The Wisdom of the Enlightenment

by Michael K. Kellogg

Overview

Enlightenment—Aufklärung in German, Lumières in French—is more an idea than a period. But it is an idea that took hold in a particular historical context of revolutionary scientific advances, increasing economic and social freedom, rising literacy and prosperity, and a greater willingness to challenge the authoritarianism of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. In The Wisdom of the Enlightenment, author Michael K. Kellogg points to 1637, the year that gave us Rene Descartes’ landmark inquiry into truth, as the beginning of a period that radically changed individual human thought and collective societal action.

From Descartes’ assertion of “I think, therefore I am,” to the philosophies of Enlightenment thinkers like Moliere, Spinoza, Voltaire, Hume, and Kant, this book charts the new and revolutionary philosophies at a time when progress seemed possible across the whole range of human knowledge and endeavor. In sweeping aside tired superstitions and applying a new scientific methodology, the Enlightenment ideas of progress through free exercise of reason ushered us into the modern world. This engaging and comprehensive survey of Enlightenment thoughts and thinkers is a celebration of the faith that all problems are solvable by human reason.

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Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781633887930
Publisher:	Globe Pequot
Publication date:	02/15/2022
Pages:	352
Product dimensions:	6.20(w) x 9.10(h) x 1.60(d)

About the Author

Michael K. Kellogg (Washington, DC), educated at Stanford and Oxford in philosophy and at Harvard Law School, is a founding and managing partner at Kellogg, Huber, Hansen, Todd, Evans & Figel, PLLC. He is the author of The Wisdom of the Renaissance, The Wisdom of the Middle Ages, The Greek Search for Wisdom, and The Roman Search for Wisdom.

Table of Contents

Introduction vii

1 Descartes and the Mechanical Universe 1

2 John Milton and the Paradise Within 25

3 Moliere: From Farce to Social Comedy 57

4 Pascal and the Hidden God 85

5 Spinoza: God without Religion 107

6 Defoe and Swift: Autobiography as Myth 131

7 Voltaire and the Philosophies 163

8 Samuel Johnson on the Stability of Truth 193

9 David Hume and the End of Philosophy 219

10 Kant and the Claims of Reason 247

Acknowledgments 275

Notes 277

Suggestions for Further Reading 309

Index 317