A NEW INTELLECTUAL HISTORY? JONATHAN ISRAEL'S ENLIGHTENMENT

This review points out the dangers of taking Jonathan Israel's volumes on the Enlightenment as a new framework for Enlightenment studies. Despite Israel's claim in Enlightenment contested to have historicized our understanding of the Enlightenment, his modus operandi is fundamentally unhistorical, and the result is a presentist interpretation with all oversimplified classification of thinkers into radical' and 'moderate' camps. The review suggests more effective wails to make a truly historicized Enlightenment present for us now, especially by devoting more attention to the literary and rhetorical Properties of Enlightenment texts.