The Enlightenment, Volume 1 by Peter Gay5/23/2023 ![]() Yet, even Israel's work, as its critical reception highlights, does not convincingly demonstrate that the Enlightenment, as an intellectual movement, contributed in any meaningful way to the creation of modern political culture. More recently, Jonathan Israel's trilogy on the Enlightenment has revived the modernization thesis, albeit in a dramatic new form. Indeed, Gay's most important and influential successors – historians such as Robert Darnton and Roy Porter – all ended up defending the idea that the Enlightenment was a major force in the creation of modern democratic values and institutions. ![]() Yet, as this paper shows, it continues to survive in postwar historiography, in particular in the Anglophone world. Ever since this view – which we might describe as the modernization thesis – was first formulated by Peter Gay, it has been repeatedly criticized as misguided: a myth. According to the textbook version of history, the Enlightenment played a crucial role in the creation of the modern, liberal democracies of the West. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |