Key Thinkers of the English, Scottish and American Enlightenments: From Locke to Madison - Hardcover

by Sabrina P. Ramet (Author), Torbj?rn L. Knutsen (Author)

This book summarizes and explains the way in which political thinkers in England, Scotland, and North America reshaped Western thinking about government and citizens. Although the ideas of the Anglo-American Enlightenment can be traced back, in embryo, to the Italian Renaissance and the Protestant Reformation, it was responses to wars - the Thirty Years' War (1618-1648) and the English Civil War (1642-1651) which were fought above all over religion - that defined it. Algernon Sidney demanded an end to royal absolutism. John Locke called for a government based on religious toleration. Benedictus de Spinoza, Samuel von Pufendorf and others elaborated on the ideas that society was composed of sovereign individuals endowed with reason and rights. Building on the works of these thinkers, Scottish philosophers including David Hume and Adam Smith, and American revolutionaries including Thomas Jefferson and James Madison advanced arguments defending human reason, individual freedom, including religious freedom, and democracy.

Back Jacket

"Sabrina P. Ramet and Torbj?rn L. Knutsen, previously co-authors of German Moral and Political Philosophy, have returned with a second collaborative volume, this time examining the Anglo-American Enlightenment. Their new book is succinct, insightful, and easy to read. The book is a valuable addition to academic literature."

-- Vladimir Đorđevic, Associate Professor, Mendel University, Czechia

"Key Thinkers of the English, Scottish and American Enlightenments will be a must-have item for me and my students. The authors have shown that not only Spinoza, Locke, Hume, Jefferson, Madison, Paine, and Kant but also Algernon Sidney, Francis Hutcheson, Adam Smith, and Mary Wollstonecraft are our contemporaries, thanks to whom we better understand ourselves and the world we live in."

--Stanislaw Obirek, Professor of Humanities, University of Warsaw, Poland.

"What is Enlightenment? Like the metaphor of vision presupposed by the question, the typical short answer - "reason, liberty, rights" - has been formative for the Western tradition since the end of the seventeenth century. In this learned book, the authors resist any shorthand interpretation. They historicise the narrative and trace how Enlightenment thinkers across the Atlantic articulated radical ideas of social change which continue to inspire and vex us 350 years on."

-- Silviya Lechner, Chair of the Department of Political Science, Anglo-American University in Prague, and Visiting Senior Research Fellow, King's College London.

This book analyses the Anglo-American Enlightenment, showing how the ideas developed first by John Locke and Algernon Sidney spread to the New World and influenced and were reflected in the thinking of James Madison and Thomas Jefferson, among others.

Sabrina Ramet is Professor Emerita at The Norwegian University of Science & Technology, Norway.

Torbjorn Lindstrom Knutsen is Professor Emeritus at The Norwegian University of Science & Technology, Norway.