The enlightenment needs rescuing, or so thinks Jonathan Israel, the pre-eminent historian of 17th-century Holland. In 2001 he pu

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问题     The enlightenment needs rescuing, or so thinks Jonathan Israel, the pre-eminent historian of 17th-century Holland. In 2001 he published Radical Enlightenment. He now offers a second Volume with a third to come. (46)The three volumes will be the first comprehensive history of the Enlightenment for decades—and Mr. Israel’s groundbreaking interpretation looks set to establish itself as the one to beat.
    The period was once thought of as a glorious chapter in the history of mankind, a time when the forces of light (science, progress and tolerance) triumphed over the forces of darkness (superstition and prejudice). Today, the Enlightenment tends to be dismissed. (47)Post-modernists attack it for being biased, self-deceived and ultimately responsible for the worst in Western civilization. Post-colonialists accuse it of being Eurocentric, an apology for imperialism. Nationalist historians reject the idea of a coherent universal movement, preferring to talk about the English, French, even Icelandic Enlightenments.
    Mr. Israel has set himself the task oil repelling these critics and re-establishing the period as the defining episode in the liberation of man. His arguments are convincing. He contends that there were two Enlightenments, one Radical, and the other Moderate. The Radicals, inspired by Spinoza, were materialists, atheists and equalities. (48)The Moderates, who followed Locke and Newton, were conservative and more at home than the Radicals in the hierarchical and deeply religious world of 18th-century Europe. They advocated only a partial Enlightenment.
    In Mr. Israel’s opinion, the Radicals offered the only true Enlightenment, giving us democracy, equality, individual liberty and secular morality. The Moderates, on the other hand, have left an ambiguous and, in the end, harmful legacy. While promoting tolerance, they remained uncomfortable with the idea of universal equality. While advancing reason, they failed to divorce morality from religion and tried to rationalize faith. (49)Mr. Israel argues that for as long as historians treat the two wings of the Enlightenment as a single movement, they have misunderstood the phenomenon. Worst still, they supply today’s critics with the evidence they need to blacken the movement.
    This re-evaluation makes for an unfamiliar picture of the Enlightenment and its torchbearers. According to Mr. Israel, "enlightened values" were born not in England but in Holland, and he re-casts men such as Locke, Voltaire and even Hume, once thought of as champions of the party of light, as apologists for colonialism and enemies of equality. In addition, Mr. Israel would like his book to be studied beyond academia. In an ideal world everyone would be reading it. (50)His stupendous research and grasp of the sources are such that few will contest his core argument that the Enlightenment was a coherent, Europe-wide phenomenon, intellectual in origin, which represented a profound shift in the way that men thought about themselves and the world around them.


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答案作者为此做了大量的研究,掌握了充足的资料,致使无人能质疑他的核心论点,即启蒙运动是一场欧洲范围内的统一运动,有着深邃的思想底蕴并且可以认为是人类在思考自身价值及其周围世界道路上的一次深刻转变。

解析 stupendous,coherent的正确理解;intellectual in origin的意译;从句的翻译顺序。句子较长,结构较复杂:that few will contest his core argument是that引导的宾语从句;that the Enlightenment was a coherent…the world around them是that引导的同位语从句,修饰argument;在这个同位语从句中which represented a profound shift in the way that men thought about themselves and the world around them是which引导的非限制性定语从句,修饰Enlightenment。此句话的主干为his research and source are that。了解了句子的结构,翻译就简单了很多。stupendous原意为"极大的,极感人的,极好的",这里译成"大量的";coherent原意为"一致的,符合的,连贯的",这里译成"统一的",which引导的非限制性定语从句按照分句翻译,以免句子臃肿;origin原意是"起源,开端,血统",intellectual in origin意译为"深邃的思想底蕴"。
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