Abstract
Professor Thomas Osborne (SPAIS, University of Bristol, author of Aspects of Enlightenment: Social Theory and The Ethics of Truth (1998) and The Structure of Modern Cultural Theory (2008) visited Prague in mid-2018 and presented a paper On Montesquieu, Markets and the Liberalism of Fear. The interview was conducted online by Dr. Filip Vostal (CSTSS, Institute of Philosophy of the Czech Academy of Sciences) in autumn 2020.
Highlights
Thomas Osborne: My first book was written in the mid-1990s amidst the controversy over post-modernism, relativism and the culture wars
Filip Vostal: In your fascinating book Aspects of Enlightenment from 1998 you say that thinking about society should be driven by the “ethics of enlightenment”, but your conception differs from the Enlightenment as a sociohistorical motion and set of cultural principles and imperatives
Can you say more about your idea of the ethics of enlightenment and why it should account for a central principle in the social sciences?
Summary
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have