The Legacy of the Enlightenment : Rights, Constitutions, Equality

Recent historiography often portrays the Enlightenment as the intellectual source of modern evils and projects contemporary biases on Enlightenment thinkers. Discussions on the legacy of the Enlightenment have ended up being subsumed within the study and exploration of Western imperialism, colonial domination, capitalism, inequalities, and racism. For its part, this volume aims to offer an alternative perspective on the legacy of the Enlightenment. It does so by shedding light on the new language of rights, constitutionalism, and equality shaped by the Enlightenment and by exploring its legacies, transformations, and reinterpretations in the nineteenth century. The Enlightenment promoted a cultural revolution and a new humanism associated with the invention of the language of the “rights of man” and the idea of the equality of humanity. The essays collected in this volume retrace some aspects of the intellectual legacy of this revolution by looking at how Enlightenment authors and texts influenced debates on the safeguarding of individual rights, written constitutionalism, inequalities and the remnants of feudalism, ideas of development, the equality of men and women, European colonialism, and the oppression of indigenous people. The volume also explores the impact of the ideas of rights and humanity brought on by the Enlightenment by looking at the new ethical and social role acquired by art and music.