Beginning his story in the latter half of the seventeenth century, while also lo
oking back to the Renaissance and forward to the future, Hazard traces the proce
ss by which new developments
in the sciences, arts, philosophy, and philology c
ame to undermine the stable foundations of the classical world, with its commitm
ent to tradition, stability, proportion, and settled usage. Hazard shows how tra
velers tales and archaeological investigation widened European awareness and acc
eptance of cultural difference; how the radical rationalism of Spinoza and Richa
rd Simon s new historical exegesis of the Bible called into question the reveale
d truths of religion; how the Huguenot Pierre Bayle s critical dictionary of ide
as paved the way for Voltaire and the Enlightenment, even as the empiricism of L
ocke encouraged a new attention to sensory experience that led to Rousseau and r
omanticism.
