Recent scholarly and popular attempts to define the Enlightenment, account for its diversity, and evaluate its historical significance suffer from a surprising

In the late 1770s, as a wave of revolution and republican unrest swept across Europe, scholars looked with urgency on the progress of European civilization. Car

"The Enlightenment has been represented in radically opposing ways: on the one hand, as the throwing off of the chains of superstition, custom, and usurped auth

A major study of modern culture, Dialectic of Enlightenment for many years led an underground existence among the homeless Left of the German Federal Republic u

Developed from the author's PhD thesis (University of East Anglia, 2011) under the title The French Prophets: A Cultural Approach to Religious Enthusiasm in Pos