The Shape of the New: Four Big Ideas and How They Made the Modern World

by Scott L. Montgomery, Daniel Chirot

Overview

How four revolutionary ideas from the Enlightenment shaped today's world

This panoramic book tells the story of how revolutionary ideas from the Enlightenment about freedom, equality, evolution, and democracy have reverberated through modern history and shaped the world as we know it today.

A testament to the enduring power of ideas, The Shape of the New offers unforgettable portraits of Adam Smith, Thomas Jefferson, Alexander Hamilton, Charles Darwin, and Karl Marx—heirs of the Enlightenment who embodied its highest ideals about progress—and shows how their thoughts, over time and in the hands of their followers and opponents, transformed the very nature of our beliefs, institutions, economies, and politics. Yet these ideas also hold contradictions. They have been used in the service of brutal systems such as slavery and colonialism, been appropriated and twisted by monsters like Stalin and Hitler, and provoked reactions against the Enlightenment's legacy by Islamic Salafists and the Christian Religious Right.

The Shape of the New argues that it is impossible to understand the ideological and political conflicts of our own time without familiarizing ourselves with the history and internal tensions of these world-changing ideas. With passion and conviction, it exhorts us to recognize the central importance of these ideas as historical forces and pillars of the Western humanistic tradition. It makes the case that to read the works of the great thinkers is to gain invaluable insights into the ideas that have shaped how we think and what we believe.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780691150642
Publisher:	Princeton University Press
Publication date:	05/26/2015
Pages:	512
Product dimensions:	6.20(w) x 9.40(h) x 1.70(d)

About the Author

Scott L. Montgomery is an affiliate faculty member in the Henry M. Jackson School of International Studies at the University of Washington. Daniel Chirot is professor of Russian and Eurasian studies at the University of Washington.

Table of Contents

Preface to the Paperback Edition ix

Preface xi

Acknowledgments xiii

Introduction: Ideas as Historical Forces 1

PART I: INVENTORS OF MODERNITY AND WHAT BECAME OF THEIR IDEAS 17

1 Adam Smith: The Science of Man, Morality, and Money 19

2 Karl Marx: The Tragic Consequences of a Brilliant Theory 81

3 Charles Darwin: Struggle and Selection in the Realm of Ideas 148

4 Making Democracy: The Jefferson-Hamilton Debates 215

PART II: SECULAR AND RELIGIOUS REACTIONS AGAINST ENLIGHTENMENT 279

5 Counter-Enlightenment: From Antimodernism to Fascism 281

6 Christian Fundamentalism: The Politics of God in America 336

7 Purifying Islam: The Muslim Reaction against the Western Enlightenment 379

Conclusion: The Power of Ideas and the Importance of the Humanities 418

Bibliography 439

Index 473

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

"This is a wonderful book. Montgomery and Chirot combine double-barreled scholarship, lucid prose, and considerable wisdom to offer us a fascinating excursion into the history of ideas. For anyone who wants to understand today's emerging conflicts—and what it will take for Enlightenment liberalism again to prevail—The Shape of the New is essential reading."—Jeffrey Gedmin, Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service, Georgetown University

"The Shape of the New is an ambitious book and a joy to read. The scholarship is brilliant. In contextualizing the great ideas of modern history, Montgomery and Chirot provide a holistic framework with which to understand the processes of social change and ideological conflict."—Paul Froese, coauthor of America's Four Gods: What We Say about God—and What That Says about Us

"This fantastic book offers an impressively learned and evenhanded treatment of the Enlightenment's key ideas and the reactions to them over the past two centuries. I guarantee that anyone who reads it will be a lot smarter, more cultured, and a far more intellectually interesting dinner companion."—Zoltan Barany, author of The Soldier and the Changing State: Building Democratic Armies in Africa, Asia, Europe, and the Americas

"This important book demonstrates the power of Enlightenment ideas, how they have shaped the world we live in, and how they have created systems of both action and reaction through time. It should be widely read by students, educators, and others who think that there is no need to teach classical thinkers or that their era is over."—Karen Barkey, author of Empire of Difference: The Ottomans in Comparative Perspective

Editorial Reviews

[Montgomery and Chirot] have to cover an immense range of material, from economics to evolution to Islamic fundamentalism. But they do so comprehensively, intelligently and with nuance and judiciousness. I was struck again and again by the extraordinary breadth, erudition and lucidity of this book…[Montgomery and Chirot] provide a rich and balanced account that describes the permissive environment in which certain notions flourish—and others founder.

