Peter Gay (1923–2015) | Central European History | Cambridge Core

Contents:

• 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
• THE POLITICS OF ENLIGHTENMENT: FROM PETER GAY TO JONATHAN ISRAEL*
• PETER GAY (1923–2015)

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

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. 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. 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.

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

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.

For an fluential crique of Gay's methodology, see Darnton, Robert, ‘In search of the Enlightenment: recent attempts to create a social history of ias’, Journal of Morn History, 43 (1971), pp. In his excellent overview of Darnton's tellectual trajectory, Jeremy Popk has likewise poted out that Darnton's 1997 say ‘is a claratn of loyalty, not jt to any Enlightenment, but to somethg very siar to Peter Gay's Enlightenment’. In a new foreword, Peter Gay nsirs The Philosophy of the Enlightenment the ntext which was wrten — Germany 1932, on the precipice of the Nazi seizure of power and one of the greatt asslts on the ials of the Enlightenment.

PETER GAY (1923–2015)

Dcribed by Gay as a “self-ma man, ” Morz Fröhlich was born 1894 the predomantly Polish village of Podjanze Upper Silia and received only an eighth-gra tn before embarkg on a bs reer.

Footnote 1 Dpe his middle-class standg, Gay's father was a lifelong supporter of the Social Democratic Party (SPD) and a pronounced secularist, views he passed onto his son.