The Enlightenment That Failed
Ideas, Revolution, and Democratic Defeat, 1748-1830
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The Enlightenment That Failed
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Narrated by:
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James Cameron Stewart
About this listen
The Enlightenment That Failed explores the growing rift between those Enlightenment trends and initiatives that appealed exclusively to elites and those aspiring to enlighten all of society by raising mankind's awareness, freedoms, and educational level generally. Jonathan I. Israel explains why the democratic and radical secularizing tendency of the Western Enlightenment, after gaining some notable successes during the revolutionary era (1775-1820) in numerous countries, especially in Europe, North America, and Spanish America, ultimately failed. He argues that a populist, Robespierriste tendency, sharply at odds with democratic values and freedom of expression, gained an ideological advantage in France, and that the negative reaction this generally provoked caused a more general anti-Enlightenment reaction, a surging anti-intellectualism combined with forms of religious revival that largely undermined the longings of the deprived, underprivileged, and disadvantaged, and ended by helping, albeit often unwittingly, conservative anti-Enlightenment ideologies to dominate the scene.
©2019 Jonathan I. Israel (P)2021 TantorListeners also enjoyed...
What listeners say about The Enlightenment That Failed
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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Overall3 out of 5 stars
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Performance1 out of 5 stars
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Story4 out of 5 stars
- JCM
- 21-08-24
Fascinating book, *awful* narrator
An AI bot would have been better than this stilted, random-pause-ridden, tonally flat horror. One of the worst audiobook narrators I've had the misfortune to witness - made only partially bearable by putting him on X3 speed.
Add to that the fact that the *99* chapters have no metadata to give the titles - essential for such a wide-ranging book, the print version of which has 30 primary chapters, each with 4-5 subsections - and that none of the chapter breaks align to actual breaks in the text, and this is one of the least effective uses of the audiobook format I've ever come across.
This is a shame, because the book itself is fascinating.
Jonathan Israel taught in my department when I was an undergraduate, and I failed three times to get onto his course on the history of political thought. This book has helped me understand a little of what I missed out on - the culmination of 30+ years of his development of "the Radical Enlightenment thesis", which puts Spinoza firmly at the heart of modern Western thinking. It's largely a (loooong) summary of these arguments, as well as a response to their (many) critics.
But it's not just a lengthy defence of a thesis - it's also an intriguing overview of the entire Enlightenment and revolutionary era (more or less up to 1848 and the publication of the Communist Manifesto, despite the title claiming it stops in 1830), transcending most of Europe and both sides of the Atlantic along the way.
In the introduction, Israel says you need to have read most of his other books to make sense of this one. I disagree - I think this is an excellent introduction to his ideas and arguments. I have several other big chunky books by Israel - Radical Enlightenment, Democratic Enlightenment, Enlightenment Contested, and his history of the Dutch Republic - sitting on the shelf, waiting to be properly read. One's been there for nearly 25 years, and I've barely made a dent in it, as I found it too daunting. Thanks to this book, I'm going to have another stab.
Dense, intense, but fascinating. But *please* get a better narrator and fix the chapter formatting for books this long.
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Overall2 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story2 out of 5 stars
- James Uscroft
- 08-11-24
Longer Than "War & Peace!!!"
This audiobook is literally longer than the version of "War & Peace" which sits right next to it in my Audible library. And no, that's not a compliment. Because after the first 20+ hours, I was begging for the sweet release that only death can bring!
Of course, the irony is that the actual content of the book is incredibly insightful, well-written and a vital resource for any students of the history and/or political philosophy of the period. But why the publisher chose to release this monstrosity as a single volume rather than breaking it up into at least 6, I will never understand. Whatever the poor Voice Artist who was required to talk for almost 61 hours was paid, it wasn't enough. And in short, don't even contemplate reading this book as a single volume unless you have 6 weeks worth of provisions, oxygen tanks and a team of sherpas to aid your ascent. But instead, regard it as a reference library; jumping between chapters as necessary.
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