<\/p>
Two very different evaluations of the Enlightenment appear in recent books. First from Robert Darnton, historian of the French Enlightenment, who, according to the reviewer in the October 6 TNR <\/i> , devotes the first and most substantative essay in his recent book George Washington\u2019s False Teeth <\/i> to defending the Enlightenment. The reviewer\u2019s summary: \u201cEnlightenment was a cause that galvanized intellectuals committed to tolerance, skepticism, individuals, civil liberty, and cosmopolitanism, and that its values have proved to be the most potent defense against the various forms of inhumanity that we have experienced in our world.\u201d Rather quaint, that. <\/p>\n
The second comes from a review of a spate of recent books on Jonathan Edwards, published in the October 20 issue of The Weekly Standard <\/i> . Summarizing some of the points raised in George Marsden\u2019s biography, the reviewer argues that Edwards traditional Calvinism made him one of the most prescient critics of Enlightenment: \u201cBecause Edwards was nearly the only moral philosopher in the eighteenth century to deny natural human goodness, he was among the few to perceive that this dream [of establishing a universal system of morality that would bring an end to war] was not only empty but could lead to unimagined horrors.\u201d <\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Two very different evaluations of the Enlightenment appear in recent books. First from Robert Darnton, historian of the French Enlightenment, who, according to the reviewer in the October 6 TNR , devotes the first and most substantative essay in his recent book George Washington\u2019s False Teeth to defending the Enlightenment. The reviewer\u2019s summary: \u201cEnlightenment was […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3021,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-185","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-history"],"yoast_head":"\n