The Enlightenment philosophes, so far from being the first modern cohort, were in fact premodern because of their unshakeable belief in reason and progress. Relying on nature to reveal the organic laws of society, although based on the Newtonian approach to the physical sciences, was simplistic and bound to fall short. Becker focuses on the philosophes’ inability to solve such problems as the nature of virtue, while sidestepping their manifest challenge to the received wisdom of the Judeo-Christian tradition. The philosophes are always compared with the scholastics: there is no discussion of classical antiquity, a comparison which would lend another perspective on the basis of inquiry. At the same time, Becker himself points out history was the most popular scholarly topic of the late 18th century. Following Hume, contemporaries sought to identify universal principles of human nature (i.e., natural law) as well as continuity and progress. Such as variegated field is hardly to be compared with religious doctrine. Heavenly City turns on his own assumptions. The world is factual not rational, the author asserts (as an aside, saying it’s more important to use things efficiently than to understand them!); there is no predetermined order of progress or end of things; and no contemporary cohort can really understand the world of its predecessors. Accordingly, intelligence is conditioned by the very forces it seeks to understand. Thus, Becker not only stands in direct contrast with Cassirer, who described the philosophes as the first moderns, but also as a neo-Romantic and a forerunner of the postmoderns. As the introduction points out, Becker’s work was well timed to match emerging relativism and has since enjoyed periodic revival, but the failure to consider Athens as well as its historicism is crucial.