Key Thinkers of the English, Scottish and American Enlightenments - by Sabrina P Ramet & Torbjørn L Knutsen (Hardcover)

Book Synopsis

This book summarizes and explains the way in which political thinkers in England, Scotland, and North America reshaped Western thinking about government and citizens. Although the ideas of the Anglo-American Enlightenment can be traced back, in embryo, to the Italian Renaissance and the Protestant Reformation, it was responses to wars - the Thirty Years' War (1618-1648) and the English Civil War (1642-1651) which were fought above all over religion - that defined it. Algernon Sidney demanded an end to royal absolutism. John Locke called for a government based on religious toleration. Benedictus de Spinoza, Samuel von Pufendorf and others elaborated on the ideas that society was composed of sovereign individuals endowed with reason and rights. Building on the works of these thinkers, Scottish philosophers including David Hume and Adam Smith, and American revolutionaries including Thomas Jefferson and James Madison advanced arguments defending human reason, individual freedom, including religious freedom, and democracy.

From the Back Cover

"Sabrina P. Ramet and Torbjørn L. Knutsen, previously co-authors of German Moral and Political Philosophy, have returned with a second collaborative volume, this time examining the Anglo-American Enlightenment. Their new book is succinct, insightful, and easy to read. The book is a valuable addition to academic literature."

-- Vladimir Đorđevic, Associate Professor, Mendel University, Czechia

"Key Thinkers of the English, Scottish and American Enlightenments will be a must-have item for me and my students. The authors have shown that not only Spinoza, Locke, Hume, Jefferson, Madison, Paine, and Kant but also Algernon Sidney, Francis Hutcheson, Adam Smith, and Mary Wollstonecraft are our contemporaries, thanks to whom we better understand ourselves and the world we live in."

--Stanislaw Obirek, Professor of Humanities, University of Warsaw, Poland.

"What is Enlightenment? Like the metaphor of vision presupposed by the question, the typical short answer - "reason, liberty, rights" - has been formative for the Western tradition since the end of the seventeenth century. In this learned book, the authors resist any shorthand interpretation. They historicise the narrative and trace how Enlightenment thinkers across the Atlantic articulated radical ideas of social change which continue to inspire and vex us 350 years on."

-- Silviya Lechner, Chair of the Department of Political Science, Anglo-American University in Prague, and Visiting Senior Research Fellow, King's College London.

This book analyses the Anglo-American Enlightenment, showing how the ideas developed first by John Locke and Algernon Sidney spread to the New World and influenced and were reflected in the thinking of James Madison and Thomas Jefferson, among others.

Sabrina Ramet is Professor Emerita at The Norwegian University of Science & Technology, Norway.

Torbjorn Lindstrom Knutsen is Professor Emeritus at The Norwegian University of Science & Technology, Norway.

About the Author

Sabrina P. Ramet is a Professor Emerita at the Norwegian University of Science & Technology (NTNU). She earned her Ph.D. in Political Science at UCLA in 1981. She is the author of 16 scholarly monographs, including Alternatives to Democracy in Twentieth-Century Europe: Collectivist Visions of Modernity (Central European University Press, 2019) and East Central Europe and Communism: Politics, Culture, and Society, 1943-1991 (Routledge, 2023), and co-author (with Lavinia Stan) of East Central Europe since 1989: Politics, Culture, and Society (Routledge, in production). She is also the editor or co-editor of 40 books, including Central and Southeast European Politics since 1989, 2nd ed. (Cambridge University Press, 2019). Her previous work in political philosophy includes articles on Martin Heidegger (in Religion Compass, Vol. 6, no. 9, 2012), Jean Bodin (in Politics and Religion / Politikologija religije, Vol. XIII, Issue 1, 2019), and Benedictus de Spinoza (in Teorija in praksa, Vol. 60, no. 2, 2023). She and Torbjørn Knutsen are co-authors of German Moral and Political Philosophy, 1785-1908: A concise introduction (New Academia Publishing, 2023).

Torbjørn L. Knutsen is a Professor Emeritus at the Norwegian University of Science & Technology (NTNU) and at the Norwegian Air Force Academy. He earned his Ph.D. in Political Science at the University of Denver in 1986. His books include A History of International Relations Theory, 3rd ed. (University of Manchester Press, 2016), Norsk utenrikspolitisk idéhistorie 1890-1940, co-authored with Halvard Leira and Iver B. Neumann (Universitetsforlaget, 2016), Ways of Knowing: Competing Methodologies in Social and Political Research, 3rd ed., co-authored with Jonathon W. Moses (Palgrave Macmillan, 2019), Tenke og skrive i samfunnsvitenskapene, co-authored with Tormod Heier

(Fagbokforlaget, 2021), German Moral and Political Philosophy, 1785-1908: A concise introduction, co-authored with Sabrina P. Ramet (New Academia Publishing, 2023), and The Rise and Fall of Terrorism (Universitetsforlaget, 2024). His previous work in political philosophy includes an article on Jean-Jacques Rousseau (in Journal of Peace Research, Vol. 31, no. 3, 1994) and a chapter on Niccolò Machiavelli (in Politisk filosofi: Fra Platon til Hannah Arendt (Pax Forlag, 2013).