Vincenzo Ferrone sees the phenomenon of the Enlightenment in terms of the philosophical and cultural development of a new idea of humanity on the one hand, and the political realisation of this revolutionary concept on the other, culminating in the drawing up and formulation of human rights – the most precious legacy of the Enlightenment. Ferrone's brilliant study is the result of a lecture series at the Collège de France in which the complex, contradictory trajectory of the European Enlightenment was traced without ever losing sight of the real achievement of this unparalleled ideological trend. This was nothing nothing less than the emancipation of the people through the people – the actual implementation of a just society of free and equal citizens, and the ideal of the people taking and shaping their lifeworlds on their own responsibility.