What is called 'the age of reason' should properly be considered 'the age of feeling, sympathy and sensibility', argues Robertson. The opposition between reason and tradition, which was crucial to the Enlightenment, has been conflated with an opposition between reason and emotion, which was not. These are fairly standard points, as is highlighting the role of 'sensibility' in Enlightenment ethics, and how Francis Hutcheson, Lord Shaftesbury and David Hume variously argued that emotion, rather than reason, was, and should be, both the spur to, and the foundation for, moral behaviour. More original is Robertson’s fine-grained portrayal of how both reason and emotion were recalibrated in the Enlightenment..

There’s a certain kind of book that defies a direct approach. It arrives on the doorstep, several inches thick, dense with learning.

...the general reader can be forgiven for feeling a tad daunted. Now, however, help is at hand, in the form of The Enlightenment: The Pursuit of Happiness, 1680-1790 by Ritchie Robertson, a work that is at once readable, authoritative and wide-ranging.

... deeply impressive.

...masterly.

Two rather disconcerting realizations emerge as you read. First, one can’t help but notice how we seem to be backing away from the Enlightenment’s intellectually progressive principles in our 'modern' times. Second, with nearly 800 pages of text, the book is exhaustive, which is a euphemism for 'exhausting.' Though marketed to the general public, it seems written for scholars.

This tension, between the objectives of the historian and the advocate, runs throughout Mr. Robertson’s book, lending it both interest and partiality.

... robust.

A long, thoroughly satisfying history of an era that was not solely about reason but was 'also the age of feeling, sympathy and sensibility.'.

The so-called 'Age of Reason' also put emotion and conscience at the center of a new social ideology, according to this sweeping study of the Enlightenment.