Jonathan Israel verrast met nieuw boek

Maar ook dit gaat over zijn eigen thema: de impact van deverlichting op het denken. Hij werkte een recente serie lezingenuit, voordat hij weer verder gaat met ‘deel 3’.

Uitgever Princeton University Press schetst de inhoud en bedoelingvan het nieuwe werk als volgt: “Democracy, free thought andexpression, religious tolerance, individual liberty, politicalself-determination of peoples, sexual and racial equality–thesevalues have firmly entered the mainstream in the decades since theywere enshrined in the 1948 U.N. Declaration of Human Rights.

But if these ideals no longer seem radical today, their origin wasvery radical indeed–far more so than most historians have beenwilling to recognize. In A Revolution of the Mind,Jonathan Israel, one of the world’s leading historians of theEnlightenment, traces the philosophical roots of these ideas towhat were the least respectable strata of Enlightenmentthought–what he calls the Radical Enlightenment.

Originating as a clandestine movement of ideas that was almostentirely hidden from public view during its earliest phase, theRadical Enlightenment matured in opposition to the moderatemainstream Enlightenment dominant in Europe and America in theeighteenth century. During the revolutionary decades of the 1770s,1780s, and 1790s, the Radical Enlightenment burst into the open,only to provoke a long and bitter backlash.

A Revolution of the Mind shows that this vigorousopposition was mainly due to the powerful impulses in society todefend the principles of monarchy, aristocracy, empire, and racialhierarchy–principles linked to the upholding of censorship, churchauthority, social inequality, racial segregation, religiousdiscrimination, and far-reaching privilege for ruling groups.

In telling this fascinating history, A Revolution of theMind reveals the surprising origin of our most cherishedvalues–and helps explain why in certain circles they arefrequently disapproved of and attacked even today.’

Het gesprek van ScienceGuide met de gelauwerde Britsehistoricus die ongeveer alles weet over Spinoza en onze Gouden Eeuwleest u hier. Hij onthult er zelfs over de plannen omhem een rol te doen spelen in een film: “Hoe weet u nou dat ik ineen film over Spinoza ga optreden? Nou ja, goed. Het is waar. Rudolf vanden Berg gaat de film regisseren. Ik moet als vertelleroptreden, daar hebben we samen indringend over gepraat.”