The Cambridge History Of Modern European Thought: The Nineteenth Century 1

The Cambridge History of Modern European Thought is an authoritative and comprehensive exploration of the themes, thinkers and movements that shaped our intellectual world in the late-eighteenth and nineteenth century. Representing both individual figures and the contexts within which they developed their ideas, each essay is written in a clear accessible style by leading scholars in the field and offers both originality and interpretive insight. This first volume surveys late eighteenth- and nineteenth-century European intellectual history, focusing on the profound impact of the Enlightenment on European intellectual life. Spanning twenty chapters, it covers figures such as Kant, Hegel, Wollstonecraft, and Darwin, major political and intellectual movements such as Romanticism, Socialism, Liberalism and Feminism, and schools of thought such as Historicism, Philology, and Decadence. Renouncing a single 'master narrative' of European thought across the period, Warren Breckman and Peter E. Gordon establish a formidable new multi-faceted vision of European intellectual history for the global modern age.-- Provided by publisher Cover......Page 1 Title......Page 2 Title - Series......Page 3 Title - Full......Page 4 Copyright......Page 5 Contents......Page 6 Contributors......Page 9 Preface......Page 14 Introduction......Page 18 1 - German Idealism: The Thought of Modernity......Page 34 2 - European Romanticism: Ambivalent Responses to the Sense of a New Epoch......Page 57 3 - History, Tradition, and Skepticism: The Patterns of Nineteenth-Century Theology......Page 82 4 - The Young Hegelians: Philosophy as Critical Praxis......Page 105 5 - Utilitarianism, God, and Moral Obligation from Locke to Sidgwick......Page 128 6 - Capital, Class, and Empire: Nineteenth-Century Political Economy and Its Imaginary......Page 148 7 - Positivism in European Intellectual, Political, and Religious Life......Page 168 8 - European Liberalism in the Nineteenth Century......Page 189 9 - European Socialism from the 1790s to the 1890s......Page 213 10 - Conservatism: The Utility of History and the Case against Rationalist Radicalism......Page 249 11 - The Woman Question: Liberal and Socialist Critiques of the Status of Women......Page 272 12 - Darwinism and Social Darwinism......Page 296 13 - Historicism from Ranke to Nietzsche......Page 318 14 - Philology, Language, and the Constitution of Meaning and Human Communities......Page 347 15 - Decadence and the “Second Modernity”......Page 370 16 - Nihilism, Pessimism, and the Conditions of Modernity......Page 389 17 - Civilization, Culture, and Race: Anthropology in the Nineteenth Century......Page 415 18 - The Varieties of Nationalist Thought......Page 439 19 - Ideas of Empire: Civilization, Race, and Global Hierarchy......Page 464 20 - Rethinking Revolution: Radicalism at the End of the Long Nineteenth Century......Page 487 Index......Page 510 "It is something of a truism that each age must work through the legacy of its predecessors. In the case of the nineteenth century, this obvious statement gains poignancy when one considers the novel challenges and possibilities of the eighteenth century, which was, after all, the age of the Enlightenment. In its many guises and national variations, the Enlightenment asserted provocative and epoch-making claims about the role of reason, science, and criticism vis a vis the traditional authority of religion, state, and received knowledge. It drew new roadmaps for the conscious and reflexive reform of society and the betterment of people. At its core, it articulated a new emancipatory project - at once philosophical and political - chiefly oriented toward the ideal of individual autonomy. The cultural, social and political configuration that shaped the Enlightenment came to something of an end in the closing decade of the eighteenth century, partly through processes of internal critique but also, spectacularly, through the political collapse of the Old Regime. In the changed circumstances of the early nineteenth century, the Enlightenment fragmented into a multitude of contests over the meaning of its legacy"-- Provided by publisher "It is something of a truism that each age must work through the legacy of its predecessors. In the case of the nineteenth century, this obvious statement gains poignancy when one considers the novel challenges and possibilities of the eighteenth century, which was, after all, the age of the Enlightenment. In its many guises and national variations, the Enlightenment asserted provocative and epoch-making claims about the role of reason, science, and criticism vis a vis the traditional authority of religion, state, and received knowledge. It drew new roadmaps for the conscious and reflexive reform of society and the betterment of people. At its core, it articulated a new emancipatory project - at once philosophical and political - chiefly oriented toward the ideal of individual autonomy. The cultural, social and political configuration that shaped the Enlightenment came to something of an end in the closing decade of the eighteenth century, partly through processes of internal critique but also, spectacularly, through the political collapse of the Old Regime. In the changed circumstances of the early nineteenth century, the Enlightenment fragmented into a multitude of contests over the meaning of its legacy."--[Source inconnue] This two-volume history offers a comprehensive survey of the major themes, thinkers, and movements that shaped our intellectual world from the late eighteenth century to the present. It explores not only individual figures, but also the political, social, institutional and disciplinary contexts within which they developed their ideas.