From Publishers Weekly
Himmelfarb, a leading neoconservative historian of ideas (One Nation, Two Cultures, etc.), takes on the ambitious project of reclaiming the Enlightenment from what she sees as delusionary French thinkers and restoring it to the (apparently) virtuous moderation of the English. The French Enlightenment, she claims, was excessively preoccupied with reason and insufficiently concerned with individual liberty; the philosophes idealized Man in the abstract but despised the common man. In contrast, a distinctively humane British Enlightenment was underpinned by ideals of social virtue: compassion, benevolence and sympathy. These thinkers were tolerant and pragmatic, convinced that private self-interest and public welfare were ultimately compatible. Their legacy, Himmelfarb argues, exerts a major influence on contemporary U.S. culture. Himmelfarb's book is both sophisticated and accessible, and makes some valuable revelations: Adam Smith's hostility to the "business class"; Burke's antipathy to British rule in India. One wonders about the value of the term "Enlightenment" when it is so broad as to encompass John Wesley, and the author's exaltation of the English-speaking philosophical tradition appears particularly problematic in her treatment of the American Enlightenment. Was the American Civil War, allegedly fought in defense of liberty, any less terrible than the infamous Terror? Nonetheless, this is a book with important ideological implications that deserves to be read and debated across the political spectrum. Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From The Washington Post's Book World/washingtonpost.com
Why should Gertrude Himmelfarb have bothered to write a study of the Enlightenment ? A leading neo-conservative intellectual, author of nine books that mostly hail the virtues of Victorianism, she is passionately worried about the decline of religion and the cultural corruption of modern American life. Her sensibilities seemingly have little in common with a movement so entangled with scientific rationalism, an emerging liberal political philosophy, and critical confrontation with inherited dogma. It would also be surprising if, as she states, Himmelfarb were concerned merely with the esoteric task of distinguishing different national "enlightenments" or, for the historical record, "restoring" the standing of even a supposedly temperate British tradition. Something more has to be at stake. There is.The Roads to Modernity is an exceptionally well written and clever attempt -- all the more clever since its political aims are never made explicit -- to employ a redefined Enlightenment both as a bulwark for neoconservatism and as a device for explaining current conflicts between supposed allies. In Himmelfarb's proudly revisionist history, the English and American variants of the Enlightenment thus confront the French one while, incredibly, she identifies the Enlightenment's best aspects with an attachment to "religious dispositions," a morally upright capitalism and a "benign imperialism." Making these arguments, however, cuts the Enlightenment off from its rich historical roots and corrals it inside the 18th century. It also requires partitioning a genuinely cosmopolitan movement into three relatively isolated parts and connecting each with one essential idea: The British Enlightenment is consequently associated with "social affections," the French with the "ideology of reason" and the American with the "politics of liberty."Of course, historians should seek to recover the particular truths obscured by easy generalizations. But Himmelfarb loses the forest for the trees. She spends little time on the international scientific revolution started by Descartes, Sir Francis Bacon and Galileo or the burgeoning secular political outlook of Thomas Hobbes and John Locke, whose influence on the continent was probably as great as that of any intellectual other than Sir Isaac Newton. These trends in England helped undermine the public power of religious institutions and turn faith into a matter of individual choice. They also inspired what is usually associated with the British Enlightenment: the radical skepticism of David Hume, the utilitarianism of Jeremy Bentham and social reformism later embraced by John Stuart Mill and the Fabians. Himmelfarb has no use for any of this. She instead emphasizes the concern with empathy highlighted by Lord Shaftesbury, the small-scale capitalism with a moral conscience preached by Adam Smith, and the traditionalism of Edmund Burke. She is, after all, "engaged in a doubly revisionist exercise, making the Enlightenment more British and making the British Enlightenment more inclusive." Yet how Himmelfarb's version of the British Enlightenment paves the road to modernity remains an open question. Her concern is not with how the Enlightenment contested traditional religious prejudices or feudal institutions. Nor is she concerned with how the new mathematical logic of profit and loss undermined the various flowery moral justifications employed by advocates of the new capitalist society. Such matters would only get in the way of transforming the Enlightenment -- by sleight of hand -- into a tame and tepid romanticism. Fear of critique fuels Himmelfarb's book. She attacks the French Enlightenment, in particular, for a supposed over-reliance on "reason" that generated the guillotine. But this idea is not new. Virtually every 19th-century reactionary pounced upon it, just as reactionary romantics invoked the stereotype of the Enlightenment intellectual as a superficial rationalist throughout the 20th century. Himmelfarb ignores the French legacy of the "engaged intellectual" intent upon opposing political injustice and furthering social change. She likewise seems blissfully unaware that not French philosophy but German idealism was most obsessed with "reason," "speculation" and "critique," or that this tradition developed through a creative engagement with the thinking of Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau and Hume. As for the American Enlightenment, without forgetting the impact of European ideas, the historian Henry Steele Commager already argued that it incarnated "the blessings of liberty." Himmelfarb adds little by looking back to Jonathan Edwards, quoting the founders or noting that the treatment of Native Americans -- rather than merely of slavery and its consequences -- poses a "problem." Her institutional discussion is old hat. It is important to understand that no national expression of the Enlightenment has a unique claim to "social affection," "reason" or "political liberty." In suggesting otherwise, Himmelfarb conceals key reasons why reactionaries in all three nations condemned the new movement. Contempt for the way inherited prejudices inhibit personal liberty, a preoccupation with the liberal rule of law and the call for responsive political institutions marked the new international "republic of letters." But Himmelfarb devotes hardly a word to common Enlightenment ideals like progress, rights, institutional accountability, popular sovereignty, the scientific revolution and the critique of feudal tradition. She has even less to say about the intolerance of the religious establishment, the barbarism of the aristocracy and the power of superstition. She also tosses aside the Enlightenment's injunction to question authority -- including, in principle, the shallow prejudices held by many of its most illustrious representatives. Nor does she take on modern thinkers who chastise the Enlightenment for its supposedly white, male and Eurocentric biases. More pressing matters are at stake. Himmelfarb wishes to show that President Bush's "coalition of the willing" has intellectual roots in the past. She depicts a libertarian Anglo-American philosophy with "social affections" that has bravely opposed the cynical and latently authoritarian hyper-rationalism of the French since the birth of modernity. Similarly, given the author's uncritical admiration for Smith and Burke, it becomes possible to legitimate the president's "compassionate conservatism" in terms of the Enlightenment.The problem lies not in reinterpreting the past with an eye on contemporary politics. That can be refreshing and daring. The trouble is Himmelfarb's limited sense of the intellectual bravado exhibited by the philosophical revolutionaries of the Enlightenment, the valor of their assault on inherited dogma, the reformist social movements they inspired, and their influence on a host of non-European leaders ranging from Simon Bolivar to Nelson Mandela. What remains from her book is a pallid warning, stemming from a provincial and debilitating "common sense," built upon hidden political aims: The failings of the Enlightenment -- oh, dear! -- lie in its excesses. Thinking of this sort represents not what the Enlightenment offers, but what it challenges us to overcome.Reviewed by Stephen Eric Bronner Copyright 2004, The Washington Post Co. All Rights Reserved.

