Enemies of the Enlightenment

Critics have long treated the most important intellectual movement of modern history--the Enlightenment--as if it took shape in the absence of opposition. In this groundbreaking new study Darrin McMahon demonstrates that on the contrary contemporary resistance to the Enlightenment was a major cultural force shaping and defining the Enlightenment itself from the moment of inception while giving rise to an entirely new ideological phenomenon-what we have come to think of as the Right. McMahon skillfully examines the Counter-Enlightenment showing that it was an extensive international and thoroughly modern affair.