I found Hunter's book to be a real eye-opener. Its ambition is nothing less than to provide a new interpretation of early modern German intellectual history, with profound consequences for our understanding of Kant in particular. Hunter's own statement of his aims - to reinstate the marginalised tradition of civil philosophy - may seem modest enough. But once it becomes clear that this cannot be done without overturning the whole 'progressivist' tradition of philosophical history leading to Kant, then the scope of the book becomes apparent. On my reading, Rival Enlightenments is based around two main ideas. First, that philosophies make more sense when seen in terms of the acts of self-transformation they require of their initiates. (Hunter has a sharp eye for the pedagogical pressure applied by philosophies extolling freedom!). Second, that early modern university metaphysics and civil philosophy were locked in deep rivalry over the best way to deal with confessional division and the wars of religion. (Anyone provoked by Rorty's and Rawls' arguments on why liberal states should not ground themselves in metaphysics will find much of interest in Hunter's exciting historical discussion of this problem). As a result of this reframing, the currently obscured civil philosophers - Samuel Pufendorf and Christian Thomasius - become much more central, as they provide the intellectual architecture for a secularised civil world. Kant, though, appears as the modern inheritor of a university metaphysics bent on making the civil world more moral than is good for it. While challenging to read, this book is one of the most intellectually exciting ones I have come across in a long time.