The poet and author Judah Leib Gordon (1830–92) was one of the key figures who promoted the Haskalah (The Jewish Enlightenment) among the large Jewish population in Eastern Europe in the second hal...

Each society is marked by a selective cultural memory which, beside events and traditions whose importance is emphasized, is also constituted by its parts and contents whose influence is either diminished or forgotten. Our society, too is marked by such kind of memory, with obvious reduction, value opposition and, in sum, general duality within the reception of cultural memory, which is always more complex than it appears in political speeches mother-tongue reading books or history textbooks. For this reason, an examination (...) of construction and reception of cultural memory, with an emphasis on traditions of Enlightenment and Romanticism, stems from a necessity to answer a set of questions regarding the contemporary relation to the past, the way "distance" or "proximity" to the latter is constituted, and especially the way in which contemporary practices mark, change and make use of cultural history. Starting from the assumptions that shaping cultural history, its heritage and "memory" is closely connected to the beginnings of nation-building and that cultural memory is a never-ending political process it is my intention in this research project to examine the rivalry juxtapositions, "interruptions" and new foundations of traditions, focusing on the interdependent relation of Enlightenment and Romanticist strands, and particularly on their unmarked, empty spots. Just as cultural memory is a result of two opposed processes - foregrounding and oblivion - so this research is similarly devoted to a double and apparently paradoxical task. On one hand, the accent is on the resurrection and reinforcement of integrative segments of these traditions which, at the time of their emergence as well as in subsequent interpretations, were mostly neglected. On the other hand there is the need to keep pace with what is required by the current "acceleration of time", which amounts to nothing else but the necessity to forget. Briefly put, the aim is to point to disciplinary-interdependent, more nuances and more communicative ways of viewing these relations, which would diminish the exclusivist and profound opposition within the contemporary reception of the traditions examined. (shrink)

Each society is marked by a selective cultural memory which, beside events and traditions whose importance is emphasized, is also constituted by its parts and contents whose influence is either diminished or forgotten. Our society, too is marked by such kind of memory, with obvious reduction, value opposition and, in sum, general duality within the reception of cultural memory, which is always more complex than it appears in political speeches mother-tongue reading books or history textbooks. For this reason, an examination (...) of construction and reception of cultural memory, with an emphasis on traditions of Enlightenment and Romanticism, stems from a necessity to answer a set of questions regarding the contemporary relation to the past, the way "distance" or "proximity" to the latter is constituted, and especially the way in which contemporary practices mark, change and make use of cultural history. Starting from the assumptions that shaping cultural history, its heritage and "memory" is closely connected to the beginnings of nation-building and that cultural memory is a never-ending political process it is my intention in this research project to examine the rivalry juxtapositions, "interruptions" and new foundations of traditions, focusing on the interdependent relation of Enlightenment and Romanticist strands, and particularly on their unmarked, empty spots. Just as cultural memory is a result of two opposed processes - foregrounding and oblivion - so this research is similarly devoted to a double and apparently paradoxical task. On one hand, the accent is on the resurrection and reinforcement of integrative segments of these traditions which, at the time of their emergence as well as in subsequent interpretations, were mostly neglected. On the other hand there is the need to keep pace with what is required by the current "acceleration of time", which amounts to nothing else but the necessity to forget. Briefly put, the aim is to point to disciplinary-interdependent, more nuances and more communicative ways of viewing these relations, which would diminish the exclusivist and profound opposition within the contemporary reception of the traditions examined. (shrink)

The Vital Roots of European Enlightenment is a collection of essays dealing with the influence of Ibn Tufayl, a 12th-century Arab philosopher from Spain, on major European thinkers. Had Edward Said known about the impact of Hayy Ibn Yaqzan on Europe throughout the 17th and 18th centuries, he might have reached different conclusions in his book Orientalism.

