The End of Enlightenment: Empire, Commerce, Crisis
It was supposed to end in progress and ended in pessimism, with its own best minds watching empire and war eat the liberty they had spent their lives theorising.
Hume, Smith, Gibbon and Paine spent their careers theorising liberty and then watched commerce, empire and war corrode it. Whatmore argues that the British Enlightenment ended in pessimism rather than progress, and is particularly good on the texture of eighteenth-century debates about what freedom actually required in practice.
Recommended by 1 Person
Tyler Cowen
One of my favorite books on the British Enlightenment. For instance, the author captures the tenor of 18th century British debates about liberty very well. Very good chapters on Hume, Shelburne, and Macaulay. Whatmore somehow writes as if he is actually trying to explain things to you! If you read a lot of history books, you will know that is oddly rare.
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