Product Description

Long recognized as more than the writings of a dozen or so philosophes, the Enlightenment created a new secular culture populated by the literate and the affluent. Enamoured of British institutions, Continental Europeans turned to the imported masonic lodges and found in them a new forum that was constitutionally constructed and logically egalitarian. Originating in the Middle Ages, when stone-masons joined together to preserve their professional secrets and to protect their wages, the English and Scottish lodges had by the eighteenth century discarded their guild origins and become an international phenomenon that gave men and eventually some women a place to vote, speak, discuss and debate. Margaret Jacob argues that the hundreds of masonic lodges founded in eighteenth-century Europe were among the most important enclaves in which modern civil society was formed. In France, the Netherlands, Belgium, and Britain men and women freemasons sought to create a moral and social order based upon reason and virtue, and dedicated to the principles of liberty and equality. A forum where philosophers met with men of commerce, government, and the professions, the masonic lodge created new forms of self-government in microcosm, complete with constitutions and laws, elections, and representatives. This is the first comprehensive history of Enlightenment freemasonry, from the roots of the society's political philosophy and evolution in seventeenth-century England and Scotland to the French Revolution. Based on never-before-used archival sources, it will appeal to anyone interested in the birth of modernity in Europe or in the cultural milieu of the European Enlightenment.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #208322 in Books
• Published on: 1991-12-26
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 320 pages

Review
"This is one of the most outstanding contributions to the social interpretation of the Enlightenment in recent years. It should serve as a model for younger historians (it will for me) of how to go about tackling a historical problem."--William Connell, Rutgers University

"Margaret C. Jacob has now carried forward the frontiers again....The book is...a major step towards an account of masonry which satisfactorily integrates it with other sides of the eighteenth century...Professor Jacob ought to be widely read."--The English Historical Review

"What [Jacob] does do very well is to take us behind the scenes to listen to little groups of people, in one or two eighteenth-century European cities, as they lived their social and intellectual lives in the muddle of ideas, ideals, prejudices, assumptions and social aspirations that make up life as people live it. For that we can all be grateful to her."--French History

"A model of the new intellectual history. There have been many calls for a 'social history' of the Enlightenment, but few have actually achieved one, and none in such grand fashion. Jacob gets beyond the symbolism and ritual to place Freemasonry squarely within the social and political contexts of eighteenth-century Europe, and the unique breadth of her archival work gives the book a genuine comparative core. This pioneering study--bold, comprehensive, and vivid--is likely to be the standard work on the subject for years to come."--Gary Kates, Trinity University

"[Jacob's argument] is both elegant and seductive, and she makes an interesting contribution to our knowledge of the period....What she does...very well is to take us behind the scenes to listen to little groups of people, in one or two eighteenth-century European cities, as they lived their social and intellectual lives in the muddle of ideas, ideals, prejudices, assumptions and social aspirations that make up life as people live it. For this we can all be grateful to her."--TLS

"Jacob offers a very informative, innovative, useful, ambitious study."--American Historical Review

"A more timely book than Living the Enlightenment would be hard to imagine. Margaret Jacob has constructed a chain of richly documented case studies... Living the Enlightenment ... has no rival in the breadth and depth of its research and in its lucidity on the political import of its subject... Will have a salutary impact on the study of 18th century Freemasonry and on efforts to recover the social and political meaning of the Enlightenment for years to come."--Journal of Modern History

"A valuable contribution to the scholarship about the Enlightenment and Freemasonry... This study is highly recommended reading"--Journal of Social History

"A valuable contribution to the social history of the Enlightenment ... Historians of the Enlightenment owe a considerable debt of gratitude to Jacob ... A major contribution to our understanding of a seminal period."--The Historian

About the Author
Margaret C. Jacob is at New School for Social Research.

Customer Reviews

I Disagree with the Prior Review
Ms. Jacob has done a wonderful job showing how the essentially non-mystic, scientific and artistic Enlightenment was "translated" into a political movement by the 18th century Masons. It is extremely well done.

The Mason's historic opposition to the Catholic Church - and to other authoritarian and non-democratic institutions of all kinds (including "Holy" Russia, as the prior reviewer chooses to call it) - political as well as religious, is well established historic fact and, as such, was critical to the development of modern western governments' tenants of religious toleration. THAT is history and THAT is Ms. Jacob's theme. Whether you approve of the Mason's or not, she clearly presents their critical role in history.

After reading and completely enjoying the book's scholarship and perspective, I wanted to let other readers know that, in my opinion, the prior review is simply a strong pro-Catholic and anti-Masonic view of history, and is not a review of the book, which is excellent.

An Important Scholarly Contribution to Freemasonry
This work is intellectually accessible to the educated, general reader who is willing to spend the time to read her notes and follow her arguments. She directs her scholarly attention to the charges against, or boasts of, some Freemasons, that the Craft was responsible for the French and American Revolutions. She answers both sides of the controversy with a qualified "yes", hastening to show that it was the already long-standing practice (in every sense) of self-government in masonic lodges that provided a blueprint for the rise of our respective constitutional governments, based on utopian ideas about the perfectability of man and society (at least as goals to strive toward). Any educated Freemason could have told Prof. Jacob that, but it is wonderful to have such distinguished academic testimony of this fact. On the other hand, a careful scrutiny of Benjamin Franklin's travels and contacts (even in Catholic Spain!) that led to foreign support of the Revolution might push her argument more in support of the commonly held belief.

Exalting the Evil
"Living The Enlightenment" is not an appropriate title for this absurd manuscript. Certainly, we cannot experience this period of European history by perusing this horribly written book. A better title would be, "Exalting the Evil". For that is, indeed, what Margaret C. Jacob does between the covers of this work.

The book stands as, more than anything else, a panegyric to the hideous legacy of freemasonic "Enlightenment" thought and political action that led to the bloody French Revolution, was ostensibly founded on the philosophy of the regicidal 17th Century English Revolution, and carried through to the even more horrible 20th Century Bolshevik Revolution. In the Bolshevik Revolution, its leaders, Trotsky and Lenin, both harkened back to their intellectual predecessors, the Jacobins who, were, of course, children of this "Enlightenment".

What did this movement, upon which Ms. Jacob casts such lavish encomiums in this ridiculous book, represent? The Masonic lodges of 18th century Europe, as recorded by Jacob and others were places of radical politics, anti-clericalism, elitism, and unspeakable sexual perversion. This is the essence of the evil that Ms. Jacob seeks to exalt.

As to style, the writing is terrible. We are reminded in suffering through Ms. Jacob's poor excuse for prose of Denis Fahey's description of another author curiously also surnamed Jacob, whom Fahey characterized, quite accurately, as employing a "studied vagueness of expression". For illustrative purposes, we will cite a couple of examples:

On page 113 of her text, occurs the following memorable sentence,

"The message in the preface is clear enough, if somewhat disguised."

In a similar vein, on page 198, Ms. Jacob regales us with the following:

"However much the Enlightenment's endorsement of human equality was tied inexorably to literate and polite culture and deeply distrustful of "the people", it was palpably different from the rationale that justified separate and privileged estates."

Perhaps there is an esoteric meaning to such gibberish. But on the face of it, it is, like the bulk of the corpus of this text, complete and utter nonsense.

Finishing this book was a release from darkness. We have read this book, so that others will not be so encumbered. To any university professors who may be considering using this book as an adjunct to their coursework, we would urge them to consider other alternatives. This is the type of writing that drives many sincere and motivated history undergraduates into other disciplines.