaissance and the reformation to the 'scientific revolution' and political upheavals of the seventeenth century. It is written by a highly distinguished team of contributors.

Annotation. The Cambridge History of Seventeenth-Century Philosophy offers a uniquely comprehensive and authoritative overview of early-modern philosophy written by an international team of specialists. As with previous Cambridge Histories of Philosophy the subject is treated by topic and theme, and since history does not come packaged in neat bundles, the subject is also treated with great temporal flexibility, incorporating frequent reference to medieval and Renaissance ideas. The basic structure of the volumes corresponds to the way an educated seventeenth-century European might have organised the domain of philosophy. Thus, the history of science, religious doctrine, and politics feature very prominently.

This book is a collection of essays by leading practitioners of modern European intellectual history, reflecting on the theoretical and methodological underpinnings of the field. The essays each attempt to assess their respective disciplines, giving an account of their development and theoretical evolution, while also reflecting on current problems, challenges, and possibilities.

An authoritative and comprehensive survey of the major themes, thinkers, and movements in modern European intellectual history.