Introduction

Whether consisting of a single Enlightenment or several interconnected movements of ideas, the eighteenth century has long been identified as an age of reform– or at least as a period when public debate about reform was conducted on an unprecedented magnitude, employing fundamentally new arguments and strategies of persuasion. By contrast to recent studies of radical philosophy, this project firmly places actual attempts of reform at its centre. But it does not amount to a thematic or exhaustive handbook concerning reform in different domains (legal, political, social, educational, etc.). As the title makes clear, the book examines the discursive languages in which reforms were suggested, legitimised, enacted, and contested. The project thus aims to provide an overview of how eighteenth-century authors demanded, justified, or developed a variety of discursive potentials and spheres of interpretation in context of reform.