The Enlightenment: A Genealogy

by Dan Edelstein

What was the Enlightenment? Though many scholars have attempted to solve this riddle, none has made as much use of contemporary answers as Dan Edelstein does here. In seeking to recover where, when, and how the concept of “the Enlightenment” first emerged, Edelstein departs from genealogies that trace it back to political and philosophical developments in England and the Dutch Republic. According to Edelstein, by the 1720s scholars and authors in France were already employing a constellation of terms—such as l’esprit philosophique—to describe what we would today call the Enlightenment. But Edelstein argues that it was within the French Academies, and in the context of the Quarrel of the Ancients and the Moderns, that the key definition, concepts, and historical narratives of the Enlightenment were crafted.

A necessary corrective to many of our contemporary ideas about the Enlightenment, Edelstein’s book turns conventional thinking about the period on its head. Concise, clear, and contrarian, The Enlightenment will be welcomed by all teachers and students of the period.

 

Genres: History, Philosophy, European History, 18th Century, France

221 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2010

Reviews

[Andrew · Rating 5 out of 5]

A terrific short book that pretends to be more of a historiographic survey than it is: in reality, it has a sharp argument that elegantly integrates several different lines of scholarship on the Enlightenment in a consistently convincing manner. Integrates, I should stress, rather than synthesizes, as Edelstein often uses other historians’ arguments in away that deliberately (and fairly) remolds their shape or re-weights their balance, such that the part which Edelstein extracts is not necessarily the author’s principal point or even the main thrust of their intention.

In other words, Edelstein is often less concerned about informing the reader of the historiographic context of another historian’s work—why the historian was arguing for this or against that in this particular way, who they were most closely responding to, in accord with, or ranged against—and is more focused on advancing his own case.

As I see it, that case consists in points:
1) the Enlightenment may not be as singular a phenomenon as historians used to imagine, but the idea of plural Enlightenments has gone much too far;
2) France is the central and indispensable site of the Enlightenment;
3) it occupies that position not because it hosted a specific epistemological break or Revolution earlier than anywhere else, but because its intellectual circles were the workshops where the narrative of Enlightenment was drafted, revised, and above all publicized;
4) that narrative was about the relatively broad diffusion—again not the birth of invention or origin—of a new mode or style or fashion of living “philosophically” that was socially and not privately intellectual. Society rather than the scientist or the philosophe was the protagonist of this narrative.

Edelstein mostly sticks to a constructive argument, although he also spends a (imo) disproportionate amount of time saying mean things about Jonathan Israel—just let the poor man have his Spinoza-centric worldview! At any rate, it’s a book that is probably not a good introduction to the subject of the Enlightenment—I wouldn’t recommend using it as such—but if you want something that may challenge your ideas about the Enlightenment and that will encourage you to think carefully about the methodology of intellectual history, you will enjoy it very much.

[Mirte · Rating 1 out of 5]

Maybe the author should have called this `AHMERGEWRD FRANCE IS SOOOO AWESOME IN THE 18TH CENTURY!!11!` That would have been a more honest title, really. The book is about the French enlightenment and keeps throwing names at me, the unknowing reader not getting who is who and what is when and not seeing the forest for the trees. The penultimate chapter said stuff about other countries, which was the most interesting and best understandable part. Pity.

[Dominic Muresan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Edelstein creates a very interesting map of the Enlightenment, using mostly the philosophes' conceptions of themselves. His treatment of the movement is French-based, recognizing that, even though Europe had enough to contribute to it, the original philosophical fashion was started and disseminated by some french guys that thought they were living a new era. In his mapping endeavour, Edelstein deals with the Scientific Revolution as the creation-myth of the new enlightened era, but the myth itself, only seen through the lenses of the debate between the Ancients and Moderns. Does modernity mean that we have to renounce the past altogether? The winning position would constitute a kind of middle-ground: while Antiquity is to be preserved, a new era will have to be built upon it!

The Encyclopédie - the manifest and most important work of the Enlightenment - cites as many as three times more ancient authors than modern ones.

