The Creation of the Modern World: The Untold Story of the British Enlightenment

by Roy Porter

"Porter's [book] has been long in the making and has been worth waiting for."―Peter Gay, Times Literary Supplement From the author of The Greatest Benefit to Mankind (winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Award) comes a "sumptuous and spicy volume" ( Washington Post Book World ) that highlights Britain's long-underestimated and pivotal role in disseminating the ideas and culture of the Enlightenment. In response to numerous histories centered on France and Germany, Roy Porter explains how the monumental transformation of thinking in Britain influenced worldwide developments. This "splendidly imaginative" work "propels the debate forward...and makes a valuable point" ( New York Times Book Review ). 16 pages of black and white illustrations

Genres: History, Philosophy, Nonfiction, Science

770 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2000

About the author

Roy's books cover several fields: the history of geology, London, 18th-Century British ideas and society, medicine, madness, quackery, patients and practitioners, literature and art, on which subjects (and others) he published over 200 books are articles.

List of works can be found @ wikipedia ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roy_Porter )

Reviews

[Karli · Rating 2 out of 5]

I tried. I coffee'ed up and put in the time. Multiple reading sessions, high hopes and the kind of determination only an accomplished sufferer of OCD could understand. I didn't want to NOT read this. So 200+ pages in and it's over.

Roy just couldn't stop trying to prove his point before he had even bothered to make it. I'm all for backing a dream and making your case strongly. Impassioned authorship typically makes for a great read. There was just too much philosophy and far too little content. Please teach me about the Enlightenment in Britain before trying to talk me into its importance. Making arguments using facts that I have yet to learn (and was hoping to learn in this book) is confusing and de-motivating.

So that's all. I'm quitting you book.

[Katya Epstein]

I didn't actually read this. I only made it a few pages in. I found the tone insufferable (full of name-dropping), and it devoted far too much space to trying to convince me that nobody else had covered the same material. I don't care! If I pick up a book on the British Enlightenment, I want to learn about the British Enlightenment, not how nobody else has written about the British Enlightenment. I probably gave up on it too quickly, but the tone was so pompous and I wasn't feeling very patient...

[Shane Avery · Rating 2 out of 5]

Roy Porter "aims to make a modest contribution to ... rethinking Albion's Enlightenment and shedding light on the 'black hole.'" (xxiv) I'm not really sure if he succeeds, for he tells us much of what we already know: Kant took a daily constitutional, Tom Paine was not just a political radical but also a designer of smokeless candles, Dr Johnson was witty, and print culture transformed public consciousness. And while the chapters on medicine and science are quite good, the book scarcely contains any original scholarship. Porter pretends that nobody else has studied British thinkers, which is absurd.

His main argument is that the British Enlightenment was a practical one. British intellectuals were activists that courted public opinion in the metropolitan marketplace, clamouring for practical improvement and the individual's pursuit of [viz., commercial and consumer:] happiness. Hence, historians should shift their focus away from the metaphysical breakthroughs of the continental philosophes :

"the Enlightenment was thus not just a matter of pure epistemological breakthroughs; it was primarily the expression of new mental and moral values, new canons of taste, styles of sociability and views of human nature. And these typically assumed practical embodiment: urban renewal; the establishment of hospitals, schools, factories and prisons; the accelerations of communications; the spread of newspapers, commercial outlets and consumer behaviour; the marketing of new merchandise and cultural services .... British pragmatism was more than mere wordiness: it embodied a philosophy of expediency, a dedication to the art, science and duty of living well in the here and now." (14-15)

Very well. But as the title suggests, Porter celebrates British pragmatism for its contributions to The Creation of the Modern World. In the process he pretends to avoid a heroes-and-villains approach to the legacy of the Enlightenment, note: "Enlightenment is not a good thing or a bad thing, to be cheered or jeered." (xxi). The result is far from what we might call detached scholarly neutrality. He dismisses "Foucauldian and postmodernist readings" of the enlightenment as "wilfully lopsided" in a single paragraph and proceeds to devote five hundred pages to heaping as much praise upon his subjects as possible. Indeed, Porter champions the polite commercial society his subjects created as the best of all possible worlds.

All in all, this is intellectual history at its worst: Porter uses his subject as an excuse to show off his wit & erudition. It's almost comical: "I find enlightened minds congenial: I savour their pithy prose, and feel more in tune with those warm, witty, clubbable men than with, say, the aggrieved Puritans who enthral yet appal Christopher Hill or with Peter Gay's earnestly erotic Victorians. I trust, however, that this book will be read as a work of analysis rather than one of advocacy or apology ... This coming intelligentsia prided itself upon being at the cutting edge of thought: it would strike off the shackles of tradition, prejudice, vested interests and oppression, and defend the first principles of freedom: habeas corpus, free speech, a free press, free trade, universal [UNIVERSAL!?!?:] education. Refinement, or, in a later, modified idiom, self-improvement, came to the fore. Everyone was to make himself -- with a little help from his guru, be he Mr Spectator of Tom Telescope." (480) No, no advocacy there, Dr Porter...

[Carter · Rating 4 out of 5]

I haven't read much history recently; this was a bit of a refresher, of some of the key highlights, of the British Enlightenment. Primary sources next?

[Sadia Reza · Rating 1 out of 5]

Porter sounds like the most pretentious prick ever. He's like those "intellectuals" who try too hard to spew off random references and quotes just for the sake of trying to show off how much they know...except that he does so in his own book that is supposed to be respectable history. Can't get through this. At all. Doesn't seem to get to any sort of point whatsoever, seems like he's just rambling.

I don't know why my professor assigned this because it's really not enlightening me about the Enlightenment.

[John]

enlightenment,history,nonfiction