Walter Donway’s How Philosophers Change Civilizations: The Age of Enlightenment is a good survey of the major thinkers who contributed to the development of the Enlightenment — along with some important coverage of their Counter-Enlightenment detractors — as well as an argument about what causes historical change.
Here’s his question:
‘How did the “new philosophers” in the 18th century change Britain, continental Europe, North America capture the attention of their world? What talents and skills, what existing and new vehicles of expression, and what avenues and opportunities for communication did they have or invent that reached and changed minds and inspired action decade after decade?’
Donway’s Table of Contents gives an indication of his wide-ranging coverage: * Introduction Enlightenment Themes: An Overview * Philosophers at Work: An Example * The Medieval Monopoly: Scholasticism * Francis Bacon and the New “Scientific Method” * Thomas Hobbes “Puts the Century on Edge” * René Descartes Dreams the “Philosopher’s Dream” * Blaise Pascal Bets It All on Faith * John Locke and the New Empiricism * John Locke and “The Rights of Man” * Isaac Newton: History’s Greatest Scientist * Isaac Newton: Life After Principia * Bayle’s Dictionary: #1 Bestseller in the 18th Century * Defoe Battles Militant Sectarianism * Robinson Crusoe “Gets Religion” * The Enlightenment as Methodology * Rebirth, Science, Humanism, Reformation * John Toland Embraces “Pantheism” * Jonathan Swift: “Savage Indignation” Laughs * Shaftesbury’s “Moral Sense” and the Enlightenment * Russia’s “Enlightened Absolutists” * George Berkeley: “Yours faithfully, God” * Montesquieu: Foundations of Liberal Government * Voltaire: The French Enlightenment Is Born * The First Internationally Celebrated Writer? Candide is Banned—And Becomes A French Classic * Bishop Butler Preaches the Virtue of Self-Love * Exceptionalism: Birth of the Idea of America * Benjamin Franklin: “First philosopher” of America * Books Unchained: Libraries * David Hume: Skepticism, Pessimism, * Enlightenment 18th-Century Optimism Collides with Hume * David Hume’s Book on Religion is Banned * Rousseau Dissents from the Modern World * Denis Diderot and the Encyclopédie * The Spectator Offers Lessons in Enlightenment * Adam Smith: Enlightenment to Industrial Revolution * America Doomed by Climate (Circa (1778) * Immanuel Kant: the “Crisis of the Enlightenment” * Kant: The “Last Enlightenment Philosopher” * Haskalah: the Jewish Enlightenment * Edmund Burke: Enlightenment Credentials? * Revolutionary Terror and Burkean Conservatism * Joseph Priestley: “Enlightenment Man” * James Watt: Industrial Revolution “New Philosopher” * Cesare Beccaria Shapes the U.S. Bill of Rights * “Pamphlet Wars”: Revolution and Ratification * Ethan Allen: Yankee Extraordinaire * Ethan Allen: Individualism and Deism * Nicholas Condorcet: “Unlimited Human Progress” * Jefferson’s Notes for A New Republic * John Playfair: Sherlock Holmes of Geological Science * The Enlightenment of Robert Burns * Burns and “Moral Sentiments” * Maria Edgeworth: Beyond “Enlightened Women” * Kemal Atatürk’s Enlightened Islamic Nation * Fukuzawa Yukichi: Japanese Enlightenment * Enlightenment Now by Steven Pinker: A Review * Ayn Rand and the New Enlightenment? * Anti-Enlightenment Dead-Ends in Postmodernism * Postmodernist Historiography * Bibliographical Note * Index
I recommend Donway’s book for those seeking a clearly written, public-intellectual level discussion of the big names and big issues of the modern and postmodern eras.