The Vital Roots of European Enlightenment is a collection of essays dealing with the influence of Ibn Tufayl, a 12th-century Arab philosopher from Spain, on major European thinkers. Had Edward Said known about the impact of Hayy Ibn Yaqzan on Europe throughout the 17th and 18th centuries, he might have reached different conclusions in his book Orientalism.

It has become a recurrent theme in public debate in Greece, at least for the past few decades, to evoke the cultural and socio-political lag due to the lack of an Enlightenment process similar to t...

A major theme of the European Enlightenment was the rationalization of value, the use of reason to determine the value of things, from diamonds to civilizations. This view of the Enlightenment is well-established in the human sciences. It is ripe for extension to the natural sciences, given the rich recent literature on affect, evaluation, and subjectivity in early modern science. Meanwhile, in art history, the new history of connoisseurship provides a model for the historical study of the (...) evaluation of material things. Historians of natural history have already noted the connections between science, Enlightenment, and connoisseurship. The time has come to extend their insights to other areas of Enlightenment science. This means recognizing the breadth of connoisseurship – the social, linguistic, and disciplinary diversity of the practice – as understood in Europe in the eighteenth century and the latter part of the seventeenth century. An outline of the three papers in this special section gives an indication of how this historiographical project might be carried out. (shrink)

In this book, Alexander Bevilacqua presents us with a lucid, erudite, and in many respects engaging study of a dimension of the European Enlightenment and its precursor traditions that has not prev...

Introduction Herder's status within German intellectual history has largely rested on the premise that he, along with his friend Johann Georg Hamann, ...

Study of the European Enlightenment could do with a fillip. Perhaps the best tonic we have is combining the close reading of significant works with the study of print history and reader reception....

Gary Kates has written an admirable and original study, which also happens to be a very good read. In a series of ‘case studies’ of eighteenth-century books, Kates shows how a significant ‘sample’...

Study of the European Enlightenment could do with a fillip. Perhaps the best tonic we have is combining the close reading of significant works with the study of print history and reader reception....

A major theme of the European Enlightenment was the rationalization of value, the use of reason to determine the value of things, from diamonds to civilizations. This view of the Enlightenment is well-established in the human sciences. It is ripe for extension to the natural sciences, given the rich recent literature on affect, evaluation, and subjectivity in early modern science. Meanwhile, in art history, the new history of connoisseurship provides a model for the historical study of the (...) evaluation of material things. Historians of natural history have already noted the connections between science, Enlightenment, and connoisseurship. The time has come to extend their insights to other areas of Enlightenment science. This means recognizing the breadth of connoisseurship – the social, linguistic, and disciplinary diversity of the practice – as understood in Europe in the eighteenth century and the latter part of the seventeenth century. An outline of the three papers in this special section gives an indication of how this historiographical project might be carried out. (shrink)

A major theme of the European Enlightenment was the rationalization of value, the use of reason to determine the value of things, from diamonds to civilizations. This view of the Enlightenment is well-established in the human sciences. It is ripe for extension to the natural sciences, given the rich recent literature on affect, evaluation, and subjectivity in early modern science. Meanwhile, in art history, the new history of connoisseurship provides a model for the historical study of the (...) evaluation of material things. Historians of natural history have already noted the connections between science, Enlightenment, and connoisseurship. The time has come to extend their insights to other areas of Enlightenment science. This means recognizing the breadth of connoisseurship – the social, linguistic, and disciplinary diversity of the practice – as understood in Europe in the eighteenth century and the latter part of the seventeenth century. An outline of the three papers in this special section gives an indication of how this historiographical project might be carried out. (shrink)

