"The Enlightenment and Why It Still Matters" tells nothing less than the story o
f how the modern, Western view of the world was born. Cultural and intellectual
historian Anthony Pagden explains how, and why, the ideal of a universal, global
, and cosmopolitan society became such a central part of the Western imagination
in the ferment of the Enlightenment - and how these ideas have done battle with
an inward-looking, tradition-oriented view of the world ever since.