The New York Times Book Review - Fareed Zakaria

04/27/2015
University of Washington professors Montgomery (international studies) and Chirot (Russian and Eurasian studies) look at three thinkers and ideas that represent “Enlightenment liberalism”: Adam Smith’s “invisible hand”; Karl Marx’s “dialectical materialism”; and Charles Darwin’s “natural selection.” The fourth idea is presented as an ongoing debate, which originated with Alexander Hamilton and Thomas Jefferson, on the virtues of centralized versus decentralized government. After a clear presentation of these ideas, their evolution, and distortions, the authors turn to “secular and religious reactions against the Enlightenment.” The prominent movements of anti-modernism include Christian and Islamic fundamentalism as well as fascism, with its “admiration of violence and direct action,” focus on “the mythic origins of the nation,” and “worship of a heroic national leader.” The strongest chapter addresses Christian fundamentalism in relation to contemporary American politics. The authors also offer a clear exposition of the Islamic fundamentalist thinker Sayyid Qutb, which is particularly helpful in understanding the intellectual roots of al-Qaeda and ISIS. The book sometimes covers too much too quickly, but it is a solid, idea-rich examination of how formative 18th- and 19th-century ideas germinated into the belief systems that have governed the 20th and 21st centuries. (June)

Publishers Weekly

One of The New York Times 100 Notable Books of 2015

One of Choice's Outstanding Academic Titles for 2016

One of Bloomberg Businessweek’s Best Books of 2015, chosen by Diana Farrell

From the Publisher

"Montgomery and Chirot offer a sweeping defense of intellectual liberalism and an examination of its indelible influence on the modern world. . . . Thoughtful, highly readable, and provocative."

Choice

2015-04-01
A broad survey of the ideas that have driven modern history since the 19th century—and on account of which millions of lives have been changed for good or ill. According to Montgomery (Does Science Need a Global Language?: English and the Future of Research, 2013, etc.) and Chirot (Contentious Identities: Ethnic, Religious and National Conflicts in Today's World, 2011, etc.), both professors at the University of Washington, these ideas are fourfold, resting in the single persons of Adam Smith, Karl Marx, and Charles Darwin, and then in the struggle between Thomas Jefferson and Alexander Hamilton over the nature of the new republic that would grow from certain parallel and antecedent ideas. The first two are economic in nature, the third biological, and the fourth political. But all are political, of course, and the authors nicely move to depersonified history by examining deeper values: the idea embodied by Smith, for instance, that "individuals should have the freedom to make all essential decisions affecting their material and moral lives." The authors' argument is fluent and mainly unobjectionable; as intellectual historians, it is their bread and butter to maintain that ideas matter, and the ideas they enumerate have inarguably "structured the modern world." Their later elaborations sometimes seem a stretch, if by modern world one means modern ideas, which would discount some of their cases. The book is academic in outlook and attitude and sometimes in execution. The prose is accessible, though, and the narrative is well-written, made more interesting by the authors' willingness to tangle with tough constituencies and mount tough arguments—against, say, the narrowness of religious fundamentalists or the aridity of "postmodern pedagogy and scholarship," with their lamentable habit of reducing the love of and insistence on reason as a species of evil. A pleasure for students of modern history, especially useful for those seeking an introduction to the broad field of intellectual history. Barzun, Berlin, and Needham would likely argue at points, but this fits squarely in their tradition.

Kirkus Reviews