A leading historian reveals the radical origins of humanity's most
cherished secular values
Democracy, free thought and expression, religious tolerance, individual
liberty, political self-determination of peoples, sexual and racial
equality--these values have firmly entered the mainstream in the decades
since they were enshrined in the 1948 U.N. Declaration of Human Rights.
But if these ideals no longer seem radical today, their origin was very
radical indeed--far more so than most historians have been willing to
recognize. In A Revolution of the Mind, Jonathan Israel, one of the
world's leading historians of the Enlightenment, traces the
philosophical roots of these ideas to what were the least respectable
strata of Enlightenment thought--what he calls the Radical
Enlightenment.
Originating as a clandestine movement of ideas that was almost entirely
hidden from public view during its earliest phase, the Radical
Enlightenment matured in opposition to the moderate mainstream
Enlightenment dominant in Europe and America in the eighteenth 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 vigorous
opposition was mainly due to the powerful impulses in society to defend
the principles of monarchy, aristocracy, empire, and racial
hierarchy--principles linked to the upholding of censorship, church
authority, social inequality, racial segregation, religious
discrimination, and far-reaching privilege for ruling groups.
In telling this fascinating history, A Revolution of the Mind reveals
the surprising origin of our most cherished values--and helps explain
why in certain circles they are frequently disapproved of and attacked
even today.