From Bookmarks Magazine
Reclaiming the Enlightenment would be an ambitious challenge for any historian, but it is perhaps even more daunting for one so closely identified with a particular brand of politics (neoconservatism). No one questions Himmelfarb’s credentials for tackling the job: she is professor emeritus at the City University of New York and the author of nine books. But she takes some hard lumps for attempting to link the Enlightenment to the current American political scene (one reviewer dubbed her "an apologist for the Bush administration"; another accused her of knowingly "reading her own political agenda into the text of the past"). Is it any wonder that the more conservative critics provided raves and liberals gave sharp critique? Detractors felt Himmelfarb ignored historical facts inconvenient to her viewpoint. Ultimately, as its mixed reviews illustrate, The Roads to Modernity succeeds in at least one area: inspiring impassioned debate about a controversial new idea. Copyright © 2004 Phillips & Nelson Media, Inc.

From Booklist
Himmelfarb's earlier books (The De-Moralization of Society, 1995, and One Nation, Two Cultures, 1999), established her as a talented intellectual historian most deeply concerned with, and by, modern moral and social mores. Her latest book is more muted in its engagement with the postmodern academic culture wars, if only because she is confident that her side has already won. Analyzing the traditional stalwarts of Enlightenment thought in America (Jefferson, Paine), France (Tocqueville, Voltaire, Diderot), and Britain (Locke, Smith, and, somewhat surprisingly, Burke), Himmelfarb presents a cogent case for the chronological priority and philosophical primacy of the British model in shaping the philosophy of reason and liberty on the cusp of modernity. Essentially, she would like to see the Enlightenment wrestled away from the French and away from academics who would deconstruct its intellectual foundations in favor of social and economic explanations for the genesis of modern political thought. Brendan Driscoll
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

From the Inside Flap
One of our most distinguished intellectual historians gives us a brilliant revisionist history.

