Pt. 1: The radical challenge. Nature and providence: earthquakes and the human condition -- The Encyclopédie suppressed (1752-1760) -- Rousseau against the Philosophes -- Voltaire, enlightenment, and the European courts -- Anti-philosophes -- Central Europe: Aufklärung divided -- Pt. 2: Rationalizing the Ancien Régime. Hume, scepticism, and moderation -- Scottish enlightenment and man's 'progress' -- Enlightened despotism -- Aufklärung and the fracturing of German protestant culture -- Catholic enlightenment: the papacy's retreat -- Society and the rise of the Italian revolutionary enlightenment -- Spain and the challenge of reform -- Pt. 3: Europe and the remaking of the world. The Histoire philosophique, or colonialism overturned -- The American revolution -- Europe and the Amerindians -- Philosophy and revolt in Ibero-America (1765-1792) -- Commercial despotism: Dutch colonialism in Asia -- China, Japan, and the West -- India and the two enlightenments -- Russia's Greeks, Poles, and Serfs -- Pt. 4: Spinoza controversies in the later enlightenment. Rousseau, Spinoza, and the 'general will' -- Radical breakthrough -- Pantheismusstreit (1780-1787) -- Kant and the radical challenge -- Goethe, Schiller, and the new 'Dutch Revolt' against Spain -- Pt. 5: Revolution. 1788-1789: the 'general revolution' begins -- The diffusion -- 'Philosophy' as a maker of revolutions -- Aufklärung and the secret societies (1776-1792) -- Small-state revolutions in the 1780s -- The Dutch democratic revolution of the 1780s -- The French revolution: from 'philosophy' to basic human rights (1788-1790) -- Epilogue: 1789 as an intellectual revolution.

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