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intellectual transformation of the late seventeenth and eighteenth
centuries within a wider European framework. In comparison to
these assets the possible drawbacks count for little. Historians of philosophy
and science may correct some details in the appraisal of individual
philosophers. Israel might also have exaggerated the differences
which separated intellectual developments before and after
1650. He might even have fallen into the same trap as Spinoza’s traditionalist
enemies in the early eighteenth century, who discovered a
Spinoziste behind every more daring text, and thus might have overestimated
the influence of Spinoza’s ideas on the radical Enlightenment.
3 Yet we will have to wait a long time before his book is
matched by another account of the intellectual turmoil in Europe
around 1700, and especially a book which is written with as much
verve and can be read with as much pleasure as Israel’s.
II
A completely different perspective on the Enlightenment from the
one put forward by Jacob and Israel, which emphasizes intellectual
history and provides a sweeping treatment of the whole of the
Enlightenment, is presented by studies which have appeared with
increasing frequency since the 1970s. They give priority to the utilitarian
orientation of the Enlightenment, address questions of implementation
and dissemination of ideas, and depend mainly on a
methodology derived from social history. In contrast to the books
mentioned above, scholars pursuing this strand of research concentrate
on the moderate, practical-minded version of the Enlightenment.
�urthermore, their favourite period of investigation is the second
half of the eighteenth century, and for good reason. As both
Jacob and Israel point out, although with slightly differing periodizations,
in intellectual terms the Enlightenment had passed its
peak by the last decades of the century. In its later stages the principal
aim of the Enlightenment movement was to popularize and,
where possible, realize concepts which had been developed earlier.
39
A War of Words?
3 This criticism was raised by Susan James in ‘Life in the Shadow of Spinoza’,
Times Higher Eduactional Supplement, 21–28 December 2001, p. 31. It also
resurfaces, albeit less explicitly, in Anthony Grafton’s review in the Times
Literary Supplement, 9 November 2001, pp. 3 f.