The Roads to Modernity reclaims the Enlightenment–an extraordinary time bursting with new ideas about the human condition in the realms of politics, society, and religion–from historians who have downgraded its importance and from scholars who have given preeminence to the Enlightenment in France over concurrent movements in England and America. Contrasting the Enlightenments in the three nations, Gertrude Himmelfarb demonstrates the primacy of the British and the wisdom and foresight of thinkers such as Adam Smith, David Hume, Thomas Paine, the Earl of Shaftesbury, Edward Gibbon, and Edmund Burke, who established its unique character and historic importance. It is this Enlightenment, she argues, that created a moral and social philosophy–humane, compassionate, and realistic–that still resonates strongly today, in America perhaps even more so than in Europe.

This is an illuminating contribution to the history of ideas.

About the Author
Gertrude Himmelfarb taught for twenty-three years at Brooklyn College and the Graduate School of the City University of New York, where she was named Distinguished Professor of History in 1978. Now Professor Emeritus, she lives with her husband, Irving Kristol, in Washington, D.C. Her previous books include The De-Moralization of Society: From Victorian Virtues to Modern Values; On Looking into the Abyss: Untimely Thoughts on Culture and Society; Poverty and Compassion: The Moral Imagination of the Late Victorians; The New History and the Old; Marriage and Morals Among the Victorians; The Idea of Poverty: England in
the Early Industrial Age; On Liberty and Liberalism: The Case of John Stuart Mill; Victorian Minds (nominated for a National Book Award); Darwin and the Darwinian Revolution; and Lord Acton: A Study in Conscience and Politics.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
1. "Social Affections" and Religious Dispositions

The British did not have "philosophes." They had "moral philosophers," a very different breed. Those historians who belittle or dismiss the idea of a British Enlightenment do so because they do not recognize the features of the philosophes in the moral philosophers--and with good reason: the physiognomy is quite different.

It is ironic that the French should have paid tribute to John Locke and Isaac Newton as the guiding spirits of their own Enlightenment, while the British, although respectful of both, had a more ambiguous relationship with them. Newton was eulogized by David Hume as "the greatest and rarest genius that ever rose for the ornament and instruction of the species,"[1] and by Alexander Pope in the much quoted epitaph: "Nature and Nature's laws lay hid in night;/God said, Let Newton be! and all was light." But Pope's An Essay on Man sent quite a different message: "The proper study of mankind is man" implied that materialism and science could penetrate into the mysteries of nature but not of man. In an earlier essay, the allusion to Newton was more obvious; it was human nature, not astronomy, Pope said, that was "the most useful object of humane reason," and it was "of more consequence to adjust the true nature and measures of right and wrong, than to settle the distance of the planets and compute the times of their circumvolutions."[2] While Newton received the adulation of his countrymen (he was master of the Royal Mint and president of the Royal Society, was knighted, and given a state funeral), and his scientific methodology was much praised, he had little substantive influence on the moral philosophers or on the issues that dominated the British Enlightenment. (His Opticks, on the other hand, was an inspiration for poets, who were entranced by the images and metaphors of light.)[3]

John Locke, too, was a formidable presence in eighteenth-century Britain, a best-selling author and a revered figure. But among the moral philosophers he was admired more for his politics than for his metaphysics. Indeed, the basic tenets of their philosophy implied a repudiation of his. What made them "moral philosophers" rather than "philosophers" tout court was their belief in a "moral sense" that was presumed to be if not innate in the human mind (as Francis Hutcheson thought), then so entrenched in the human sensibility, in the form of sympathy or "fellow-feeling" (as Adam Smith and David Hume had it), as to have the same compelling force as innate ideas.

