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    Fire and Light: How the Enlightenment Transformed Our World
    Fire and Light: How the Enlightenment Transformed Our World
    Fire and Light: How the Enlightenment Transformed Our World
    Audiobook14 hours

    Fire and Light: How the Enlightenment Transformed Our World

    Written by James Macgregor Burns

    Narrated by Norman Dietz

    3.5/5

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    About this audiobook

    In this engaging history, James MacGregor Burns brings to vivid life the two-hundred-year conflagration of the Enlightenment, during which audacious questions and astonishing ideas tore across Europe and the New World, transforming thought, bringing down governments, and inspiring visionary political experiments that would ultimately reach every corner of the globe. Unlike most historians, Burns pays particular attention to America's intellectual revolution, beginning and ending his story on American soil. He discovers the origins of our domestic Enlightenment in men like Benjamin Franklin, John Adams, and Thomas Jefferson and their early encounters with incendiary European ideas about liberty and equality, and he highlights the role of thinkers like James Madison and Alexander Hamilton. After all, it was the American founders, alone among Enlightenment thinkers, who actually carried through with their ideas.

    Today the same questions Enlightenment thinkers grappled with have taken on new urgency around the world: in the blossoming Arab Spring, in the former Soviet Union, China, and in the United States. What should a nation be? What should a citizenry expect from its government? Who should lead and decide? How can citizens effect change? What is happiness, and what can the state contribute to it? Burns's exploration of the ideals and arguments that formed the bedrock of our nation shines a new light on these ever-important questions.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherTantor Media, Inc
    Release dateOct 29, 2013
    ISBN9781452686202
    Author

    James Macgregor Burns

    James MacGregor Burns (1918–2014) was a bestselling American historian and political scientist whose work earned both the National Book Award and a Pulitzer Prize. Born in Boston, Burns fell in love with politics and history at an early age. He earned his BA at Williams College, where he returned to teach history and political science after obtaining his PhD at Harvard and serving in World War II. Burns’s two-volume biography of Franklin D. Roosevelt is considered the definitive examination of the politician’s rise to power, and his groundbreaking writing on the subject of political leadership has influenced scholars for decades. Most recently, he served as the Woodrow Wilson Professor of Government Emeritus at Williams College and as Distinguished Leadership Scholar at the University of Maryland. 

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    Reviews for Fire and Light

    3.5/5

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    • 4/5
      Despite the undeniably beneficial and long-lasting effect the Enlightenment has had on…well, just about everything, I’m not entirely sure everyone appreciates how transformational this time was. This may be due, ironically, to how successful it was. Unfortunately, Burns doesn’t provide a chapter defining the Enlightenment in his book, so I’ll try to make up for that omission with a brief description.

      Most references will tell you that the Enlightenment was a philosophical or intellectual movement of the 18th century (or the 17th-18th centuries). It was a new way of thinking gave primary emphasis to reason and the individual over tradition and authority. Several Enlightenment philosophers voiced these ideas in their writings, and though they profoundly disagreed on a great many things, they established the notion that tradition and belief could and should be subjected to rational argument. This period is also sometimes called the Age of Reason or included as part of the Scientific Revolution. By whatever name, the ideas that emerged during this time have had a profound impact that defines Western (and much of global) society to this day.

      To appreciate how significant these ideas were requires a brief look at the culture prior to the Enlightenment. In the 17th century, most Europeans knew that commoners were intellectually and morally inferior to nobles; that non-Europeans (i.e. dark-skinned people) were intellectually and morally inferior to European commoners; and that women were intellectually and physically inferior to males of their race and class. This was simply common sense to them. Kings held their authority by the will of God, the nobility was entitled to their privileges, religion provided absolute Truth, and everyone—nobles, merchants, peasants, and slaves—were all in their proper places due their inherent virtues. These things were unquestionable….

      Until Enlightened philosophers questioned them.

