Critique and Crisis established Reinhart Koselleck's reputation as the most important German intellectual historian of the postwar period. This first English translation of Koselleck's tour de force demonstrates a chronological breadth, a philosophical depth, and an originality which are hardly equalled in any scholarly domain. It is a history of the Enlightenment in miniature, fundamental to our understanding of that period and its consequences.Like Tocqueville, Koselleck views Enlightenment intellectuals as an uprooted, unrealistic group of onlookers who sowed the seeds of the modern political tensions that first flowered in the French Revolution. He argues that it was the split that developed between state and society during the Enlightenment that fostered the emergence of this intellectual elite divorced from the realities of politics.Koselleck describes how this disjunction between political authority proper and its subjects led to private spheres that later became centers of moral authority and, eventually, models for political society that took little or no notice of the constraints under which politicians must inevitably work. In this way progressive bourgeois philosophy, which seemed to offer the promise of a unified and peaceful world, in fact produced just the opposite.The book provides a wealth of examples drawn from all of Europe to illustrate the still relevant message that we evade the constraints and the necessities of the political realm at our own risk.Reinhart Koselleck is Professor of the Theory of History at the University of Bielefeld and author of Futures Past: On the Semantics of Historical Time. Critique and Crisis is included in the series Studies in Contemporary German Social Thought, edited by Thomas McCarthy.

诚如克罗齐所告诫的，历史和历史学家无法免于时代的印记。本书即以克罗奇的教诲为戒，其主旨在反应海内外持续不歇的关于1919年“五四运动”意义的讨论。作者最终领悟到的“五四运动”的意义是：只要专制、官僚和教条主义的思想仍然盘踞在民众的脑袋中，启蒙运动必将在中国继续发展下去，无论路途是多么的曲折，代价是多么的高昂。

大家小书，漫谈欧洲启蒙精神，探索欧洲公民社会，反思东西文化差异。 启蒙主义者总是在自我批判，在公民社会中起了很大作用。就此意义而言，启蒙永远没有结束。 我经过几十年的反复思考，只弄明白一个简而明的道理：我挚爱的祖国多么需要一种彻底的启蒙精神。——陈乐民 当一切变得费解时，人们往往借助恐怖和暴力重新建立一种制度，这当然是与启蒙和公民社会的原则背道而驰的。当他们无法理解社会时，全社会都是敌人。——史傅德 这本书在欧洲的历史语境和在中国当下现实这双重语境下讨论欧洲启蒙精神和公民社会，使得本书既充满着历史的视野，又带有思想的透视和现实的观照，这对于正在转型的中国具有一种昭示性意义。阅读这本书让人总是觉得思想扑面而来，犹如一个睿智的长者在叙述一段逝去的历史，在凝练流畅的言说中包含着对人深切关怀的生命跃动，充满了智慧的哲理与思想的启迪。——李宏图 本书再版了陈乐民先生晚年的两本学术随笔《启蒙札记》与《对话欧洲——公民社会与启蒙精神》（与欧洲著名历史学者史傅德教授的对话录）。作为国际政治和欧洲学家，在西方文明史中，作者特别关注启蒙精神怎样在西欧以及北美萌芽、生长和铺开，而了解启蒙精神有助于理解欧洲公民社会的历史进程，反思中国的启蒙。同样，如果没有中国历史作参照，有些欧洲历史的特性便容易忽略。在对谈中，两位学者的批判与反思贯穿了欧洲内战、市场经济、宗教改革、民族主义、教育、革命、理性、传统、政党、欧盟建设等诸多话题，时时激起对中西文化差异的思考。本书语言平易近人，是了解欧洲公民社会与启蒙进程的通识读本，从中可以看到老一辈学者对历史与现实的无尽思索与追问。