Presenting a reassessment of the Western Enlightenment for a generation, this book focuses on the first half of the eighteenth century. It aims to trace to their roots the core principles of Western modernity: the primacy of reason, democracy, racial equality, feminism, religious toleration, sexual emancipation, and freedom of expression.

I: INTRODUCTORY ; 1. Early Enlightenment, Revolution, and the Modern Age ; 2. Philosophy and the Making of Modernity ; II: THE CRISIS OF RELIGIOUS AUTHORITY ; 3. Faith and Reason: Bayle versus the Rationaux ; 4. Demolishing Priesthood, Ancient and Modern ; 5. Socinianism and the Social, Psychological, and Cultural Roots of Enlightenment ; 6. Locke, Bayle, and Spinoza: A Contest of Three Toleration Doctrines ; 7. Germany and the Baltic: Enlightenment, Society, and the Universities ; 8. Newtonianism and Anti-Newtonianism in the Early Enlightenment: Science, Philosophy, and Religion ; III: POLITICAL EMANCIPATION ; 9. Anit-Hobbesianism and the Making of 'Modernity' ; 10. The Origins of Modern Democratic Republicanism ; 11. Bayle, Boulainvilliers, Montesquieu: Secular Monarchy versus the Aristocratic Republic ; 12. 'Enlightened Despotism': Autocracy, Faith, and Enlightenment in Eastern and South-Eastern Europe 1689-1755 ; 13. Popular Sovereignty, Resistance, and the 'Right to Revolution' ; 14. Anglomania, anglicisme, and the 'British Model' ; 15. The Triumph of the 'Moderate Enlightenment' in the United Provinces ; IV: INTELLECTUAL EMANCIPATION ; 16. The Overthrow of Humanist Criticism ; 17. The Recovery of Greek Thought ; 18. The Rise of 'History of Philosophy' ; 19. From 'History of Philosophy' to Histoire de l'Esprit humain ; 20. Italy, the Two Enlightenments, and Vico's 'New Science' ; V: THE PARTY OF HUMANITY ; 21. The Problem of Equality ; 22. Sex, Marriage, and the Equality of Women ; 23. Race, Radical Thought, and the Advent of Anti-Colonialism ; 24. Rethinking Islam: Philosophy and the 'Other' ; 25. Spinoza, Confucius, and Classical Chinese Philosophy ; 26. Is Religion Requisite for a Well-Ordered Society? ; VI: RADICAL PHILOSOPHES ; 27. The French Enlightenment prior to Voltaire's Lettres Philosophiques (1734) ; 28. Men, Animals, Fossils: French Hylozoic materialisme before Diderot ; 29. Realigning of the parti philosophique: Voltair, Voltairemanie, antivoltairianisme 1733-1747 ; 30. From Voltaire to Diderot ; 31. The 'Unvirtuous Atheist' ; 32. The parti philosophique Embraces the Radical Enlightenment 1747-1752 ; 33. The 'War of the Encyclopedie: The First Stage 1745-1752 ; 34. Postscript ; Bibliography ; Index

The core ideas of this book deserve to be widely disseminated and debated. `Review from previous edition Enter Jonathan Israel. His vast - and vastly impressive - book sets out to redefine the intellectual landscape of early modern Europe. The stupendous scale of this book ranges from London to Moscow, Stockholm to Naples, in a virtuoso display of polyglot learning . . . Magnificent and magisterial, Radical Enlightenment will undoubtedly be one of the truly great historical works of the decade.' John Adamson, Sunday Telegraph `There is much to praise in Israel's majestic account of the Enlightenment and his detective work in placing Spinoza at the heart of it.' A.C. Grayling, FT Weekend `The scholarship is breathtaking. Israel has read everything, absorbed every nuance, followed up every byway ... Five years from now, our views of the Enlightenment will have been enormously influenced by Israel.' Peter Watson, New Statesman `Deserves to be widely read because it is an example of ground-breaking vastly well-informed and thoroughly new history' David Horspool, The Guardian