Author(s): Ritchie Robertson

History | Culture | Science | Western Europe

The Enlightenment is one of the formative periods of Western history, yet more than 300 years after it began, it remains controversial. It is often seen as the fountainhead of modern values such as human rights, religious toleration, freedom of thought and evidence-based argument. Others accuse the Enlightenment of putting forward a scientific rationality which ignores the complexity and variety of human beings. Answering the question 'what is Enlightenment?' Kant famously urged men and women above all to 'have the courage to use your own understanding'. Robertson shows how the thinkers of the Enlightenment did just that, seeking a rounded understanding of humanity in which reason was balanced with emotion and sensibility. His book goes behind the controversies about the Enlightenment to return to its original texts and to show that above all it sought to increase human happiness in this world. It is a master-class in 'big picture' history, about one of the foundational epochs of modern times.

Review: cogently expressed and scrupulously documented ... The Enlightenment, he believes, has an urgent message for our time -- Keith Thomas * London Review of Books *
the book is written out of genuine curiosity and palpable enthusiasm. Robertson's range allows him to make many illuminating comparisons and some provocative juxtapositions ... This is surely the best and most up to date single-volume study of the Enlightenment that we currently possess. It will inform the general reader while also often provoking, delighting and surprising the specialist. -- David Womersley * Standpoint *
The Enlightenment by Ritchie Robertson is a fine examination of how the enlightenment changed the world in different ways in different places - scintillating. -- Simon Sebag Montefiore * Aspects of History Books of the Year *
a work that is at once readable, authoritative and wide-ranging ... a handsome single volume, complete with nearly 30 images from the great first editions of the period. The author is a professor of German literature and thought at Oxford University, but whatever the specific subject addressed, the quality of scholarship is uniformly high. -- Jesse Norman * Spectator *
learned, capacious and gloriously rich ... "The first Quality of an Historian," David Hume wrote to a friend, "is to be true and impartial; the next to be interesting." Judged by such a standard, Robertson must be reckoned a historian of very high quality indeed. His book is not just learned and balanced, it is also - in the noblest tradition of the Enlightenment itself - principled and humane. -- Tom Holland * The Times *

Author Biography: Ritchie Robertson is Taylor Professor of German at the University of Oxford. He is a member of the board of the Voltaire Foundation which promotes research on the Enlightenment, and is a frequent reviewer for the Times Literary Supplement.