Locke himself could not have been more explicit in rejecting innate ideas, whether moral or metaphysical. The mind, as he understood it, so far from being inhabited by innate ideas, was a tabula rasa, to be filled by sensations and experiences, and by the reflections rising from those sensations and experiences. The title of the first chapter of his Essay Concerning Human Understanding was "No Innate Speculative Principles" (that is, epistemological principles); the second, "No Innate Practical Principles" (moral principles). Even the golden rule, that "most unshaken rule of morality and foundation of all social virtue," would have been meaningless to one who had never heard that maxim and who might well ask for a reason justifying it, which "plainly shows it not to be innate." If virtue was generally approved, it was not because it was innate, but because it was "profitable," conducive to one's self-interest and happiness, the promotion of pleasure and the avoidance of pain. Thus, things could be judged good or evil only by reference to pleasure or pain, which were themselves the product of sensation.[4]

Locke's Essay was published in 1690. Nine years later, the Earl of Shaftesbury wrote an essay that was, in effect, a refutation of Locke. This, too, had its ironies, for this Shaftesbury, the third earl, was brought up in the household of his grandfather, the first earl, who was a devotee of Locke and had employed him to supervise the education of his grandchildren. It was this experience that had inspired Locke's Thoughts Concerning Education--and inspired as well, perhaps, the pupil's rejection of his master's teachings.[5] Shaftesbury's essay, "An Inquiry Concerning Virtue, or Merit," was published (without his permission but to great acclaim) in 1699 and reprinted in 1711 in somewhat revised form in his Characteristics of Men, Manners, Opinions, Times. That three-volume work, reissued posthumously three years later and in ten more editions in the course of the century, rivalled Locke's Second Treatise (a political, not metaphysical tract) as the most frequently reprinted work of the time. The hundred-page essay on virtue was the centerpiece of those volumes.

Virtue, according to Shaftesbury, derived not from religion, self-interest, sensation, or reason. All of these were instrumental in supporting or hindering virtue, but were not the immediate or primary source of it. What was "antecedent" to these was the "moral sense," the "sense of right and wrong."[6] [Shaftesbury's "moral sense" was very different from John Rawls's recent use of that term. For Shaftesbury it was an innate sense of right and wrong; for Rawls it is an intuitive conviction of the rightness of freedom and equality.] It was this sense that was "predominant...inwardly joined to us, and implanted in our nature," "a first principle in our constitution and make," as natural as "natural affection itself."[7] This "natural affection," moreover, was "social affection," an affection for "society and the public," which, so far from being at odds with one's private interest, or "self-affection," actually contributed to one's personal pleasure and happiness.[8] A person whose actions were motivated entirely or even largely by self-affection--by self-love, self-interest, or self-good--was not virtuous. Indeed, he was "in himself still vicious," for the virtuous man was motivated by nothing other than "a natural affection for his kind."[9]

This was not a Rousseauean idealization of human nature, of man before being corrupted by society. Nor was it a Pollyannaish expectation that all or even most men would behave virtuously all or most of the time. The moral sense attested to the sense of right and wrong in all men, the knowledge of right and wrong even when they chose to do wrong. Indeed, a good part of Shaftesbury's essay dealt with the variety of "hateful passions"--envy, malice, cruelty, lust--that beset mankind. Even virtue, Shaftesbury warned, could become vice when it was pursued to excess; an immoderate degree of "tenderness," for example, destroyed the "effect of love," and excessive "pity" rendered a man "incapable of giving succour."[10] The conclusion of the essay was a stirring testament of an ethic that, by its very nature--the "common nature" of man--was a social ethic: "Thus the wisdom of what rules, and is first and chief in nature, has made it to be according to the private interest and good of everyone to work towards the general good; which if a creature ceases to promote, he is actually so far wanting to himself and ceases to promote his own happiness and welfare.... And, thus, Virtue is the good, and Vice the ill of everyone."[11]

The contrast, not only with Thomas Hobbes but with Locke as well, could not be more obvious.[12] Neither was explicitly named by Shaftesbury, perhaps out of respect for Locke, who was still alive when the essay was written (although he had died by the time it was reissued). But no knowledgeable reader could have mistaken Shaftesbury's intention. In 1709 he wrote to one of his young proteges that Locke, even more than Hobbes, was the villain of the piece, for Hobbes's character and base slavish principles of government "took off the poison of his philosophy," whereas Locke's character and commendable principles of government made his philosophy even more reprehensible.

