The Enlightenment and the Intellectual Foundations of Modern Culture

Dupré (religious studies, Yale U.) explores the philosophical, religious, and historical paths leading from the Enlightenment to modernity, finding it more complex than both its adherents and detractors claim. He explains that questions about habitual acceptance of authority, secular and sacred, are said to have arisen from the ashes of 1648 and came to fruition in the French Revolution of 1789, and that many of the answers seemed rational but were based on unproved assumptions. Dupré finds these questions of the mind were only part of the progression. They formed a way of thinking that continues unabated into modern times, and include in its conventions the detractors of the Enlightenment themselves. He shows how the larger questions of the heart and soul, such as the role of rationality, protection of the individual conscience against religious compulsion, the creative purpose of the self, the nature of true authority, all woven in the Enlightenment, continue to walk amongst us, albeit in modern clothes. Annotation ©2004 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)