This is the second volume of FriedellÂ’s monumental A Cultural History of the Modern Age. A key figure in the flowering of Viennese culture between the two world wars, this three volume work is considered his masterpiece. The centuries covered in this second volume mark the victory of the scientific mind: in nature-research, language-research, politics, economics, war, even morality, poetry, and religion. All systems of thought produced in this century, either begin with the scientific outlook as their foundation or regard it as their highest and final goal. Friedell claims three main streams pervade the eighteenth century: Enlightenment, Revolution, and Classicism. In ordinary use, by "Enlightenment" we mean an extreme rationalistic tendency of which preliminary stages were noted in the seventeenth century. The term "Classicism", is well understood. Under the term "Revolution" Friedell includes all movements directed against what has been dominant and traditional. The aims of such movements were remodeling the state and society, banning all esthetic canons, and dethronement of reason by sentiment, all in the name of the "Return to Nature." The Enlightenment tendency might be seen as laying the ground for an age of revolution. This second volume continues FriedellÂ’s dramatic history of the driving forces of the twentieth century.

שם הספר
A Cultural History of the Modern Age: Renaissance and Reformation (Volume 1)