"In 1932, Cassirer's warning against dismissing Enlightenment thought as shallow went tragically unheard, but it is as timely as ever. His classic study of Enlightenment philosophy has not been surpassed. In portraying Enlightenment philosophy as a process, not a doctrine, Cassirer not only undermines all those caricatures of the Enlightenment that still flourish within and without the academy; he also shows the force it can have for renewing philosophy itself."--Susan Neiman, author of Moral Clarity

"Ernst Cassirer's The Philosophy of the Enlightenment is not only a brilliantly original work of history, it is itself a work of philosophy by one of the twentieth century's most interesting thinkers. Despite all that has been written on the Enlightenment since it first appeared in 1932, it remains unsurpassed."--Anthony Pagden, University of California, Los Angeles

"This fine new re-edition of Ernst Cassirer's The Philosophy of the Enlightenment gives us two classics in one: Cassirer's own seminal statement of the evolution of eighteenth-century philosophy, and a concise and moving foreword by an intellectual sympathizer, Peter Gay, amongst the greatest historians of our time. Together the two men did more than virtually any other to define the Enlightenment for the twentieth century."--Darrin M. McMahon, Florida State University