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The Dream of Enlightenment: The Rise of Modern Philosophy Kindle Edition

by Anthony Gottlieb (Author) Format: Kindle Edition

4.5 472 ratings

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One of Slate’s 10 Best Books of the Year

Anthony Gottlieb’s landmark The Dream of Reason and its sequel challenge Bertrand Russell’s classic as the definitive history of Western philosophy.

Western philosophy is now two and a half millennia old, but much of it came in just two staccato bursts, each lasting only about 150 years. In his landmark survey of Western philosophy from the Greeks to the Renaissance, The Dream of Reason, Anthony Gottlieb documented the first burst, which came in the Athens of Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle. Now, in his sequel, The Dream of Enlightenment, Gottlieb expertly navigates a second great explosion of thought, taking us to northern Europe in the wake of its wars of religion and the rise of Galilean science. In a relatively short period—from the early 1640s to the eve of the French Revolution—Descartes, Hobbes, Spinoza, Locke, Leibniz, and Hume all made their mark. The Dream of Enlightenment tells their story and that of the birth of modern philosophy.

As Gottlieb explains, all these men were amateurs: none had much to do with any university. They tried to fathom the implications of the new science and of religious upheaval, which led them to question traditional teachings and attitudes. What does the advance of science entail for our understanding of ourselves and for our ideas of God? How should a government deal with religious diversity—and what, actually, is government for? Such questions remain our questions, which is why Descartes, Hobbes, and the others are still pondered today.

Yet it is because we still want to hear them that we can easily get these philosophers wrong. It is tempting to think they speak our language and live in our world; but to understand them properly, we must step back into their shoes. Gottlieb puts readers in the minds of these frequently misinterpreted figures, elucidating the history of their times and the development of scientific ideas while engagingly explaining their arguments and assessing their legacy in lively prose.

With chapters focusing on Descartes, Hobbes, Spinoza, Locke, Pierre Bayle, Leibniz, Hume, Rousseau, and Voltaire—and many walk-on parts—The Dream of Enlightenment creates a sweeping account of what the Enlightenment amounted to, and why we are still in its debt.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"[A] lucid, accessible history of Western philosophy."
― Adam Kirsch, The New Yorker

"Vivid and often illuminating…Offers a compact but fairly comprehensive survey, along with much historical detail…Gottlieb’s highly readable book can be recommended as an engaging personal introduction to some of our most brilliant moral and intellectual ancestors."
― Thomas Nagel, New York Review of Books

"A rare combination of encyclopedic knowledge, clarity, and lapidary style. I have never seen a discussion of philosophy as fun to read, presented with such clarity. I spent a decade and a half waiting for this book, yet it exceeds expectation: Gottlieb has a philosophical erudition that is so refreshing in a world of narrow academic résumé building."
― Nassim Nicholas Taleb, author of The Black Swan

"Wondrously perceptive and exceptionally well written, The Dream of Enlightenment not only provides a key account of the Enlightenment philosophers but also inspires us to consider a new enlightenment that could fundamentally transform our own world as much as it did theirs."
― Edward O. Wilson, author of On Human Nature, winner of the Pulitzer Prize

"Gottlieb’s aim, admirably fulfilled, is to help us see what older and newer philosophers have to say to us but not to turn them into mouthpieces for what we already think we know…Gottlieb often makes fun of his philosophers, but gently, as a way of bringing us closer to them, and they emerge as brilliant, vulnerable humans rather than monsters of any kind."
― Michael Wood, New York Times Book Review

"An elegant journey through modern philosophy with a humane, witty, and expert guide."
― K. Anthony Appiah, professor of philosophy and law, New York University

About the Author

Anthony Gottlieb was the executive editor of the Economist from 1984 until 2006. He studied philosophy at Cambridge University and University College, London, and has been a visiting fellow at Harvard University. He has written articles and book reviews for the New York Times. He is a visiting scholar at New York University and a fellow of the New York Institute for the Humanities.

Product details

ASIN ‏ : ‎ B016CAJIZO
Publisher ‏ : ‎ Liveright; Reprint edition (August 30, 2016)
Publication date ‏ : ‎ August 30, 2016
Language ‏ : ‎ English
File size ‏ : ‎ 2935 KB
Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Not Enabled
Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Sticky notes ‏ : ‎ On Kindle Scribe
Print length ‏ : ‎ 307 pages

Best Sellers Rank: #478,733 in Kindle Store (See Top 100 in Kindle Store)
- #44 in Renaissance Western Philosophy
- #86 in History of Philosophy & Schools of Thought eBooks
- #326 in Religious Philosophy (Kindle Store)

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4.5 472 ratings

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Anthony Gottlieb

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Anthony Gottlieb is the author of "The Dream of Reason: A History of Western Philosophy from the Greeks to the Renaissance" (2000), and "The Dream of Enlightenment: The Rise of Modern Philosophy" (2016). A former executive editor of The Economist, and former fellow of All Souls College, Oxford, his work has appeared in The New Yorker and the New York Times. Website: https://www.anthonygottlieb.com/

