The Enlightenment: An Idea and Its History

There are many books claiming to explain the Enlightenment, but most assume that it was a thing. J. C. D. Clark shows what it actually was, namely a historiographical concept. The Enlightenment: An Idea and Its History provides a critical historical analysis of the Enlightenment in England, Scotland, France, Germany, and the United States from c. 1650 to the present. It argues that the degree of commonality between social and intellectual movements in each--and, more broadly, between the five societies--has been overstated for polemical purposes. Clark shows that the concept of 'the Enlightenment' was not widely adopted in those societies until the mid-twentieth century; indeed, that it was unknown in the eighteenth. Without the concept, people at the time were unable to act in ways that would have created the Enlightenment as a coherent movement. Since the conventional account has held that the Enlightenment was a phenomenon, the idea could be used as a component of what has been called a 'civil religion' a summing up of the myths of origin, aims, and essential values of a society from which dissent is not permitted. An appreciation that it was instead a historiographical concept undermines, in turn, the idea that there was any great transition to what came to be called 'modernity'.

About the Author :
J. C. D. Clark was educated at Cambridge, where he was a fellow of Peterhouse. At Oxford, he was a fellow of All Souls College; at Chicago, he held a visiting professorship at the Committee on Social Thought; he has held visiting posts elsewhere. Latterly he was Hall Distinguished Professor of British History at the University of Kansas. He lives now in Northumberland. His interests are primarily in intellectual history, philosophy, social history, literature, and historiography, especially in the 'long eighteenth century', 1660-1832. Mike Cooper is a British voice talent who left big-city life in London for a log cabin in the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina. Mike is recognizable from his years with the BBC World Service, and as the narrator of countless television documentaries. A disruptive influence in school, Mike's first break in narration came at age six, when his teacher realized he could tell the afternoon story better than her (and she could get a nap by way of a bonus). When he's not in his home studio, you'll find him enjoying hobby farm life and tending to two charming pet goats, named Baxter and Hazel. Mike Cooper is a British voice talent who left big-city life in London for a log cabin in the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina. Mike is recognizable from his years with the BBC World Service, and as the narrator of countless television documentaries. A disruptive influence in school, Mike's first break in narration came at age six, when his teacher realized he could tell the afternoon story better than her (and she could get a nap by way of a bonus). When he's not in his home studio, you'll find him enjoying hobby farm life and tending to two charming pet goats, named Baxter and Hazel.