What Is Enlightenment?: Questions for the Eighteenth Century

A panoramic view of the Age of Enlightenment.

From the search for knowledge and a new kind of science to debates about religion, human equality, freedom of mankind, the demand for civil rights, mercantilism, and cosmopolitanism, many issues that the great thinkers of the Enlightenment dealt with are now fundamental to our society. Even today, we are still striving for some of their goals.

Prepare in celebration of the three hundredth birthday of Enlightenment philosopher Immanuel Kant in 2024, this book offers the perfect occasion to take a closer look at the long eighteenth century. What were the most important debates at the time? What contradictions and ambivalences, conflicts over concepts, and demands can be revealed today? This comprehensive publication, with contributions by international experts, explores the changing ideas of science, equality, and tolerance of the past and the present.

Raphael Gross is the president of the Deutsches Historisches Museum, Berlin. Liliane Weissberg is professor in the arts and sciences at the University of Pennsylvania.