The Dream of Enlightenment: The Rise of Modern Philosophy

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The Dream of Enlightenment: The Rise of Modern Philosophy

The Dream of Enlightenment: The Rise of Modern Philosophy


The Dream of Enlightenment: The Rise of Modern Philosophy


Free Ebook The Dream of Enlightenment: The Rise of Modern Philosophy

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The Dream of Enlightenment: The Rise of Modern Philosophy

The author of the classic The Dream of Reason vividly explains the rise of modern thought.

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 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 listeners 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.

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Audible Audiobook

Listening Length: 10 hours and 3 minutes

Program Type: Audiobook

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Publisher: Blackstone Audio, Inc.

Audible.com Release Date: November 1, 2016

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The author gives a concise history of philosophy from Descartes to Voltaire, by a circuitous route that includes Leibniz, Newton, Locke, Hume etc. He provides a good description of the periods these people lived in and the challenges they faced when trying to publish their work(s). The book is enjoyable to read and one wished that there was more to absorb from such an important period of history.

Gottlieb’s new account of the enlightenment is a pleasant and easy read. The thought of major philosophers is balanced with their biographies and an overall sense of the enlightenment program (challenging the hegemony of the church and aristocracy by the advocacy of science and reason) comes through in a lucid fashion.The title is, however, somewhat misleading. The book principally concerns philosophy rather than science and the empirical method. The latter are discussed, of course, but the chapters cover Descartes, Hobbes, Spinoza, Locke, Bayle (surprisingly), Leibniz and Hume, where one might have expected extended discussions (there are brief discussions) on Bacon, Newton and, e.g., the Dutch physicians/Newtonians who helped spread news of English science to their continental patients.Late in the book (p. 196), Gottlieb comments that “there are few avowed Leibnizians, Lockeans or Hobbists today.” He refers to a 2009 poll of philosophers “who were asked to pick the dead thinker with whom they most identified.” The top four: Hume, Aristotle, Kant, Wittgenstein. Fair enough, but why does Gottlieb’s survey of enlightenment philosophers end with Hume rather than with the equally influential (in all honesty, probably far more influential) Kant? Kant not only completes and extends some of the most important philosophic threads of the eighteenth century; he is a crucial bridge to the Romanticism which followed.We all have our favorites, of course, but I am surprised that Berkeley is not given far more attention, not just as a bridge to Hume, but as an enormous influence on such literary figures as Blake. If one looks at the book baldly it is essentially an account of seven philosophers. The final chapter “What Has the Enlightenment Ever Done for Us?” (a clever play on Cleese’s question concerning the Romans in Monty Python’s Life of Brian) attempts to pull all of the threads together in 13 tidy pages. Unfortunately, the enlightenment is far more complex than that and a book which at first appears to be a grand synthesis turns out to be a fairly basic primer.The “Suggestions for Further Reading” (p. 281) contain a spare eleven titles and Peter Gay’s magisterial study of the enlightenment is not among them. Gottlieb’s enlightenment is also essentially French, a kind of dual between Voltaire and Rousseau. Hume is not seen as part of the Scottish enlightenment or, indeed, as part of a larger British enlightenment. Johnson, e.g., is mentioned briefly and is contrasted with Hume, though Johnson explicitly said once that all of Hume’s ideas had passed through his own mind. Gottlieb catches the more moderate aspects of the British enlightenment (Hume scoring religion but in a reverent manner) and he appreciates the fact that the enlightenment begins in England—and Voltaire’s recognition and praise in that regard—but he fails to see how important these distinctions are. Hume makes a crucial and obvious (but somehow easily forgotten) distinction between faith and reason. Faith is, by its very definition, closed to rational attack. Thinkers who have that faith, Johnson, e.g., are still capable of embracing the great mass of the enlightenment program. At bottom, the enlightenment is an extremely complex set of ideas and debates whose ultimate contrast now is not with the church and aristocracy but with the romanticism(s) that replaced it. On another level it highlights the conflicts between science and philosophy which were of such deep concern to the Anglo-American mid 20th century. Gottlieb gives us some wonderful hints of this on p. 77: “Both [Locke and Hobbes] maintained that some traditional puzzles are merely confusions masquerading as problems, which appear to be substantive only because people do not pay enough attention to how words get their meanings. This idea was far from new in the history of philosophy—it is found in Plato’s time and in every subsequent period—but Hobbes made much more of it than most, and Locke followed his example.”Yes, indeed. And that is why Wittgenstein makes the list of the top four philosophers with whom contemporary philosophers associate themselves. The most important questions are, as he argued, those of which we cannot speak. Hence the importance of the British enlightenment’s figures of faith (Newton, Boyle, Johnson, et al.) for our understanding of the total picture. Gottlieb gives us glimpses of these issues but does not pursue them to the degree that one might wish.Bottom line: a lucid and workmanlike exposition of the thought of a handful of enlightenment philosophers that is very light (but occasionally quite suggestive) on the overall patterns that constitute this era in Western thought.

