Enlightenment Volume 1

Download or read book Enlightenment Volume 1 written by Peter Gay and published by Knopf. This book was released on 2013-06-26 with total page 702 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The eighteenth century Enlightenment marks the beginning of the modern age when the scientific method and belief in reason and progress came to hold sway over the Western world. In the twentieth century, however, the Enlightenment has often been judged harshly for its apparently simplistic optimism. Here a master historian goes back to the sources to give us both a more sophisticated and intriguing view of the philosophes, their world and their ideas.