Summary Of The Road To Modernity

In the book The Enlightenment: A Genealogy, Dan Edelstein attempts to discuss both the historical and the philosophical areas of The Enlightenment. In Edelstein’s book, he discusses the fundamental meanings of Enlightenment, its historical significance, and how the Enlightenment spread across Europe between 1680 and 1740. Alternatively, in Gertrude Himmelfarb’s book, The Roads to Modernity, the author compares the different forms of Enlightenment that occurred throughout Europe during the same period. Edelstein’s book, although advertised otherwise, is based more around historical fact rather than around philosophical debate, which Edelstein says he is attempting to do. However, Himmelfarb succeeds in the areas that Edelstein lacks. Thus, reading
Himmelfarb takes a unique approach to the Enlightenment by leaving the French point of view as a sort of afterthought, and primarily discussing the English’s form of Enlightenment. She argues that the origins of the Enlightenment came from the eighteenth century, starting with Lord Shaftesbury’s essay Inquiry Concerning Virtue or Merit. In this essay, Shaftesbury argues that all creatures have a “social affection” and a moral sense towards each other, creating a base for the Enlightenment to evolve. Himmelfarb also discusses other influential works such as Adam Smith’s The Wealth of Nations, and Edmund Burke’s “counter-Enlightenment”. The author then spends a brief period, of not even two chapters, discussing the French and American Enlightenments denouncing France for their supposed extremes and contradictions, and admiring the American’s for mimicking the
He argued his points well, and provided relevant and necessary historical significance. Dan Edelstein is a Professor of French at Stanford University in California specializing in eighteenth-century France. He earned his Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania in 2004, and has written multiple books on the subject of the Enlightenment and eighteenth-century France since then. Alternatively, Gertrude Himmelfarb earned her doctorate degree from the University of Chicago in 1950, and has written about the British and the Victorian era for over fifty years. Himmelfarb has numerous achievements including having served on the Council of Scholars of the Library of Congress, the Council of Academic Advisors of the American Enterprise Institute, and the Council of the National Endowment for the Humanities. Both author’s, Edelstein and Himmelfarb, are both incredible historians, and true masters in their fields of study. Separately, The Enlightenment: A Genealogy, and The Roads to Modernity are both honorable books regarding the Enlightenment, both written by accomplished historians. But by reading these two books together, the reader is able to fill in the areas where the author’s come up short, and ultimately gives the reader a complete and valuable look at the