'Twas Mr. Locke that struck at all fundamentals, threw all order and virtue out of the world.... Virtue, according to Mr. Locke, has no other measure, law, or rule, than fashion and custom: morality, justice, equity, depend only on law and will.... And thus neither right nor wrong, virtue nor vice are any thing in themselves; nor is there any trace or idea of them naturally imprinted on human minds. Experience and our catechism teach us all![13]

As Shaftesbury did not mention Locke in the Inquiry, so Bernard Mandeville did not mention Shaftesbury in The Fable of the Bees--at least not in the first edition, published in 1714. But appearing just then, a year after Shaftesbury's death and at the same time as the second edition of the Characteristics, Mandeville's readers might well take it as a rebuttal to Shaftesbury's work. The subtitle, Private Vices, Public Benefits, reads like a manifesto contra Shaftesbury.[14]

The original version of the Fable, published in 1705 as a sixpenny pamphlet (and pirated, Mandeville complained, in a halfpenny sheet), consisted of some thirty verses depicting a society, a hive of bees, where everyone was a knave, and where knavery served a valuable purpose. Every vice had its concomitant virtue: avarice contributed to prodigality, luxury to industry, folly to ingenuity. The result was a "grumbling" but productive hive, where "...every part was full of Vice,/ Yet the whole mass a Paradise." A well-intentioned attempt to rid the hive of vice had the effect of ridding it of its virtues as well, resulting in the destruction of the hive itself, as all the bees, "blest with content and honesty," abandoned industry and took refuge in a hollow tree.[15]

Lest the moral escape his readers, Mandeville reissued the poem in 1714 with a prefatory essay, "The Origin of Moral Virtue," and a score of lengthy "Remarks" amplifying lines of the poem; the editions of 1723 and 1724 added still other essays and remarks. In the enlarged version (now a full-length book), Mandeville elaborated upon his thesis. Self-love, which was reducible to pain and pleasure, was the primary motivation of all men, and what was generally called "pity" or "compassion"--the "fellow-feeling and condolence for the misfortunes and calamities of others"--was an entirely spurious passion, which unfortunately afflicted the weakest minds the most.[16] Moralists and philosophers, he conceded, generally took the opposite view, agreeing with the "noble writer" Lord Shaftesbury that "as man is made for society, so he ought to be born with a kind affection to the whole of which he is a part, and a propensity to seek the welfare of it."[17]

Maudeville's conclusion was sharp and uncompromising:

After this I flatter my self to have demonstrated that neither the friendly qualities and kind affections that are natural to man, nor the real virtues he is capable of acquiring by reason and self-denial are the foundation of society; but that what we call evil in this world, moral as well as natural, is the grand principle that makes us sociable creatures, the solid basis, the life and support of all trades and employments without exception; that there we must look for the true origin of all arts and sciences, and that the moment evil ceases, the society must be spoiled if not totally dissolved.[18]

The Fable of the Bees profoundly shocked contemporaries, provoking a frenzy of attacks culminating in a ruling handed down by the grand jury of Middlesex condemning it as a "public nuisance." Joining in the near-universal condemnation were most of the eighteenth-century greats--Bishop Berkeley, Francis Hutcheson, Edward Gibbon, Adam Smith. Smith expressed the general sentiment in pronouncing Mandeville's theory "licentious" and "wholly pernicious."[19] [Smith was offended not only by Mandeville's amoralism, his refusal to distinguish between vice and virtue, but also by his mercantilist views, which were a by-product of that philosophy. Because there was no natural moral sense and thus no natural harmony among men, Mandeville assumed that the government had to intervene to convert "private vices" into "public benefits." Mandeville is sometimes taken to be an apologist for capitalism; but it was mercantilism that was the logical deduction from his philosophy.]


Mandeville's was a spirited but futile attempt to abort the social ethic that was the distinctive feature of the British Enlightenment. That ethic derived neither from self-interest nor from reason (although both were congruent with it) but from a "moral sense" that inspired sympathy, benevolence, and compassion for others. Thus, where Locke, denying any innate principles, looked to education to inculcate in children the sentiment of "humanity," "benignity," or "compassion,"[20] Shaftesbury rooted that sentiment in nature and instinct rather than education or reason. "To compassionate," he wrote, "i.e., to join with in passion.... To commiserate, i.e., to join with in misery.... This in one order of life is right and good; nothing more harmonious; and to be without this, or not to feel this, is unnatural, horrid, immane [monstrous]."[21]

