The Enlightenment: The Pursuit of Happiness, 1680–1790 by Ritchie Robertson (Review)

Reviewed by Margherita Bovo

London: Penguin Books Ltd., 2022 (originally published 2020)
1,008 pp., $18.99

The Enlightenment was a cultural current almost everyone has heard about—yet today it is not a major concern for many scholars nor for people interested in history and philosophy. Misleading stereotypes about thinkers of this movement include that they advanced a cynical versio…