Historicizing the Enlightenment, Volume 1: Politics, Religion, Economy, and Society in Britain

The Enlightenment has been blamed for many deadly developments of modern life, but Michael McKeon's new book argues that it is a reaction against deadly traditions and should be historicized. It requires us to conjure what it was like to live through the emergence of concepts and practices that are now commonplace, and shows how the Enlightenment has shaped our views of tradition and modernity.

Format: Paperback / softback
Length: 256 pages
Publication date: 14 July 2023
Publisher: Bucknell University Press,U.S.

The Enlightenment has been held responsible for some of the most tragic advancements in modern history, including racism, white supremacy, imperialist oppression, capitalist exploitation, neoliberal economics, scientific positivism, and totalitarian rule. These developments are believed to have stemmed from principles that originated within the Enlightenment, such as abstraction, reduction, objectification, quantification, division, and universalization. In his groundbreaking book, Michael McKeon challenges this flawed perception by historicizing the Enlightenment.

McKeon argues that Enlightenment thought emerged as a response to deadly traditions that preceded it. He emphasizes that critics have overlooked the fact that Enlightenment thought is a reaction against these traditions. Furthermore, McKeon demonstrates how the Enlightenment extended its reactive analysis of the past to its present through self-analysis and self-criticism.

The book also explores the Enlightenment's future, pointing out that much of the blame for its failures has been attributed to the failure of its posterity to sustain Enlightenment principles. To historicize the Enlightenment, McKeon encourages us to imagine what it was like to live during the emergence of concepts and practices that are now commonplace, such as society, privacy, the public, the market, experiment, secularity, representative democracy, human rights, social class, sex and gender, fiction, and the aesthetic attitude.

McKeon's book is a significant contribution to the field of history, as it argues for the continuity of Enlightenment thought, its consistency and integrity across a broad range of conceptual domains. It also shows how the Enlightenment has shaped our views of tradition and modernity, and the revisionary work that needs to be done in order to understand our place in the future. Historicizing the Enlightenment exemplifies a distinctive historiography and historical method, making it an essential read for scholars and students of history.

Published by Bucknell University Press, this book is distributed worldwide by Rutgers University Press.

Dimension: 235 x 156 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9781684484713