edit SideBar Books

Cosmopolis — The Hidden Agenda of Modernity
Stephen Toulmin

Pi

Contents

Preface . ix

Prologue — Backing into the Millenium . 1

Chapter One — What is the Problem About Modernity? . 5

   Dating the Start of Modernity
   The Standard Account and Its Defects
   The Modernity of the Renaissance
   Retreat from the Renaissance
   From Humanists to Rationalists

Chapter Two — The 17th Century Counter-Renaissance . 45

   Henry of Navarre and the Crisis of Belief
   1610-1611: Young René and the Henriade
   1610-1611: John Donne Grieves for Cosmopolis
   1640-1650: The Politics of Certainty
   The First Step Back from Rationalism

Chapter Three — The Modern World View . 89

   Fashioning the New "Europe of Nations"
   1660-1720 Leibniz Discovers Ecuminism
   1660-1720 Newton and the New Cosmopolis
   1720-1780 The Subtext of Modernity
   The Second Step Back from Rationalism

Chapter Four — The Far Side of Modernity . 139

   The High Tide of Sovereign Nationhood
   1750-1914: Dismantling the Scaffolding
   1920-1960: Re-renaissance Deferred
   1965-1975: Humanism Reinvented
   The Twin Trajectories of Modernity

Chapter Five — The Way Ahead . 175

   The Myth of the Clean Slate
   Humanizing Modernity
   The Recovery of Practical Philosophy
   From Leviathan to Lilliput
   The Rational and the Reasonable

Epilogue — Facing the Future Again . 203