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    A Revolution of the Mind: Radical Enlightenment and the Intellectual Origins of Modern Democracy
    A Revolution of the Mind: Radical Enlightenment and the Intellectual Origins of Modern Democracy
    A Revolution of the Mind: Radical Enlightenment and the Intellectual Origins of Modern Democracy
    Audiobook7 hours

    A Revolution of the Mind: Radical Enlightenment and the Intellectual Origins of Modern Democracy

    Written by Jonathan Israel

    Narrated by James Adams

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    About this audiobook

    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. 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 privilage 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.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherUniversity Press Audiobooks
    Release dateSep 29, 2010
    ISBN9781509494934

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    • 3/5
      Informative, but a bit dry and pompous. The quoting of extensive textual extracts in French - without any translation - is alienating and irritating in equal measure. This elitist, profoundly dated style, is somewhat ironic given the book's concern to chart the rise of radical, egalitarianism. I endured this self-satisfied snobbery for as long as I could, but had to stop listening before the end as I just couldn't bear it.