A NEW INTELLECTUAL HISTORY ? JONATHAN ISRAEL’S ENLIGHTENMENT

This review points out the dangers of taking Jonathan Israel’s volumes on the Enlightenment as a new framework for Enlightenment studies. Despite Israel’s claim in Enlightenment contested to have historicized our understanding of the Enlightenment, his modus operandi is fundamentally unhistorical, and the result is a presentist interpretation with an oversimplified classification of thinkers into ‘ radical ’ and ‘ moderate ’ camps. The review suggests more effective ways to make a truly historicized Enlightenment present for us now, especially by devoting more attention to the literary and rhetorical properties of Enlightenment texts.