Books by Dan Edelstein

What was the Enlightenment? Seeking to recover where, when, and how the concept of 'the Enlightenment' first emerged, this title departs from genealogies that trace it back to political and philosophical developments in England and the Dutch Republic.

Argues that the revolutionaries of eighteenth-century France used the natural right concept of the 'enemy of the human race' - an individual who has transgressed the laws of nature and must be executed without judicial formalities - to authorize three-quarters of the deaths during the Terror.