The Legacy of the Enlightenment: Ambivalences of Modernity(The Life of Ideas)

Going against the grain, this refreshing book argues for a non-ideological portrait of the Enlightenment as having been, above all else, a self-critical enterprise. The Enlightenment has come under substantial attack over the past several years, with some going so far as to recommend leaving behind its thinkers and their Eurocentric prejudices. In response, the most orthodox defenders of the Enlightenment have insisted that its values are not just foundational but indispensable and that abandoning them would mean opening the door to nihilism and relativism. For Antoine Lilti, one of the leading scholars of the French Enlightenment, both sides are wrong.   In this tactfully argued series of essays, Lilti emphasizes a non-dogmatic, non-ideological view of the Enlightenment—one that sees its legacy as a critical, attentive approach that can and should serve as its own best critic. Along the way, he engages with everyone from Rousseau and Kant to Foucault and Habermas, as well as such prominent contemporary voices as Jonathan Israel. The result is a remarkable new reading of the Enlightenment that redraws the stakes of old debates and offers an alternative way to engage with both canonical thinkers and later scholarship that is both honest about the past and useful for the future.  

Table of Contents:
Preface Introduction Part I: Universalism 1: The Postcolonial Challenge 2: Is Civilization European? 3: The Impossible Global History Part II: Modernity 4: Private Lives, Public Space 5: Enlightenment Radicals? Part III: Politics 6: Can One Enlighten the People? 7: Farewell, Socrates 8: The Diagnosis of Modernity Conclusion: Problematizing Modernity Notes Index

About the Author :
Antoine Lilti is professor at the Collège de France, where he holds the chair in the History of the Enlightenment, 18th to 21st century. He is the author of several books, including, most recently, The Invention of Celebrity. C. Jon Delogu is professor in the English Department at Université Jean Moulin-Lyon 3. He has translated over a dozen books, fiction and nonfiction, and is the author of three of his own on Emerson, Tocqueville, and the temptations fascism poses during vulnerable times.

Review :
“With great learning lightly worn, Lilti brilliantly shows how many of the Enlightenment’s postcolonial critics unwittingly draw upon the intellectual inheritance of this movement. In this and other respects, The Legacy of the Enlightenment mounts a sophisticated argument for the relevance of the Enlightenment in a moment when many of its critics, both left and right, would prefer to bury it.” “This book is a must-read for scholars and students of eighteenth-century European thought and culture. Written by one of the world’s great authorities on the subject, it is an erudite, eloquent, and satisfyingly nuanced account of a contentious topic: how to make sense of Voltaire and company from the vantage point of today. But this is also a book for anyone who likes to think about history—how we compose it, what we do with it, what it can do for us.” “Lilti’s engaging and thought-provoking book recovers the truly revolutionary aspects of the Enlightenment, not as a fixed canon of values and ideas to be celebrated, but as an enduring intellectual project that asks questions, answers them, and then critiques its own answers. This is a timely and compelling work that speaks directly to the challenges of the present day.”