Amazon Customer

Very very good

Revisado: 04-23-21

All things considered, this was one of my favorite books to have read. Given that, when googling several catchy enlightenment insights from this book, I found no other matches besides this book—I think that this book is incredibly unique in capturing the body of enlightenment thinking. The author also has a good mind for traversing the big thinkers and giving the reader a sense of their respective contributions, without starting from obnoxiously simple first principles or without sounding too scholarly.

I suspect that this isn’t a book for someone seeking a doctorate in philosophy, but for someone like me who has a passing familiarity with the big enlightenment thinkers, this was an excellent resource that saved me the time of reading numerous original sources.

Consistent with some other critiques, the book is comparably light on the “why it still matters” part of the book’s title. However, I disagree with other critiques that say that the book never broaches this question—it does—it just doesn’t provide a particularly “hot take”, if you will, and doesn’t substantiate why it needs to asset its proposition that the enlightenment STILL matters. Paradoxically, the first 90% of the book does such a stellar job of convincing the reader that the enlightenment DOES matter, that when the author makes a defense of his proposition, it falls somewhat flat because the reader already agrees with the author—so—it is unclear who the author is arguing against.

In any event, I did not purchase this book for a defense of why the enlightenment still matters. I just wanted to learn more about the enlightenment, and hopefully, “enlightenment” myself at bit. And for this purpose, this book is absolutely wonderful and deserves very high praise.

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