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

The Enlightenment has been blamed for many of the deadly developments of modern life, but Michael McKeon's new book argues that it is a reaction against deadly traditions and that its principles have been sustained by its posterity. To historicize the Enlightenment requires conjuring what it was like to live through the emergence of concepts and practices that are now commonplace, and it shows how the Enlightenment has shaped our views of tradition and modernity.

Format: Hardback
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 perspective by historicizing the Enlightenment.

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

Furthermore, McKeon argues that much of what has been blamed on the Enlightenment amounts 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 through 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 remarkable achievement in historiography and historical method. It demonstrates 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. In the process, Historicizing the Enlightenment exemplifies a distinctive historiography and historical method.

Published by Bucknell University Press, this book is distributed worldwide by Rutgers University. McKeon's work is a valuable contribution to the field of history and should be read by anyone interested in understanding the origins and consequences of the Enlightenment.

Dimension: 235 x 156 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9781684484720