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Kenneth L. Matheny

Helpful, witty sequel to Dream of Reason

Reviewed in the United States on August 25, 2017

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This is a delightful book. Gottlieb's "The Dream of Reason" is a lucid, very well-written discussion of philosophy from the pre-Socratic philosophers to about the 17th Century. "The Dream of Enlightenment" takes up the story and covers the extremely important period from Descartes to Rousseau. As with "The Dream of Reason" this is a remarkably well-written book that provides clear, perceptive discussions of some of the most important thinkers in human history. Mr. Gottlieb has a true gift for taking very complex ideas and presenting them to the reader in a way that is remarkably easy to understand. I'm pretty familiar with the philosophers discussed in "The Dream of Enlightenment," but, as I discovered while reading "The Dream of Reason," there are many things I thought I knew which were, unfortunately, wrong. I've learned and unlearned quite a bit from reading these two books. In particular, I have always found Hume to be a difficult thinker to understand. I found Gottlieb's discussion of Hume to be extremely useful. I now intend to go back and re-read Hume's major works because I am now in a much better position to understand them. I also discovered, while reading "The Dream of Enlightenment" that I did not truly understand Rousseau correctly. I had underestimated Rousseau as a thinker, and thanks to Mr. Gottlieb, I now know better. The preface to this book indicates that a third book will follow that will take up the discussion from Rousseau up to our times. I look forward to the final book of this outstanding trilogy and have no doubt I will be delighted with Mr. Gottlieb's discussion of such important thinkers as Kant, Hegel, Nietzsche, and Sartre. It ought to be fun. And speaking of fun, both "The Dream of Reason" and "The Dream of Enlightenment" are wonderfully witty. (I'm pretty sure that no previous discussion of Western philosophy alludes to Monty Python's "Life of Brian"!) If the third book in this series comes close to being as useful and lucid as the first two books, Gottlieb's trilogy will be a classic that will delight and inform generations of readers well into the future!

6 people found this helpful

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Emit Flesti

Readable and worthy study of mankind's emergence from the kingdom of darkness...

Reviewed in the United States on June 5, 2019

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An engaging read. Indeed, the reader will perhaps be left with the searching question: "should not the philosophers of 'the Enlightenment' be an obligatory and worthy course for the text-messaging but semi-feral children of today ?" Is there a growing need to revisit the original ideas behind a "social contract", in a modern world now doubly threatened by both a Hobbesian egotism and a regression into superstition ? Further, would the unthinking mercantilists and Brexiteers of today benefit from a refresher course in the legalistic and progressive social thinking of John Locke and David Hume ?

For certainly very little has changed in the inner nature of homo sapiens since the brief period somewhat pompously referred to as "the Enlightenment", although there can be no doubting the huge and ensuing benefits of the years 1630-1800, whence Gottlieb describes humanity as first undertaking "a cold bath of scepticism". Ironically, the provocative Hobbes was the first leviathan to emerge from this bath - but there were perhaps other worthier philosophers to follow.

It would no exaggeration to state that much of the modern word owes its present advanced circumstances to the intellectual enquiry and methodology of Descartes, Newton and Leibniz, who in turn had returned to Euclidian geometry as a starting point for their investigations. Indeed, it is altogether impossible to conceive of a modern world functioning without the use of Cartesian coordinates or differential calculus. The progress achieved by the scientific methods of these three geniuses of the Enlightenment setting the very template for the rest of humanity to follow, after centuries of blind dogma and intellectual repression. How was it achieved ?

It seems to me that Gottlieb divides the Enlightenment into a movement of three broad fronts: the huge intellectual seduction of Locke and Hume and Voltaire in the field of human nature; parallel to that, the substantial progress made Newton, Leibniz and Descartes in the field of science; and then, lastly, the social, political and even the revolutionary upheaval that followed the realization that man could indeed come to master the very mechanisms at work in the natural world around him !

Unshackled as they finally were from the world of Neo-Platonist theology, the Enlightenment thinkers were set loose on a course that humanity is still following today: "the break with superstition !" There is perhaps still a surprising and vague deism lingering in the forma mentis of the enlightenment philosophers, but it does not crucially seem to hamper their use of and recourse to the principles of reason. A new methodology has asserted itself.

The advent of "freethinking" and the methodology of reasoned enquiry is all the more startling in its sudden reemergence, after centuries of received dogma and seeming lack of any intellectual enquiry. Thus, Gottlieb's inclusion of chronological timetable of all the European thinkers involved in this movement brilliantly and helpfully serves to illustrate just how rapidly humanity was beginning to emerge from its long, long sojourn in "the kingdome of darknesse".

