Ideas: A History from Fire to Freud

Voltaire in England – Diderot and the Encyclopédie – formation of the French language – rise of reading – rise of middle-class taste – rise of periodical publishing – nature’s harmony = God’s benevolence – the soul reconceived as mind – Locke, language and psychology – ‘neurosis’ – new ideas about the self – Edinburgh – Hume – Ferguson, Robert Adam and civil society – the idea of the economy – Colbert – Petty – cameralistics – Adam Smith – The Wealth of Nations – commercial society – Malthus – Bentham – Linnaeus – Rousseau – Montesquieu – the idea of progress – ancients v. moderns – Condorcet – Godwin – Kant – Hegel – Saint-Simon – Comte

27. The Idea of the Factory and Its Consequences

Hard Times – the first Derbyshire factories – spinning machines – child labour – the steam engine – Watt and Boulton – iron technology – the agricultural revolution – changes in organisation – cotton industry transformed – the factory city and the change in the experience of work – gap between rich and poor – advances in electricity – advances in chemistry – oxygen – Dalton’s atomic theory – crystallography – Lavoisier – Warrington Academy and the Lunar Society of Birmingham – Priestley and Wedgwood – the making of the working class – Smith, Ricardo, Malthus and Bentham – Robert Owen – the Hungry Forties – Engels – Marx – Capital – alienation – the Great Divergence – the hundred years peace

28. The Invention of America

American treasure and the rise of capitalism – the great frontier – Philadelphia, America’s capital of the mind – the first artists, the first doctors, the first philosophers in America – Franklin – Rush – ‘the American Homer’ – Paine – Jefferson – Notes on Virginia – America compared with Europe – the Indian problem – democracy – the federal constitution – the role of law – law as America’s first literature – federalism – de Tocqueville visits America

PART FIVE: VICO TO FREUD

Parallel Truths: The Modern Incoherence

29. The Oriental Renaissance