9/10

[Daniel Schotman · Rating 4 out of 5]

Author clearly had a beef with Jonathan Israel's conclusion that there was a Radical undertow that drove the narrative of the more moderate Enlightened thinkers (who were also more public figures) that was inspired by the works of Spinoza alone

This is actually not what Jonathan Israel stated in the first volume of his now monumental Radical Enlightenment that just saw the publication of his 4rd volume. What Israel is stating is that it was not only Spinoza but a whole circle of philosophers around Spinoza that were responsible for this.

The writer did a failed attempt to draw The Enlightenment back to France, which I think at this stage is something no-one believes anymore. And the state that Encyclopaedia is the highlight of the Enlightenment (and not Kant's 3 Critiques) is I think a bit overreacting. Especially because there is no criteria given on ground of what this is the case. Interestingly also is that the author does not speak about the influence of Bayle's Philosophical Dictionary, through which, according to Israel most French Philosophers actually were getting their ideas. Rather gives the author a few extremely flimsy reason as the religious intolerance in the time of Louis XIV, the revocation of the Edict Of Nantes, etc. Religious intolerance was certainly a problem. But it already was since the works of John Wycliff, John Hus, the Modern Devotion Movement and was the reason why the Thirty Years War was fought out.
But about the Enlightenment in the Holy Roman Empire, Leibniz,. Wolff, etc. is again hardly a word spoken.

all in all was it too obvious that this author had an Axe to grind., so if you wish to read some better introductions to the Enlightenment, read the 2 volumes of Peter Gay, the 4 volumes of Jonathan Israel or the classic book of Ernst Cassirer.

[Pranjal Awasthi · Rating 3 out of 5]

The Enlightenment: A Genealogy began life, as Edelstein admits, as a long research paper—and you can feel that lineage on almost every page. The central argument is genuinely interesting: that the Enlightenment’s origins, both normative and substantive, are fundamentally French. Edelstein traces this claim through the querelle des Anciens et des Modernes, the rise of salons and Masonic lodges, the cultural hegemony of France in early modern Europe, and finally the catalytic force of the French Revolution. As an intellectual map, it’s compelling.

But the book often reads as though it never fully made the leap from specialist paper to accessible monograph. Edelstein presupposes a level of familiarity with French history, institutions, and literary culture that many readers—especially those outside the Francophone world—simply won’t have. French quotations appear without translation; references to figures like Du Bois (not the one you’re thinking of) go unexplained; and the narrative assumes a cultural fluency that narrows the book’s audience. It’s clear this was originally written for readers already steeped in French intellectual history.

For someone looking to understand why France became Europe’s intellectual engine in the 17th and 18th centuries, a broader, more contextual work—Peter Watson’s The French Mind, for instance—offers a far more inviting entry point. Edelstein’s book has value, but it’s best approached after you’ve already immersed yourself in the Francophone world. Only then does its more academic, occasionally opaque style feel rewarding rather than exclusionary.

[Isseicreek · Rating 1 out of 5]

Conclusion is weak – the author explains the genealogy of “French Enlightenment” and not of “the Enlightenment.” I would have liked to see more inter-relations among the Continental countries and British countries, not just in a summarized form in one chapter, as it is hugely relevant to consider these. The author says at one point that “somewhere someone might have independently described their age in a similar way…” and the shortage of references to works other than of French seem to suggest he began working to define the Enlightenment assuming that it began from France. But by the author’s own admission, if it was the adaptability of French models into other countries, it should be obvious that without those countries surrounding France’s general intellectual atmosphere, which may or may not have independently developed from that of France’s, the Enlightenment as the Enlightenment, involving the whole Continent was impossible. This only proves that the Enlightenment existed in France – if it was simply the societal approval of intellectual activities – but does not explain it in fact originated in France.

[Andrew · Rating 4 out of 5]

A concise overview of this important historical epoch and the changes which it initiated. The author explores how the Enlightenment was underpinned by an interest in humanism, and acknowledges the international character of the movement (in Europe at least), rather than focusing exclusively on France. The importance of the Encyclopedia is also well covered.

[Aldo · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book changed everything for me in understanding the enlightenment. The argument is VERY nuanced and will lose some people but if you can stick with him Edelstein is a genius.