ABSTRACT
The half-century of Europe's intellectual history between 1780 and 1830 might at first glance appear to have been for the most part an interval of transition. On the one hand, the critical, rationalistic motifs of Enlightenment thought had been, if not obliterated, at least seriously challenged by the long revolutionary and military crisis. On the other hand, during the period of restoration and reassessment that began with Napoleon's overthrow a new world of ideas dominated by great systematizers - Comte, Marx, Darwin - could scarcely have been expected to emerge at once, fully formed.
