THE POLITICS OF ENLIGHTENMENT: FROM PETER GAY TO JONATHAN ISRAEL* | The Historil Journal | 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.

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

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.

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.

PETER GAY (1923–2015)

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. 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. ”Footnote 3 By mid-1937, Gay's parents had formed a plan to move the fay om Berl to Florida, where an uncle lived wh his Amerin wife, but the events of 1938 ratcheted up the prsure even further. This entailed not only buyg new tickets but also alterg the date and ship name on the fay's certifite of passage, a fery Gay's father acplished wh precisn and patience.

Footnote 5 In the meantime, Gay explored the entertaments of Havana and worked on his English, polishg his prose at the Havana Bs Amy (to which he received a scholarship) and vourg Amerin perdils like Time, Collier's, and the Saturday Eveng Post.