A Revolution Of The Mind: Reviewed By Dylan Seelye

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Jonathan Israel, A Revolution of the Mind : Reviewed by Dylan Seelye
Jonathan Israel was born on the 26th of January in London. He is a British writer on Dutch history and the Age of Enlightenment. He taught at the very prestige’s University of Princeton along with others. He has authored multiple books, most notably “Democratic Enlightenment: Philosophy, Revolution, and Human Rights” and “Enlightenment Contested: Philosophy, Modernity, and the Emancipation of Man”. Which act as trilogy of the history of Radical Enlightenment along with the intellectual origins of modern day democracy. Jonathan also has received the American Historical Association’s Leo Gershoy prize and the Benjamin Franklin Medal by the Royal Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce both are very prestiges awards. He is widely renowned as being one the foremost historians of the Enlightenment period.
Jonathan’s thesis for “A Revolution of the Minds” is that there are two different enlightenment idealisms, Moderate and Radical Enlightenment. Moderate enlightenment is characterized by it dedication to dualism, constitutional monarchism and mortality based on tradition. Radical enlightenment on the other hand is mostly characterized materialism and religiously by secularism. The book is sort of his scholarly mission to reconceive the enlightenment of Europe and discuss the differences between the two very different styles in major different aspects. He explains how the different idealisms differ in views of religion, monetary status, and views on government along with many more.
Jonathan was successful to a certain extent at proving the two different enlightenment ideas. He drew his more radical ideas from Spinoza and Bayle. The radical enlightenment put reason and science over religion. Democracy was also drawn from this area of thought, our system of government today can be directly taken form the works of the radical enlightenment group. Israel believes that radical enlightenment ultimately led to, through the works of Thomas Paine and many more, the revolutions that took place in the latter 18th century.
Moderate enlightenment according to Israel disdained revolution and believed instead that progress was based on providence. Moderate enlightenment Israel say was drawn the great thinkers of Locke, Montesquieu, and Voltaire. These thinkers took more of an ordained from god approach which meant that they were more reluctant to undermine the kings authority and that of the clerics He argues that the revolutionary ideas and events in the latter 18th century were directly drawn from the ideas of ‘La nouvelle philosphie’ (French book of Philosophy) which he’s says can be cuffed to the identities of radical enlightenment. Most notably the revolutions in America, the Netherlands and France were all instigated by ideas of equality, universal mortality and none the less democracy, which
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