“Will remain a classic—a beautifully finished literary product.”—Charles A. Beard, American Historical Review
In this volume, the distinguished American historian Carl L. Becker challenges the belief that the eighteenth century was essentially modern in its temper. He writes, in crystalline prose, that the period commonly described as the Age of Reason was, in fact, very far from that; that Voltaire, Hume, Diderot, and Locke were living in a medieval world; and that these philosophers “demolished the Heavenly City of St. Augustine only to rebuild it with more up-to-date materials.”
In a Foreword written for this edition, Johnson Kent Wright looks at the book’s continuing relevance within the context of current discussion about the Enlightenment, noting that Becker’s work is “likely to beguile and provoke readers for a long time to come.”
Carl L. Becker (1873–1945), a professor of European history at Cornell University, was one of the world’s leading authorities on eighteenth-century thought. Johnson Kent Wright is associate professor in the department of history at Arizona State University and author of A Classical Republican in Eighteenth-Century France: The Political Thought of Mably.
“Will remain a classic—a beautifully finished literary product.”—Charles A. Beard, American Historical Review
“Carl L. Becker (1873–1945) was one of the Progressive historians who revolutionized the teaching of history in America. . . . We should be grateful for what the book reveals about the attitudes of Progressive historians in the 1930s even more than for what it says about the Enlightenment. . . . Becker makes a convincing case.”—D. E. Richardson, Sewanee Review
“An enduring landmark in the historiography of the Enlightenment. For three generations its eloquence of style and elegance of concept have provoked learning and creative criticism. Perhaps the chief indication of its merit is the high quality and intellectual significance of the replies and counterarguments it has called forth.”—Frank M. Turner, Yale University
“The Heavenly City of the Eighteenth-Century Philosophers remains one of the most distinctive American contributions to the historical literature on the Enlightenment. . . . [It] is likely to beguile and provoke readers for a long time to come.”—Johnson Kent Wright, from the Foreword
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