National Book Award Non Fiction Winner
The Enlightenment: An Interpretation
by Peter Gay
Summary
The first volume of Gay's study in two parts, subtitled "The Rise of Modern Paganism," arguing that the eighteenth century philosophes were united less by doctrine than by a shared appropriation of classical antiquity against Christian authority. Gay reads Voltaire, Hume, Diderot, and their circle as a coherent intellectual family recovering pagan confidence in human reason and worldly happiness. The book reframed Enlightenment studies for the postwar Anglophone academy.
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Historical Context & Significance
Gay was a Jewish refugee from Nazi Germany; his defense of Enlightenment reason was seen as a personal response to the irrationality of twentieth century fascism.