Die Philosophie der Aufklärung übt bis auf den heutigen Tag einen großen Einfluss auf unser Denken aus. Dies gilt nicht zuletzt für die Philosophie Immanuel Kants, der mit seinen Schriften zur Moralphilosophie, Rechtstheorie, Geschichtsphilosophie und Theorie der Politik den Begriff der Aufklärung zwischen Vernunft, Kritik und Unmündigkeit wesentlich geprägt hat. Die Beiträge widmen sich Kants Werk in historischer und systematischer Perspektive. Sie fragen nach dem philosophischen Gehalt von Kants Philosophie der Aufklärung und diskutieren seine Bedeutung für die Zukunft aufklärerischen Denkens. (...) Gerade bei der Philosophie Kants scheint sich zu entscheiden, ob die Ideen der Aufklärung auch im 21. Jahrhundert eine Leitfunktion für die Beschreibung und die Lösung aktueller Probleme ausüben können. (shrink)

In his highly engaging The Books that Made the European Enlightenment, Gary Kates sets out to write a new social history of the books that ‘made’ the Enlightenment. An introductory chapter sets the...

In his highly engaging The Books that Made the European Enlightenment, Gary Kates sets out to write a new social history of the books that ‘made’ the Enlightenment. An introductory chapter sets the...

In order to determine which were the most popular books during the Enlightenment, Gary Kates has developed a database (https://kates.itg.pomona.edu/booksanalytics.php?type=all) in which editions of...

This study of Herder's aesthetics is a welcome addition to the continued scholarly rehabilitation of Herder. Norton limits his study to the first fifteen years of Herder's intellectual activity, which he finds preoccupied with questions of aesthetics. Norton takes issue with much of what has been said and written about Herder's aesthetics.

These two books, while very different in many respects, also complement each other in several ways and overlap at some points. They both reflect the new paths that the study of Europe’s thinking ab...

This paper discusses the paradigms of European history and of European civilisation defined in the main histories of Europe written from the Enlightenment to Guizot.Voltaire, Robertson, Gibbon, and Guizot consolidated a model of the history of Europe which has its origins in the fall of the western Roman Empire and the invasions of the Barbarians. The other main steps of this history were the Christianisation, the creation of a vital economic centre in western and northern Europe, the (...) development of the cities, the rediscovery of Roman law, the creation of a complex system of states, the colonial expansion and again the birth of a society of “good manners”.A common civilisation which did not ignore the differences which existed between one country and another – the “national characters”, discussed by David Hume in 1748. Instead the different national characters – the variety of Europe as Guizot wrote – represented an important element of the European civilisation. (shrink)

Enriched by the methods and insights of social history, the history of mentalites, linguistics, anthropology, literary theory, and art history, intellectual and cultural history are experiencing a renewed vitality. The far-ranging essays in this volume, by an internationally distinguished group of scholars, represent a generous sampling of these new studies.".

This paper discusses the paradigms of European history and of European civilisation defined in the main histories of Europe written from the Enlightenment to Guizot. Voltaire, Robertson, Gibbon, and Guizot consolidated a model of the history of Europe which has its origins in the fall of the western Roman Empire and the invasions of the Barbarians. The other main steps of this history were the Christianisation, the creation of a vital economic centre in western and northern Europe, (...) the development of the cities, the rediscovery of Roman law, the creation of a complex system of states, the colonial expansion and again the birth of a society of “good manners”. A common civilisation which did not ignore the differences which existed between one country and another – the “national characters”, discussed by David Hume in 1748. Instead the different national characters – the variety of Europe as Guizot wrote – represented an important element of the European civilisation. (shrink)

Studies of the reaction of European thinkers of the Enlightenment - Leibniz, Wolff, Hegel, Kant, et al -to Chinese culture and ideas.