Two years after the publication of the expanded version of the Fable, Francis Hutcheson entered the debate with An Inquiry Concerning the Original of Our Ideas of Beauty and Virtue, reissued the following year with Virtue or Moral Good replacing Beauty and Virtue. The subtitle of the original edition gave its provenance: In Which the Principles of the Late Earl of Shaftesbury Are Explained and Defended, Against the Author of the Fable of the Bees. It was here that Hutcheson first enunciated the principle, "The greatest happiness for the greatest numbers."[22] Unlike Helvetius and Jeremy Bentham, who are often credited with this principle and who rooted it in the rational calculations of utility, Hutcheson deduced it from morality itself--the "moral sense, viz. benevolence."[23] [* Bentham himself variously attributed this principle to Montesquieu, Barrington, Beccaria, and Helvetius, "but most of all Helvetius." Smith mistakenly attributed the origin of the "moral sense" to Hutcheson rather than Shaftesbury.[24]] These words, "moral sense" and "benevolence," appear as a refrain throughout the book. The moral sense, Hutcheson repeatedly explained, was "antecedent" to interest because it was universal in all men. "Fellow-feeling" could not be a product of self-interest because it involved associating oneself with such painful experiences as the suffering and distress of others. So, too, the "disposition to compassion" was essentially disinterested, a concern with "the interest of others, without any views of private advantage."[25] It was also antecedent to reason or instruction. Like Burke later, Hutcheson warned of the frailty of reason: "Notwithstanding the mighty reason we boast of above other animals, its processes are too slow, too full of doubt and hesitation, to serve us in every exigency, either for our own preservation, without the external senses, or to direct our actions for the good of the whole, without this moral sense."[26] Elsewhere he explained that reason was "only a subservient power," capable of determining the means of promoting the good but not the end itself, the innate impulse to good.[27]

"Benevolence," compassion," "sympathy," "fellow-feeling," a "natural affection for others"--under one label or another, this moral sense (or sentiment, as Smith preferred) was the basis of the social ethic that informed British philosophical and moral discourse for the whole of the eighteenth century. The generation of philosophers that followed Shaftesbury qualified his teachings in one respect or another, differing among themselves about the precise nature and function of the moral sense. But they all agreed that it (or something very like it) was the natural, necessary, and universal attribute of man, of rich and poor alike, the educated and uneducated, the enlightened and unenlightened. They also agreed that it was a corollary of reason and interest, but prior to and independent of both.




ENDNOTES

1. David Hume, The History of England: From the Invasion of Julius Caesar to the Revolution in 1688, 4 vols. (Philadelphia, 1828 [1st ed., 1754-62]), IV, 434. Some commentators on Adam Smith find in his work a Newtonian mode of analysis. One claims that Smith "self-consciously" set out to apply Newtonian principles by the use of mechanical analogies and metaphors (Alan Macfarlane, The Riddle of the Modern World: Of Liberty, Wealth and Equality [New York, 2000], p. 82; see also Ian Simpson Ross, The Life of Adam Smith [Oxford, 1995], p. 179). Yet there is only one passing reference to Newton in the Theory of Moral Sentiments (on the initial public neglect of him), and none in Wealth of Nations.

2. See A. R. Humphreys, The Augustan World: Society, Thought, and Letters in Eighteenth-Century England (New York, 1963), p. 207.

3. On the aesthetic influence of Newton, see the elegant and powerful little book by Marjorie Hope Nicolson, Newton Demands the Muse: Newton's Opticks and the Eighteenth Century Poets (Hamden, Conn., 1963 [1st ed., 1946]).

4. John Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding (Chicago, 1952 [1st ed., 1690]), pp. 95, 103, 105 (bk. I, chs. 1 and 2); p. 176 (bk. II, ch. 20).

5. Lawrence E. Klein suggests that Shaftesbury's personal relationship with Locke accounts for the "emotional intensity" of his search for his own "philosophical identity" and thus his attack on the Lockean principles (Shaftesbury and the Culture of Politeness: Moral Discourse and Cultural Politics in Early Eighteenth-Century England [Cambridge, 1994], p. 15).

