The Cambridge History of Modern European Thought: Volume 1, The Nineteenth Century

Presents an authoritative and comprehensive survey of the major themes, thinkers, and movements in modern European intellectual history.

Warren Breckman (Edited by), Peter E. Gordon (Edited by)

9781107097759, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 29 August 2019

520 pages
23.5 x 16 x 2.9 cm, 0.96 kg

'In these well-nigh encyclopedic volumes, Warren Breckman and Peter E. Gordon engage in a daunting feat. They offer compact and informative introductions to essays on very many crucial dimensions of thought in the 19th and 20th centuries. And they furnish, along with their own substantive chapters, contributions from an array of prominent scholars of intellectual and cultural history, all of whom demonstrate impressive expertise in their varied areas of inquiry. The result is an important work of both scholarly and general interest.' Dominick LaCapra, Professor Emeritus of History and Bowmar Professor Emeritus of Humanistic Studies, Cornell University

The Cambridge History of Modern European Thought is an authoritative and comprehensive exploration of the themes, thinkers and movements that shaped our intellectual world in the late-eighteenth and nineteenth century. Representing both individual figures and the contexts within which they developed their ideas, each essay is written in a clear accessible style by leading scholars in the field and offers both originality and interpretive insight. This first volume surveys late eighteenth- and nineteenth-century European intellectual history, focusing on the profound impact of the Enlightenment on European intellectual life. Spanning twenty chapters, it covers figures such as Kant, Hegel, Wollstonecraft, and Darwin, major political and intellectual movements such as Romanticism, Socialism, Liberalism and Feminism, and schools of thought such as Historicism, Philology, and Decadence. Renouncing a single 'master narrative' of European thought across the period, Warren Breckman and Peter E. Gordon establish a formidable new multi-faceted vision of European intellectual history for the global modern age.

Introduction Warren Breckman and Peter E. Gordon
1. German idealism: the thought of modernity Terry Pinkard
2. European romanticism: ambivalent responses to the sense of a new epoch Nicholas Halmi
3. History, tradition and skepticism: the patterns of nineteenth-century theology David Fergusson
4. The young Hegelians: philosophy as critical praxis Warren Breckman
5. Utilitarianism, God, and moral obligation from Locke to Sidgwick Philip Schofield
6. Capital, class, and empire: nineteenth-century political economy and its imaginary Francesco Boldizzoni
7. Positivism in European intellectual, political, and religious life Mary Pickering
8. European liberalism in the nineteenth century Jerrold Seigel
9. European socialism from the 1790s to the 1890s Gareth Stedman Jones
10. Conservatism: the utility of history and the case against rationalist radicalism Jerry Muller
11. The woman question: liberal and socialist critiques of the status of women Naomi Andrews
12. Darwinism and social Darwinism Gregory Radick
13. Historicism from Ranke to Nietzsche John Toews
14. Philology, language, and the constitution of meaning and human communities Tuska Benes
15. Decadence and the 'second modernity' Mary Gluck
16. Nihilism, pessimism, and the conditions of modernity Christian Emden
17. Civilisation, culture and race: anthropology in the nineteenth century Adam Kuper
18. The varieties of nationalist thought Erica Benner
19. Ideas of empire: civilization, race, and global hierarchy Jennifer Pitts
20. Rethinking revolution: radicalism at the end of the long nineteenth century Claudia Verhoeven.

Subject Areas: History of ideas [JFCX], History of Western philosophy [HPC], European history [HBJD]