Customer Reviews

The Radical Enlightenment: Pantheists, Freemasons and Republicans

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

It is perhaps some measure of the importance of this book that its first edition was impossible to get hold of. This printing isn't the finest in terms of layout, but this is largely balanced by the substantial content. (A better printing would have earned 5 stars - certainly the content earns them.) The reader who found it boring didn't explain why - perhaps they found it a heavy-going read. But this is because Jacob is writing serious, complex and little-known history, unlike most of the pseudo-historical airport novels that pass for Masonic history these days. For me, one of the most valuable aspects of Jacob's work is her outline of the theological stances of the Newtonians: although the "religious" tendencies of Freemasonry today are a hodgepodge of civic religion and (to a much lesser degree) faintly whiffy mysticism, an understanding of the Deist and quasi-Deist background to Masonic religiosity is valuable when considering anti-Masonic sentiment among Christian groups. Jacob's work is, I think, the most substantial introduction to this.

This book is a landmark in the studies of Masonic influences regarding the period of European enlightenment period.

Prof. Margaret C. Jacob would be included in any Masonic scholar's list of experts on Masonic research, and she would probably be at the top of most lists. She has written several books and learned articles about Freemasonry, including "Living the Enlightenment: Freemasonry and Politics in Eighteenth Century Europe, published in 1991"

In this second revised edition of "The Radical Enlightenment: Pantheists, Freemasons and Republicans" new evidence from Masonic archives has been incorporated into the work which I am sure will be of interest to any researcher.

I'm not sure what another reviewer is trying to say about the quality of this book or why as I have seen none of the problems he is describing. The cover is very much like the original in style and color and there are no problems with the quality of this book after reading it several times.

Margaret Jacob's is one of the key studies that re-inspired interest in the study of the radical enlightenment of the 17th and 18th century, and in this second edition still offers many threads that are intruiging to pursue. Moreover, she has done a great job in portraying the dynamics of enlightenment, which is still all too often caricatured by ignorance, usually from certain postmodern and Marxist authors. A very meritable study that deserves four stars.

It's been a crime that this groundbreaking study has been out of print for so long (for examples I refer to Jacob's introduction to the second edition), a still greater crime is the truly ABOMINABLE edition this study got. A paperback that feels as if it is wrapped in cardboard with dirty colors on the cover; whole parts of text have fallen away leaving blank pages or blank parts of pages; the ink will smudge easily, so watch out where you place your thumbs and hands! It is truly a shame, and should be remedied immediately. This is not a copy that will survive occassional lending at a library very long...

Although I paid you extra money to have the book delivered in six days - on 17 July- the book has not yet arrived at the adress I gave you and which you have had for some time. PO Box W46, West Wollongong, NSW Australia 2500. After 36 days it has not arrived

This book is just boring boring boring! I put it away half way through it.