6. Anthony Ashley Cooper, third Earl of Shaftesbury, Characteristics of Men, Manners, Opinions, Times, 3 vols. (Indianapolis, 2001 [1711; reprint of 6th ed., 1737-38]), II. 27 (bk. I, pt. 3, sect. 2); p. 18 (bk. I, pt. 2, sect. 3, and passim). "Moral sense" appears only once in the text of the essay (p. 27), but it is clearly meant to be synonymous with "the sense of right and wrong," which appears repeatedly. In the 1714 edition, "moral sense" also appears in the marginal notations and in the index. (Here, and throughout this book, I have modernized the capitalization, punctuation, and spelling of these eighteenth-century writers. To retain the original is distracting and, in the case of the capitalization of common nouns, deceptive because it gives an unintended emphasis to the words.)

7. Ibid., p. 80 (bk. II, pt. 2, sect. 1); p. 25 (bk. I, pt. 3, sect. 1).

8. Ibid., p. 45 (bk. II, pt. 1, sect. 1); p. 57 (bk. II, pt. 1, sect. 1).

9. Ibid., p. 14 (bk. I, pt. 2, sect. 2).

10. Ibid., p. 16 (bk. I, pt. 2, sect. 2).

11. Ibid., p. 100 (bk. II, pt. 2, sect. 3). On "common nature," see pp. 45-46 (bk. II, pt. 1, sect. 1).

12. Other historians dispute this interpretation of the relation of Locke and the moral philosophers. Frank Balog, for example, argues for the "pivotal position of Locke" in the Scottish Enlightenment. He quotes the first English work on the subject, James McCosh's Scottish Philosophy from Hutchinson to Hamilton (1875): "The Scottish metaphysicians largely imbibed the spirit of Locke, all of them speak of him with profound respect; and they never differ from him without expressing a regret or offering an apology." But Balog admits that the Scottish philosophers differed with Locke on "one fundamental issue, the nature of conscience and morality"--for moral philosophers, a fundamental issue, indeed. And he cites Hume as criticizing Locke for being "unhistorical and subversive"(Balog, "The Scottish Enlightenment and the Liberal Political Tradition," in Confronting the Constitution, ed. Allan Bloom [Washington, D.C., 1990], pp. 193, 207, 205).

13. Quoted in Klein, Shaftesbury and the Culture of Politeness, p. 65.

14. One editor of the Fable says that Mandeville had not read Shaftesbury when he published the first edition of the book in 1714 (The Fable of the Bees, ed. Philip Harth [London, 1970 (reprint of 1723 ed.)], p. 32). But the book has so many echoes of Shaftesbury--in reverse--that this seems improbable. It is unlikely that Mandeville would have failed to read a book published three years earlier that was so much discussed and praised. The editor also suggests that the Fable may be understood as a satire, "an outstanding ornament of the greatest age of English satire" (p. 43). But this is to take the book far less seriously than contemporaries did.

15. Ibid., pp. 67, 75.

16. Ibid., pp. 158, 165, 264.

17. Ibid., p. 329.

18. Ibid., p. 370.

19. Adam Smith, The Theory of Moral Sentiments, ed. D. D. Raphael and A. L. Macfie (Oxford, 1976 [reprint of 6th ed., 1790]), pp. 306, 308 (pt. VII, sect. 2, ch. 4). Many years later, Gibbon commended William Law for attacking "the licentious doctrine" that private vices are public benefits (see Harth, introduction to the Fable, p. 14).

20. See Locke's Some Thoughts Concerning Education (1693), especially the discussion of why children should be taught not to be cruel to animals.

21. The Life, Unpublished Letters and Philosophical Regimen of Anthony, Earl of Shaftesbury, ed. Benjamin Rand (London, 1900), p. 158.

22. Francis Hutcheson, An Inquiry Concerning the Original of Our Ideas of Virtue or Moral Good (2nd ed., 1726), reprinted in British Moralists, ed. L. A. Selby-Bigge (Oxford, 1897), I, 107.

23. Ibid., p. 118. See also Hutcheson, A Short Introduction to Moral Philosophy in Three Books (5th ed., Philadelphia, 1788 [1st ed., 1747]), pp. 12-13, 21-22. The theme reappears in his Observations on the Fable of the Bees (1726) and in An Essay on the Nature and Conduct of the Passions and Affections, with Illustrations on the Moral Sense (1728).

24. The Correspondence of Jeremy Bentham, ed. Timothy L. S. Sprigge (London, 1968), I, 134n., and II, 99 (letter to John Forster, April-May 1778); Smith, Moral Sentiments, p. 321 (pt. VII, sect. 3, ch. 3).

