Review: Peter Gay's "The Enlightenment: An Interpretatn" on JSTOR

Contents:

• THE POLITICS OF ENLIGHTENMENT: FROM PETER GAY TO JONATHAN ISRAEL*
• THE POLICS OF ENLIGHTENMENT: FROM PETER GAY TO JONATHAN ISRAELTHE POLICS OF ENLIGHTENMENT: FROM PETER GAY TO JONATHAN ISRAELTHE POLICS OF ENLIGHTENMENT: FROM PETER GAY TO JONATHAN ISRAELTHE POLICS OF ENLIGHTENMENT: FROM PETER GAY TO JONATHAN ISRAELTHE POLICS OF ENLIGHTENMENT: FROM PETER GAY TO JONATHAN ISRAEL
• PETER GAY, HISTORIAN WHO EXPLORED SOCIAL HISTORY OF IAS, DI AT 91
• PETER GAY OBUARY

THE POLITICS OF ENLIGHTENMENT: FROM PETER GAY TO JONATHAN ISRAEL*

Ever sce this view – which we might scribe as the mornizatn this – was first formulated by Peter Gay, has been repeatedly cricized as misguid: a myth. Ined, Gay's most important and fluential succsors – historians such as Robert Darnton and Roy Porter – all end up fendg the ia that the Enlightenment was a major force the creatn of morn mocratic valu and stutns.

7 On Peter Gay's life and reer, see Robert L.

THE POLICS OF ENLIGHTENMENT: FROM PETER GAY TO JONATHAN ISRAELTHE POLICS OF ENLIGHTENMENT: FROM PETER GAY TO JONATHAN ISRAELTHE POLICS OF ENLIGHTENMENT: FROM PETER GAY TO JONATHAN ISRAELTHE POLICS OF ENLIGHTENMENT: FROM PETER GAY TO JONATHAN ISRAELTHE POLICS OF ENLIGHTENMENT: FROM PETER GAY TO JONATHAN ISRAEL

Mile, ‘Peter Gay.

PETER GAY, HISTORIAN WHO EXPLORED SOCIAL HISTORY OF IAS, DI AT 91

Dietle and Mile remark that ‘Gay first anized his ias about the Enlightenment the 1940s and 1950s; agast the backdrop of twentieth-century challeng to eedom by fascism and munism, the Wtern liberal-ratnalist tradn, he believed, very much served affirmatn.

8 In one of his earlit scholarly papers, Gay intified ‘the so-lled “New Conservativ” like John H. In his 1964 book, The party of humany: says the French Enlightenment (New York, NY, 1964), Gay went on to cricize Talmon repeatedly while praisg Cobban's In search of humany. In this sense, the wrgs of Talmon and the New Conservativ formed a more immediate ntext for the genis of Gay's tert the Enlightenment than his crique of Carl Becker, even though Gay later me to put more emphasis on Becker as a foil agast which his own arguments took shape.

PETER GAY OBUARY

9 Gay, ‘The Enlightenment the history of polil theory’, p. 10 Gay, The party of humany, p. 11 Gay, The Enlightenment: an terpretatn (2 vols., New York, NY, 1966–9), i: The rise of morn paganism, p.

14 Peter Gay, Voltaire's polics: the poet as a realist (1959; New Haven, CT, 1988), p. 16 Gay, The Enlightenment, i: Rise of morn paganism, p. 17 Gay, The Enlightenment, ii: Science of eedom, p.

20 Gay, The Enlightenment, ii: Science of eedom, pp.