The Enlightenment Av Anthony (Professor Of Political Science And History Professor Of Political Science And History University Of California Los Angel

The Enlightenment and Why It Still Matters tells nothing less than the story of how the modern, Western view of the world was born. Cultural and intellectual historian Anthony Pagden explains how, and why, the ideal of a universal, global, and cosmopolitan society became such a central part of the Western imagination in the ferment of the Enlightenment - and how these ideas have done battle with an inward-looking, tradition-oriented view of the world ever since. Cosmopolitanism is an ancient creed; but in its modern form it was a creature of the Enlightenment attempt to create a new ''science of man'', based upon a vision of humanity made up of autonomous individuals, free from all the constraints imposed by custom, prejudice, and religion. As Pagden shows, this ''new science'' was based not simply on ''cold, calculating reason'', as its critics claimed, but on the argument that all humans are linked by what in the Enlightenment were called ''sympathetic'' attachments. The conclusion w