25. Hutcheson, Inquiry, pp. 86, 93, 140-43; Short Introduction, pp. 9, 12.

26. Hutcheson, Inquiry, p. 156.

27. Hutcheson, A System of Moral Philosophy (London, 1755), I, 69-70. -- Dave Cramer Manager, XML and Prepress Stratford Publishing Services 70 Landmark Hill Drive Brattleboro, VT 05301 802.254.6073 x127 davec@stratfordpublishing.com

FROM THE PUBLISHER

"The Roads to Modernity reclaims the Enlightenment - an extraordinary time bursting with new ideas about the human condition in the realms of politics, society, and religion - from historians who have downgraded its importance and from scholars who have given preeminence to the Enlightenment in France over concurrent movements in England and America. Contrasting the Enlightenments in the three nations, Gertrude Himmelfarb demonstrates the primacy of the British and the wisdom and foresight of thinkers such as Adam Smith, David Hume, Thomas Paine, the Earl of Shaftesbury, Edward Gibbon, and Edmund Burke, who established its unique character and historic importance. It is this Enlightenment, she argues, that created a moral and social philosophy - humane, compassionate, and realistic - that still resonates strongly today, in America perhaps ever more so than in Europe." This is a contribution to the history of ideas.

FROM THE CRITICS

Stephen Eric Bronner - The Washington Post

The Roads to Modernity is an exceptionally well written and clever attempt -- all the more clever since its political aims are never made explicit -- to employ a redefined Enlightenment both as a bulwark for neoconservatism and as a device for explaining current conflicts between supposed allies. In Himmelfarb's proudly revisionist history, the English and American variants of the Enlightenment thus confront the French one while, incredibly, she identifies the Enlightenment's best aspects with an attachment to "religious dispositions," a morally upright capitalism and a "benign imperialism."

Publishers Weekly

Himmelfarb, a leading neoconservative historian of ideas (One Nation, Two Cultures, etc.), takes on the ambitious project of reclaiming the Enlightenment from what she sees as delusionary French thinkers and restoring it to the (apparently) virtuous moderation of the English. The French Enlightenment, she claims, was excessively preoccupied with reason and insufficiently concerned with individual liberty; the philosophes idealized Man in the abstract but despised the common man. In contrast, a distinctively humane British Enlightenment was underpinned by ideals of social virtue: compassion, benevolence and sympathy. These thinkers were tolerant and pragmatic, convinced that private self-interest and public welfare were ultimately compatible. Their legacy, Himmelfarb argues, exerts a major influence on contemporary U.S. culture. Himmelfarb's book is both sophisticated and accessible, and makes some valuable revelations: Adam Smith's hostility to the "business class"; Burke's antipathy to British rule in India. One wonders about the value of the term "Enlightenment" when it is so broad as to encompass John Wesley, and the author's exaltation of the English-speaking philosophical tradition appears particularly problematic in her treatment of the American Enlightenment. Was the American Civil War, allegedly fought in defense of liberty, any less terrible than the infamous Terror? Nonetheless, this is a book with important ideological implications that deserves to be read and debated across the political spectrum. (Aug. 27) Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.

Library Journal

Himmelfarb (emeritus, Graduate Sch., CUNY) separates the French Enlightenment from the British and American Enlightenments, which she views as the expression of a moral philosophy found primarily in the writings of Adam Smith, David Hume, and Edmund Burke. Himmelfarb argues that a moral sentiment throughout the writings of these British philosophers led to an Age of Benevolence, in which a practical altruism prevailed in the Anglo-Saxon realm-a sentiment not commonly associated with these icons of the conservative pantheon. Conversely, she views the French Enlightenment as a more abstract and dogmatic intellectual phenomenon; the French philosophes' insistence on the compassionless primacy of Reason over the lesser emotions ultimately led to the bloody excesses of the Reign of Terror. In conclusion, she asserts that in America the moral sentiments expressed by Smith, Hume, and Burke are now embodied in George W. Bush's fading call for compassionate conservatism. Grounded in the texts, from which she quotes copiously, and sure to be controversial, this vibrant example of intellectual history should be in both academic and public libraries.-Jim Doyle, Sara Hightower Regional Lib., Rome, GA Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews