The Specter of Reason: The Historicization of theEnlightenment

In the wake of World War II, intellectuals andhistorians whose faith in progress had been shakenlooked to the eighteenth century as the source ofmodernity's ills. From the Holocaust, to Soviettotalitarianism, to the bland conformity of masssociety in 1950s America, the Enlightenment wasviewed as the cradle of some of the twentiethcentury's most undesirable qualities. Beginning in the interwar period, historiansbegan to discuss what the Enlightenment symbolized;from debates on its scope, influence, and present-dayrelevance, there was a concerted effort even beforeWorld War II to identify the philosophical movementsof the eighteenth century which came to shape themodern world. Yet after World War II and during theearly years of the Cold War, historians sought todefine the West's intellectual heritage todistinguish it from its ideological opponent, theSoviet Union. And it is here that the majority ofEnlightenment historiography begins. This book should appeal to intellectualhistorians, political theorists, those interested inthe history of religious criticism, and anyonecurious about contemporary liberal and conservativeresponses to the Enlightenment.