A good review should be short and user friendly. To do this book justice I cannot do either, so I'll sacrifice doing it justice and keep my remarks brief.This is a very detailed exploration into the philosphers of the Enlightenment. It's not a new book, and in certain circles considered something of a standard text on the subject. I would call it a must-read for anyone with an abiding interest in men like Hume, Voltaire, Diderot, Gibbon, Kant, or Holbach. You will learn much about their relation [...]

Current events have been bumming me out lately so I decided to read something old I found this really ratty copy of The Enlightenment (1964) on my shelves – it had been snoozing there for years - I probably picked it up for 50 cents at a library sale. I did vaguely remember hearing very good things about Peter Gay and now I know why. I'm a decent amateur historian of the past two centuries, but remain unschooled regarding the details of the classics, the Renaissance and the Enlightenment. Gay [...]

Not written for a general audience, this work by Peter Gay is an excellent study on Enlightenment thinkers and their relationships with religion. Kant viewed the Enlightenment "as man's claim to be recognized as an adult, responsible being" (3). Reason and science replaced faith and tradition. But Gay illustrates how even though Enligtenment thinkers shed orthodox Christianity, most were not willing to reject a belief in God altogether. Gay also demonstrates how disparate these philosophers were [...]

fantastic stuff. if you are interested in how we got to the place we are in terms of thought/ideas - the individual, the idea of progress, historicism, and so on, please do yourself a fsvour and read!

A masterpiece of scholarship.

Maybe the most important book I own. Read and re-read. Keep next to your bed.

Gay apparently spent several years on this book, and it shows in a work or painstaking and dramatic erudition. He provides, and clearly grasps, the context of the Enlightenment. To provide context in time he discusses the fall of classical paganism and the eclipse of reason in the Christian period. He covers the modes of thinking that arose during the Middle Ages and the elements of classical reason and creativity which are now increasingly accepted to have obtained during this traditionally dar [...]

Great ZOT, this man can write!At age 90 - and still with us - we hope Peter Gay remains another sixty to seventy years so we might garner another half dozen books from him. While "The Enlightenment" was written in 1966, the ancients of 2300 years ago haven't changed much, nor have those Enlightenment philosophers of 300 years past that brought them back to life. In other words, the subjects of Gay's analysis and his stunning synthesis in this book remain relevant in any time, and what a book it [...]

Gay provides an interesting dialectical model: the philosophes opposed ancient paganism to medieval Christianity in order to create an autonomous "modern paganism" (vol. I). And his writing is beautiful.Ultimately, though, his picture of the Enlightenment is thoroughly teleological and at times cartoonish. In Gay's account, for example, deism and natural law are just an earlier stage in the evolution of atheism and utilitarianism (I, p. 18). (Their respective exponents would have been very surpr [...]

The book steps the reader through the development of the Enlightenment thinkers themselves. In addition to learning about the development of thought during the 18th century, I learned about Greek thinkers (stoic, skeptics and Epicureans), the Roman thinkers (especially Cicero), and the Renaissance period of thought.This is an amazing book. It probably should not be a readers first introduction to the Enlightenment period, but it can be the reader's second. The book is very erudite and I was cons [...]

Let me start off by saying that I took way too long to finish reading this book (about 8 months) - reading other books in between and just taking multiple breaks from reading. So the views I express in this review will be somewhat colored by my discontinuous reading.To say that this is a difficult book to get through is an understatement. Indeed it is the chief reason why I got distracted several times from reading it. It is certainly not for the uninitiated in the history of the enlightenment p [...]

I felt like Peter Gay was monopolizing knowledge by using an overwhelming amount of large words, when he really could have what he meant. The book in informative, if you like his writing style though, and he goes into extreme detail about everything. I suggest reading a sample of it before you buy it though. I was very unhappy with my purchase and was unable to finish the book completely, because of how boring I found it to be.

Volume 1 of 2. This is the standard work on the conventional view of the Enlightenment--significantly, published in the late 60s, before the linguistic turn took hold. Gay is refreshingly clear.Gay represents the Enlightenment, at its core, to be a rejection of traditional, orthodox Christianity. The constructive aspect to the Enlightenment project was to fill the void.

This and its companion volume are together a good deal longer than Ernst Cassirer's study (The Philosophy of the Enlightenment) but are just as valuable. Having read these at some distance in time, I won't attempt now to say anything more about them.

This was a struggle for me and when I was finished I felt like starting over again--that I hadn't understood it enough. I think that I would "get it" better the second time around and don't want to start the second volume until I do.

Always love reading Peter Gay. He writes with such grace and erudition that few current historians have retained, with the rare exception of perhaps Peter Brown.

This a great read, confirmed my appreciation for the influence of greek culture on the development of the proper critical philosophic mentality.