The Legacy of the Enlightenment: Rights, Constitutions, Equality

Recent historiography often portrays the Enlightenment as the intellectual source of modern evils and projects contemporary biases on Enlightenment thinkers. Discussions on the legacy of the Enlightenment have ended up being subsumed within the study and exploration of Western imperialism, colonial domination, capitalism, inequalities, and racism. For its part, this volume aims to offer an alternative perspective on the legacy of the Enlightenment. It does so by shedding light on the new language of rights, constitutionalism, and equality shaped by the Enlightenment and by exploring its legacies, transformations, and reinterpretations in the nineteenth century.