The Enlightenment that Failed: Ideas, Revolution, and Democratic Defeat, 1748-1830 (Authored by Jonathan I. Israel)

What this episode covers

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/501590 to listen full audiobooks. Title: The Enlightenment that Failed: Ideas, Revolution, and Democratic Defeat, 1748-1830 Author: Jonathan I. Israel Narrator: James Cameron Stewart Format: Unabridged Audiobook Length: 60 hours 58 minutes Release date: December 14, 2021 Ratings: Ratings of Narrator: 3 of Total 1 Genres: World Publisher's Summary: 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.

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