Also addressed are some of the more foolish aspects of the Enlightenment, as inadvertently purveyed by Hobbes and Rousseau, and their later spiritual children. It is indeed difficult not to link some of their more intoxicating ideas to the later catastrophes of National socialism and the later lack of any social contract, although Gottlieb does go to some lengths in explaining that the Enlighenment did not necessarily spell the end of human folly !

Although the cult of Rousseau's noble savage and even the blonde beasts of Nietzsche are mentioned as a direct by-product ( as the possible nightmarish side to the Enlightenment), it is to thinkers with a moral compass like Immanuel Kant and the later reformers of the Utilitarian movement - and the latter day teachings of a philosoper like John Rawls - that Gottlieb keeps returning to as setting the defining tone of the Enlightenment.

All in all, a quite worthy philosophical study of a most remarkable period of human history. I cannot help thinking that the progressive social ideas of these brave philosophers, based around their struggles for a valid theory of knowledge, is a period in human history that will continue to act as a beacon to future generations of free thinkers. As such, Gottlieb does a fine job of conveying their importance.

4 people found this helpful

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Anne Mills

Great Read -- Complex Material Clearly and Enjoyably Presented.

Reviewed in the United States on January 21, 2017

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"The Dream of Enlightenment" discusses the key figures in the second great flowering of Western philosophy, in seventeenth and eighteenth century Europe. It follows Gottlieb's earlier work, "The Dream of Reason", which covered the first flowering in ancient Greece. A third volume which will bring the series up to the present. "Enlightenment" is a worthy successor to "Reason", which is high praise indeed. Both books have a lot to teach the reader, and both do so in an eminently readable manner. Gottlieb's prose is crystal clear and frequently witty. The structure of the book -- in which key philosophers, starting with Descartes and ending with Voltaire, are discussed in the context of their times -- carries the narrative along. That presentation in historical context is amplified by brief biographical sketches and by some discussion of what contemporaries had to say about the personality of the philosopher in question. That was particularly valuable to me, because it gave the ideas under discussion a depth that they would lack in a contextless listing. A very valuable book: I look forward to Volume 3.

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Glenn R. French

Enlightened about the enlightenment

Reviewed in Canada on October 19, 2021

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I found this text easily understandable and written in a manner that brought the enlightenment into perspective. A must-read for those interested in Western philosophy.

Rao San

Enlightenment through six great philosophers.

Reviewed in India on February 24, 2018

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Modern philosophy was born with the advent of enlightenment. Anthony Gottlieb's book features eight chapters about eight great philosophers. His book is fun to read as it is written without any kind of philosophical jargon.

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carlo

lively and useful guide

Reviewed in Italy on December 24, 2017

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As a physician i have a very distant recollection of that little of philosophy teaching I got as a pre-university student. What I can say now of that far away learning experience is just that I didn't enjoy it. Well, I must say just the opposite about this book: no agiography, no neutral description, no pills of what you absolutely have to repeat, I enjoied a lot the critical discussion, the contradictions the blend of geniality and conservatism, the wide wanderings of great minds at work.
I would suggest this book to anybody with even a passing interest in the job of reasoning

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Serghiou Const

Concise, accessible, erudite, and witty

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on October 22, 2016

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The present book, the second of a trilogy, covers the period from the 1630s to the eve of the French Revolution in 1789; the first, titled 'The Dream of Reason', unfolds in the Athens of Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle, from the middle of the fifth century to the late fourth century BC; the third, not yet published, will take up the story of philosophy again,commencing with Immanuel Kant.

During the limited period covered by the book, such eminent modern philosophers flourished like Hobbes, Descartes, Spinoza, Locke, Newton, Leibniz, Hume, and Voltaire. All these philosophers were amateurs and none of them was affiliated with a university.

In order to understand them properly, we have to appreciate the social environment in which they were working, conducive to the exploration of the new science and the religious upheaval in which they lived which led them to reject many traditional teachings and attitudes. Some of the questions that occupied them were: how the advance of science entails to the understanding of ourselves and for our idea of God; how the government is to deal with religious diversity; and what is the role of government.

What united these philosophers was a distaste for undue deference to tradition, intellectual orthodoxy, scripture or religious dogma, because these things had proved to be impediment to knowledge and to the well being of mankind. In fact they believed that all old ideas are suspect; that they must go out and find the facts for themselves instead of resorting to the Ancients. This would unlock the secrets of nature which subsequently could be exploited to render the world a better place for mankind.

The case for the Enlightenment is at its best when we point to the waning power of religious authorities to interfere in and even end people's lives, to the gradual dismantling of political institutions that were too close to feudalism and too far from democracy, and the advancement of science such as Newton's theory of gravity and the independent invention of calculus by him and Leibniz.

9 people found this helpful

Utkarsh

Excellent!

Reviewed in India on September 27, 2018

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Written in a very lucid and beautiful manner. Difficult things are explained very easily.

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