      Anything, they said, could be subjected to rational inquiry, and they proceeded to do just that. Descartes, famously, even questioned his own existence, finally concluding cogito ergo sum—I think, therefor I am. Since he was obviously thinking, he must exist as the one doing the thinking. (I won’t go into why this may not be entirely valid because it’s not relevant to this discussion.) This, briefly, is the core idea that changed the world. Challenge assumptions. Question beliefs. Use reason and experience to determine what is true and what is not. This grand idea is epitomized by the moto of Royal Society of London (founded in 1660) nullius in verba, which can be loosely translated as ‘don’t take anyone’s word for it’.

      When these philosophers questioned the unquestionable, they debated whether the king really sat on the throne by divine right. What if different races and social classes weren’t inherently different? Maybe it wasn’t fate or the will of God that made them what they were, but simply a matter of their circumstances. If this was the case, shouldn’t the working classes have the same rights as the nobility? Would commoners be just as capable as their betters if they had access to similar education? Shouldn’t everyone have the freedom to make of themselves what they could through their own achievement? Was the authority of Church and State truly legitimate? Shouldn’t people have the liberty to choose such things for themselves? Perhaps, rather than the vast majority of the population working for the benefit of the aristocracy, the government should work for the benefit of the common people.

      This aspect of the Enlightenment is primarily what Burns addresses in this book. It is about how emerging thoughts about human rights and the purpose of government transformed Britain and France, and helped create the United States, in the 18th century. He also briefly discusses how Enlightenment ideals are still challenged by ideological and moneyed interests striving to be more equal than others.

      Burns shows us that Enlightenment philosophers heavily influenced the founders of the new American republic. They read their works, corresponded with them, even met them in person. Jefferson, for example, was especially well acquainted with their books and is said to have always carried a picture of Francis Bacon with him wherever he went. Benjamin Franklin, in 1756, became one of the few 18th century Americans elected as a Fellow of the Royal Society. Jefferson, Madison, Franklin, Paine, and other architects of the American experiment were important Enlightenment thinkers in their own right.Fire-Light2

      The United States was the first government purposely founded on the principles of the Enlightenment. The U.S. Constitution permitted no king, no aristocracy, no fixed social classes, and no state religion. It established unprecedented rights of free speech, a free press, and freedom of religion. Unlike the monarchies of Europe, its leaders did not hold their positions by the grace of God but by the will of the people…well, some of the people. More than most. Freeing slaves and equal rights and opportunities for women remained goals for the future. We shouldn’t be overly critical of the founding fathers because they couldn’t solve all societal ills in one blow. What they did achieve was, quite literally, revolutionary for the time and an inspiration for others to follow.

      Things did not go quite as well when the people of France overthrew their monarch in an effort to institute a bright new age of reason. Burns discusses why the situation there was so different, why it took longer, and why it was bloodier…and why similar changes in Britain were less disruptive.

      I found the book interesting, but it may suffer from its divided focus. The subject matter could probably fill four separate books that focus on each of the three nations he talks about plus an additional volume for the Enlightenment itself, to include a few chapters on why it remains a work in progress. The 18th century was a pivotal time in history, though, and the thoughts expressed by Enlightenment thinkers have shaped human civilization ever since. They are well worthy of the attention Burns provides in this book.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 3/5
      bookshelves: philosophy, history, e-book, net-galley, nonfiction, published-2013, autumn-2013, epic-proportions, civil-war-english, napoleonic, north-americasRecommended for: Susanna, CareyRead from September 11 to 17, 2013Uncorrected Digital Galley via St. Martin's Press and Thomas Dunne Books where St. Martin's Press and Thomas Dunne Books are just about my favourite dynamic duo.Dedication:FORMILTON DJURICANDSUSAN DUNNOpening to the Introduction: For hundreds of years European minds were locked in orthodoxy. Save for scattered rebellions against the Catholic Church and the emperors and kings it annointed, most Europeans had no prospects other than the "life after life" in heaven promised to true believers.Rousseau: When they have carried their temerity of free-thinking perhaps so far as to suspect that nations may exist without monks or tyrants, it is already too late to burn libraries or philosophers.Glorious overview of the history of modern thought that has brought the Western World to where it is today, and so essential to our understanding of modern-day living that it would be hard to sit down to dinner with someone entirely ignorant of this long, bloodied process.Burns is an expert nib, cutting through to the essentials and tying it up in a readable text that is interesting without being dry.Don't let your kids empty-nest without this under their belt.