Unless you're studying for a advanced degree in philosophy, I'm afraid reading the stuff is much like panning for gold: a great deal of effort for a very occasional nugget of insight. But this book - wow! You really get inside the head of these revered icons via Gottlieb's narrative. He provides all the goodies: historical context, character description, incidental correspondence between philosophers, high praise or, sometimes, puerile criticism by one philosopher of another., etc., etc. It is refreshing to encounter a very readable, well explained summation of the various philosophies of these iconic figures without endlessly try to slog through their sonorous screeds. This is the first book on philosophy I've had trouble putting down. I can't wait for Gottlieb's next one!

“The Dream of Enlightenment” by Anthony Gottlieb It seems that much of what is worth remembering in Western (European) Philosophy happened in two spurts of about 2 centuries each---the Athens of Socrates, Plato and Aristotle (550-400 BC) and the Enlightenment of Descartes, Hobbes, Spinoza, Locke, Newton, Leibniz, Voltaire and Hume (1600-1800). This second period is the subject of this outstanding book (the same author also summarized the first period in his “A Dream of Reason”). The wisdom of the “ancients” of the first period held sway during the intervening period until the 17th century when Francis Bacon (1561-1626), Blaise Pascal (1623-62) and others who believed (in Pascal’s words) Those whom we call the ancients were really new in all things, and properly constituted the infancy of mankind; and as we have joined to their knowledge the experience of the centuries which have followed them, it is in ourselves that we should find this antiquity rather than in others. Bacon’s insistence that all old ideas were suspect and that a Philosopher’s time was better spent finding the facts in the world about him than in dusty libraries motivated others to do just that, although Bacon himself dismissed the results of Galileo (1564-1642) and Johann Kepler (1571-1630) because they were tiresomely mathematical and did not think much of Copernicus’ heliocentric model for the universe.. Renee Descartes (1596-1650), who had invented analytical geometry to solve then-modern physics problems about space and motion, undertook the development of a comprehensive mathematical “mechanical” theory for motion of bodies in terms of their interactions with other bodies to replace the ancient Aristotlean theory. His theory of motion was for a short time a rival to that developed somewhat later by Isaac Newton (1642-1727), and he also applied his mathematics to the design of lens for telescopes. He distrusted the senses and thought that all wisdom was to be found by rational thought, a process which led him to several deductive proofs of God. He is remembered mainly as a mathematician and an abstract thinker who made the basis of knowledge the most basic question of philosophy. The work of three very different Englishmen--Thomas Hobbs (1588-1679), John Locke (1632-1704) and David Hume (1711-76), a Dutch-Portugese Jew---Baruch Spinoza (1632-77), a German polymath---Gottfried Leibniz (1646-1716), and two French intellectuals--- Francios Voltaire (1694-1778) and Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-78), completes the author’s discussion of the Enlightenment. It may seem strange that Rousseau is included in this pantheon of philosophers, because he was definitely not reconciled to the civilization of his day, nor to that of any other. The Enlightenment is generally credited with the ideas that led to the American Declaration of Independence and the French Revolution. It is also frequently credited with the ideas that led to the reign of terror following the French Revolution and to the Russian and German dictatorships of the 20th century. According to the author, the case for the Enlightenment is on its firmest ground when we point to the waning power of religious authorities to interfere in and even end people’s lives, to the toleration of religious dissent, to scientific progress, and to the gradual dismantling of political institutions that were too close to feudalism and too far from democracy.

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The Dream of Enlightenment: The Rise of Modern Philosophy


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