The article offers an overview and a critical assessment of the work of Zeev Sternhell, focussing on the questions of fascism and of the anti-Enlightenment tradition. It claims that the career of the Israeli historian revolves around the intuition of a history of European modernity marked by a central opposition: that between the Enlightenment and the anti-Enlightenment. I show how the idea is already present in his initial works, and argue that it produces a specific kind (...) of intellectual history, concerned with the unity of traditions over large temporal horizons. I claim that it has the advantage of offering an historically grounded reading of fascism which nonetheless is capable to account for its emergence in apparently very dissimilar contexts. After having examined some of the shortcomings of this approach, I offer an historical explanation for the type of intellectual history practiced by Sternhell, arguing that it must be tied to his political activism in Israel. (shrink)

ABSTRACT Wang Yangming is the founder of Chinese Enlightenment in the Ming-Qing period, in a similar way Descartes is for the European. The European Enlightenment thinkers such as Leibniz and Voltaire had been inspired by China about the human being’s ethical independence at the collective level, namely, the ability of a community to lead an ethical life independent of God’s revelation. Meanwhile, the Enlightenment thinkers failed to notice the Chinese intellectual resources that encourage human being’s (...) ethical independence at the individual level, namely, the belief that every human individual is equally capable of leading one’s ethical life purely relying on one’s own good judgment. For this point, Wang Yangming is the resources that the West could have drawn upon. Both Wang Yangming and Descartes assert the egalitarianism about every individual’s power of judgment. I label this similarity as the ‘Sino-European juncture of Enlightenment.’ Other similarities between these two thinkers lie, firstly, in their common strategy in defending egalitarianism: both give a psychological account of the sources of error by analyzing the relationship between will and reason; and secondly, in their methodology: both redefine the method of attaining knowledge, and both emphasize that one should start from the plain, simple and insignificant things and then ascend to the complex things at issue. (shrink)

Interpreting the Enlightenment: on methods -- A map of the Enlightenment: whither France? -- The spirit of the moderns: from the new science to the Enlightenment -- Society, the subject of the modern story -- Quarrel in the Academy: the ancients strike back -- Humanism and Enlightenment: the classical style of the philosophes -- The philosophical spirit of the laws: politics and antiquity -- An ancient god: pagans and philosophers -- Post tenebras lux: Begriffsgeschichte or regime (...) d'historicité? -- Ancients and the Orient: translatio imperii -- Enlightened institutions (i): the royal academies versus the Republic of Letters -- Enlightened institutions (ii): universities, censorship, and public instruction -- Worldliness, politeness, and the importance of not being too radical -- From Enlightenment to Revolution: a shared history? -- France and the European Enlightenment -- Modern myths. (shrink)

A central theme in the scholarly literature on Enlightenment Europe concerns the increased focus on the role of reason in the development of European thought, especially in the development of the new science by the natural philosophers. As a consequence, there is a tendency in both philosophical scholarship and teaching to bind philosophy and science tightly together. While there is certainly much that is correct in this approach, one motivation for pluralizing philosophy’s past is that this story leaves (...) out a great deal that is important in Enlightenment views of reason. We argue, using as an example the work of figures like Margaret Cavendish, that reason was significantly broader in scope—and that developments in science were paralleled by equally important advances in music, art, literature, medicine, philosophy, and other areas. In recognizing the lack of a sharp boundary between these areas, an inclusive canon of Enlightenment philosophy gives us this richer notion of reason. Integrating figures such as Cavendish into the canon helps us to see that the narrow focus on the scientific version of reason within Enlightenment scholarship creates a false distinction between science and the humanities and misses out on the humanistic ends for which we engage in philosophy. (shrink)

Enlightenment Cosmopolitanism brings together ten innovative contributions by outstanding scholars working across a wide array of disciplines in the humanities and social sciences. Interdisciplinary in its methodology and compass, with a strong comparative European dimension, the volume examines discourses ranging from literature, historiography, music and opera to anthropology and political philosophy. It makes an original contribution to the study of 18th-century ideas of universal peace, progress and wealth as the foundation of future debates on cosmopolitanism. At the same (...) time, it analyses examples of counter-reaction to these ideas and discusses the relevance of the Enlightenment for subsequent polemics on cosmopolitanism, including 21st-century debates in sociology, politics and legal theory. (shrink)