Anthony Gottlieb - The Dream Of Enlightenment (Penguin, 2016) ***

Despite having studied philosophy every year at university, few details remain about the learnings of the great philosophers apart from some big picture ideas, so it's good to go back to many of the philosophers who largely shaped the world we live in today. If people sometimes wonder about the impact of philosophy on real life, I can only recommend this book, if only because it shows the gigantic divide between general common sense today, and the clear lack of knowledge and even rationality among thinkers in the 18th Century, let alone if compared to the less educated people with power.

Gottlieb starts with Descartes, and his narrow evidence-less thinking about the world, starting with his own personal ego as the basis to understand the world. The comes Hobbes, the Monster of Malmesbury, whose Leviathan designed the ideal state, that in today's view appears very much to be a dictatorship, even if Hobbes believes in the righteousness of the sole leader to whom everybody should report. Then he moves on to Spinoza, the Dutch ex-communicated jew who questioned everything and defined concepts. What people think is their own private affair, he says, and the role of the state should be limited to create a secure place in which individuals can enjoy their liberty, and no church should be given any legal powers.

Then comes the great John Locke, whose concept of the tabula rasa, the fact that humans are born without any preconceived knowledge and notions, shocked the world even more. Then comes Leibniz with his "best of all possible worlds", who at the same time tried to make a synthesis of all things, using calculus and evidence. He rejected the idea even suggested by Newton that God could intervene in things and course-correct trajectories of planets to make them match the math. From Hume we move to the French philosophers and Voltaire, who gave broader appeal to the ideas of the enlightenment, and not hesitating to criticise each other's thoughts and ideas. Good examples are Voltaire's attacks on Leibniz and Rousseau.

When you learn about these philosophers when you're eighteen or nineteen, you are baffled by their knowledge and the subtletly and nuance of their thinking. When you read them today, some of their concepts are risible and totally alien for most educated people living today. Nobody would take Descartes or Hobbes seriously, but then again, they paved the way to get us where we are today.

We really have to appreciate how our views of the world has changed. Unfortunately, the enlightenment has still not reached some so-called civilised countries.

This book is easy to read, with interesting biographical and historical anecdotes that help us frame where some of the ideas came from, and written with deep interest and appreciation.

An easy book to recommend to readers interested in one of the greatest moments in western philosophy.