Pragmatic Enlightenment

Dennis C. Rasmussen is Assistant Professor of Political Science at Tufts University, Massachusetts. He is the author of The Problems and Promise of Commercial Society: Adam Smith's Response to Rousseau (2008), which received an honorable mention for the Delba Winthrop Award for Excellence in Political Science.

• Introduction; Part I. Hegemonic Universalism?: 1. Morality in context; 2. Pragmatic liberalism; Part II. Blind Faith in Reason?: 3. The age of the limits of reason; 4. The perils of political rationalism; Part III. Atomistic Individualism?: 5. The social and encumbered self; 6. Negative liberty for a positive community; Conclusion.

“Analyzed through the lenses of Hume, Smith, Montesquieu, and Voltaire, Rasmussen’s ‘pragmatic Enlightenment’ brings a welcome contribution to the recent debates on radical and moderate Enlightenment; it also invites us to reconsider the nature of liberalism and the points made by some of its critics. A thorough and superbly researched work, philosophically sensitive to the complex legacy of the Enlightenment and written with clarity and conviction, this book will be of great interest to political theorists, historians, sociologists, and philosophers.” -- Dr. Aurelian Craiutu, Professor of Political Science, Indiana University, Bloomington