We can't find the internet
Attempting to reconnect
Something went wrong!
Hang in there while we get back on track
£30.97
Princeton University Press Enlightenment against Empire
Price data updated today
Price History & Forecast
Last 91 days • 91 data points
Price Distribution
Price distribution over 91 days • 4 price levels
Current Price
Price Analysis
Most common price: £26 (41 days, 45.1%)
Price range: £26 - £32
Price levels: 4 different prices over 91 days
Description
In the late eighteenth century, an array of European political thinkers attacked the very foundations of imperialism, arguing passionately that empire-building was not only unworkable, costly, and dangerous, but manifestly unjust. Enlightenment against Empire is the first book devoted to the anti-imperialist political philosophies of an age often regarded as affirming imperial ambitions. Sankar Muthu argues that thinkers such as Denis Diderot, Immanuel Kant, and Johann Gottfried Herder developed an understanding of humans as inherently cultural agents and therefore necessarily diverse. These thinkers rejected the conception of a culture-free "natural man." They held that moral judgments of superiority or inferiority could be made neither about entire peoples nor about many distinctive cultural institutions and practices. Muthu shows how such arguments enabled the era's anti-imperialists to defend the freedom of non-European peoples to order their own societies. In contrast to those who praise "the Enlightenment" as the triumph of a universal morality and critics who view it as an imperializing ideology that denigrated cultural pluralism, Muthu argues instead that eighteenth-century political thought included multiple Enlightenments. He reveals a distinctive and underappreciated strand of Enlightenment thinking that interweaves commitments to universal moral principles and incommensurable ways of life, and that links the concept of a shared human nature with the idea that humans are fundamentally diverse. Such an intellectual temperament, Muthu contends, can broaden our own perspectives about international justice and the relationship between human unity and diversity.
Product Specifications
- Format
- paperback
- ASIN
- 0691115176
- Category
- Books > Subjects > History
- Domain
- Amazon UK
- Release Date
- 31 August 2003
- Listed Since
- 13 February 2007
Barcode
No barcode data available
Similar Products You Might Like
92% match
The Postcolonial Enlightenment: Eighteenth-Century Colonialism And Postcolonial Theory
Oxford University Press
£69.25
23 Feb 2026
91% match
Thinking about the Enlightenment: Modernity and its Ramifications
Routledge
£49.99
07 Mar 2026
91% match
Routledge - What is Enlightenment? (Kant's Questions) Book
Routledge
£128.72
21 Apr 2026
91% match
Ideas for the Philosophy of the History of Mankind
Princeton University Press
£47.77
20 Apr 2026
91% match
Thinking about the Enlightenment: Modernity and its Ramifications
Routledge
£127.67
06 Jan 2026
91% match
Towards the Dignity of Difference?: Neither 'End of History' nor 'Clash of Civilizations' (Ethics and Global Politics)
Routledge
£117.88
19 Dec 2025
91% match
The Politics of Humanity: Justice and Power
MACMILLAN
£84.95
09 Mar 2026
91% match
Critics of Enlightenment Rationalism (Palgrave Studies in Classical Liberalism)
MACMILLAN
£77.50
24 Feb 2026
90% match
Kant on Mind, Action, and Ethics
Oxford University Press
£88.73
21 Feb 2026
90% match
Scepticism in the Eighteenth Century: Enlightenment, Lumières, Aufklärung: 210 (International Archives of the History of Ideas Archives internationales d'histoire des idées, 210)
Springer
£78.83
08 Mar 2026
90% match
What Does it Mean to be an Empiricist?: Empiricisms in Eighteenth Century Sciences: 331 (Boston Studies in the Philosophy and History of Science, 331)
Springer
£91.82
17 Apr 2026
90% match
What Does it Mean to be an Empiricist?: Empiricisms in Eighteenth Century Sciences: 331 (Boston Studies in the Philosophy and History of Science, 331)
Springer
£91.63
25 Feb 2026
90% match
Domesticating Human Rights: A Reappraisal of their Cultural-Political Critiques and their Imperialistic Use: 4 (Philosophy and Politics - Critical Explorations, 4)
Springer
£75.05
08 Mar 2026
90% match
Routledge - The Imbecile's Guide to Public Philosophy Book
Routledge
£133.30
18 Apr 2026
90% match
The Religious Enlightenment: Protestants, Jews, and Catholics from London to Vienna: 64 (Jews, Christians, and Muslims from the Ancient to the Modern World)
Princeton University Press
£33.05
07 Mar 2026
90% match
Enlightenment Orientalism – Resisting the Rise of the Novel
University of Chicago Press
£79.00
16 Feb 2026
90% match
Let There Be Enlightenment – The Religious and Mystical Sources of Rationality
Johns Hopkins University Press
£40.50
21 Feb 2026
90% match
Infinity in Early Modern Philosophy: 76 (The New Synthese Historical Library, 76)
Springer
£90.72
09 Mar 2026
90% match
Infinity in Early Modern Philosophy: 76 (The New Synthese Historical Library, 76)
Springer
£68.27
25 Feb 2026
90% match
Natural Law and Toleration in the Early Enlightenment: Vol 186 (Proceedings of the British Academy)
Oxford University Press
£53.89
08 Mar 2026
90% match
The Atlantic Enlightenment (Ashgate Series in Nineteenth-Century Transatlantic Studies)
Routledge
£140.40
12 Jan 2026
90% match
The Specter of Skepticism in the Age of Enlightenment
Johns Hopkins University Press
£43.77
20 Feb 2026
90% match
Conservatism: An Anthology of Social and Political Thought from David Hume to the Present
Princeton University Press
£30.67
20 Feb 2026
90% match
The World of the Enlightenment (Routledge Studies in Renaissance and Early Modern Worlds of Knowledge)
£136.16
11 Jan 2026