Synopses & Reviews
This collection of essays is addressed to the legacy of Enlightenment thought, with respect to eighteenth-century notions of human nature, human rights, representative democracy or the nation-state, and with regard to the barbarism, including the Holocaust, allegedly unleashed by eighteenth-century ideals of civilization. Each author offers an interpretation of modern or postmodern philosophy against the background of a so-called Enlightenment Project, envisaged as the conceptual ghost that haunts modernity.
About the Author
Norman Geras is Professor of Government at the University of Manchester.
Robert Wokler is Research Professor in the Department of Politics at the University of Exeter.
Table of Contents
Part I: Interpreting Enlightenment Principles * The Boundaries of Universalism: Philosopher Travelers in the Enlightenment--Ursula Vogel *
L'éducation peut tout: Education Can Do All--Geraint Parry * Kant: The Arch-Enlightener--Andrea Baumeister * Kant, Property and the General Will--Hillel Steiner * Equality from an Enlightenment Perspective--Ian Carter * Unintended Consequences and the Muddied Legacy of the Scottish Enlightenment--Alistair Edwards *
Part II: Assessing the Enlightenment Roots of Modernity * English Conservatism and Enlightenment Rationalism--Ian Holliday * Four Assumptions About Human Nature--Norman Geras * The Enlightenment and the French Revolutionary Origins of Modernity--Robert Wokler * Habermas and Foucalt on the Enlightenment--Maurizio Passerin d'Entrèves * The Normative Foundation of Society: Two Legacies of the Social Contract Tradition--Vittoria Bufacchi