Enlightenment Philosophy Research Articles

COMMERCIALIZATION OF ART IN THE CONTEXT OF CONSUMPTION CULTURE

The Enlightenment philosophy, inspired by the intellectual movements of the Renaissance and Reformation, emerging from the scholastic darkness of the Middle Ages, led to the emergence of the Industrial Revolution with its strong light; With the great acceleration given by the production, it has become the dominant ideology of science, culture and art by spreading first to Europe and then to the whole world. Modernism, which was shaped by the idea of Enlightenment, transformed into capitalism in a short time and caused the formation of a consumption culture. The enlightenment ideology brought the understanding of "objective reason" and "progressive history" to humanity, which transformed it into a consumer society shaped by capitalism instead of the "promised paradise". This is why the 'Age of Modernity' is called the age of capitalist transformation. The spread of capitalism to the whole world has been achieved through mass communication and production techniques. TVs, which are the broadcasting organs of capitalism, have become the main tool of capital transformation and have ensured the spread of consumption culture with advertising and marketing techniques. Modernism has carried the material, thinking and comprehension stages of art to a materialistic dimension within a structure that is far from emotional, formed by a technocentric and mechanical mentality. Art integrated with technology has become commodified with capitalist regulation and institutionalization; has gained a commercial dimension. Pop Art, which emerged in the 1960s, has become the symbol of commercialized art; It has emerged as an art movement that deals with the consumption society and its values. Andy Warhol, the famous representative of Pop Art, is one of the artists known to play a role in the commodification of works of art. Warhol's art has made serious contributions to the process of transforming today's art into commodity aesthetics. Meta art/aesthetics is a tradeable world of copies. This artificial world has turned into the real world in the consumer society, which can be reproduced in line with the possibilities of art production technologies; They have become objects of consumption whose uniqueness has been lost. Keywords: Art, Consumption Culture, Commercialization, Kitsch, Andy Warhol

«Lemma»: Jay Wright’s Idiorrhythmic American Theater

This essay presents Jay Wright’s play Lemma as a historiographical challenge and also as a piece of idiorrhythmic American theater. Consonant with his life’s work of poetry, dramatic literature, and philosophical writing, Lemma showcases Wright’s expansive intellectual framework with which he constructs vivid, dynamic, and complex visions of American life. The “America” conjured here is steeped in many traditions, traditions typically kept distinct by academic discourse, such as West African cosmology, Enlightenment philosophy, jazz music theory, Ancient Greek theater, neo-Baroque modifications of Christian theology, pre-Columbian indigenous ways of knowing, etymological connections between Spanish and Gaelic, the materiality of John Donne’s poetry, and the lives of enslaved Africans in the New World. What is the purpose of Wright’s theatrical conjuration? How do we approach a text with such a diverse body of intellectual and literary sources? The author answers these questions and ends with a call to treat Lemma as a much needed point of view that opens lines of sight into Black and American theater far outside the well-worn territory of the Black Arts Movement.

Mendelssohn on the Edge: Memory, Agency, and National Belonging in Weimar Germany

Abstract In times of great political unrest and disorientation, societies generally invent and reinvent myths. As unrest and disorientation were among the most striking characteristics of the Weimar era, it is not surprising that the bicentenary celebrations of Moses Mendelssohn’s birth, held in 1929, constituted the peak of the Enlightenment philosopher’s popularity as a German-Jewish patron saint. This article argues that the commemoration of Mendelssohn on the eve of catastrophe, four years before the Weimar Republic’s collapse, serves as a particularly precise indicator of ambivalent German-Jewish agency at the time, due to its political, social, and cultural implications. Whereas the bicentenary celebrations—featuring the Republic’s most prominent representatives, state-of-the-art exhibitions, cultural events in prestigious locations, and extensive media coverage—attest to the considerable leeway German Jewry had in shaping social reality, the continuing absence of Mendelssohn in the canon of German poets and thinkers illustrates the limits of German-Jewish agency in the cultural imaginary of the German nation.

Toward Nonbinary Theories of Practice in Teacher Education Research

This essay argues that contemporary debates about the role of practice in teacher education run the risk of reproducing mind/body, thought/action dualisms. Absent these binaries, practice is understood as always theoretical, principled, and contextualized and knowledge and identity are understood as always embodied and enacted. The author discusses nonbinary theories of practice and their application in teacher education scholarship within both historical and political contexts. The essay argues that the practice turn in teacher education might be leveraged to enhance the field’s intersectional imagination and to eschew the polarities and linearities the field has inherited from Western enlightenment philosophy.

Spiritualism and Rationalism in Early Modern Europe

Abstract Despite his reputation as a narcissistic Anabaptist messiah, after 1544 David Joris became an influential spiritualist who abandoned claims of a unique possession of the Holy Spirit and promoted the Spirit as active within the mind of all believers, just as he had already internalized demons and angels to the inner person. He only fully elaborated his mature pneumatology in the 1550s, and since none of those writings were printed in his lifetime, outside of correspondence and conversation it became known only when printers produced these late works starting in the 1580s. In the Dutch Republic, where spiritualism flowed freely, Joris’s creative approach to the Spirit helped shape discourse on religion and philosophy among nonconformists such as the Doopsgezinden (baptism-minded people, i.e., Mennonites) and Collegiants. These in turn contributed to the conversations of early Enlightenment philosophers, such as Descartes and Spinoza.

Qu’est-ce que c’est une vie juste et une vie mutilée ? La critique à l’éthique de la pensée chez Adorno

What is a damaged life? What kind of theoretical and metaphysical problems are challenged by Adorno’s moral philosophy? In this paper we argue that the reflections delivered by Adorno after the catastrophe of the Second World War must be read from the scope of a systematic use of reason present in modern enlightenment philosophy as well as in modern market society. We claim the traditional concepts of moral autonomy and ethical life (Sittlichkeit) are both guided by the exchange principle developed by bourgeois society. We focus in the systematic architecture of Hegel’s social philosophy with a view to identify an antimony shared with bourgeois society: the boundless expansion of the market and rational knowledge. The role of the synthetic concept of infinity is discussed in an ideological sense, stressing labor’s division consequences. Finally, we set forth a discussion about the limits of Adorno’s theoretical criticism, especially on his use of dialectical categories and the ways in which they can be integrated in the core of a Critical theory.

Philosophical Premises for Saint-Pierre’s Project of the Perpetual Peace

The article analyzes the traditional and innovative worldview components in the political doctrine of Saint-Pierre, developed in his work Project for the Establishment of Perpetual Peace in Europe. Reflecting on the political prospects of mankind, the abbot highlighted the psychological motives that, in his opinion, determine acts of rulers. He proceeded from the idea that human nature does not change, his worldview is characterized by the belief that the final forms of government are already present in his epoch and are not subject to transformation. In his view, the existing political structure prevailing in various countries should not be changed, but there should be formed a supranational collective body, authorized to carry out international arbitration. Referring to Henry IV’s plan for universal peace in Europe, Saint-Pierre did not literally repeat it, although in order to promote his ideas he presented himself as a follower of the great monarch. Proclaiming the value of impartial reasoning, the abbot attached particular importance to convincing the rulers that war is not beneficial to them personally or to their subjects. He connected happiness with the wealth and prosperity of society, subordinating politics to morality. Recognizing progress in the intellectual and economic spheres, he treated wars as a factor impeding mankind’s progress. Unlike most philosophers of Enlightenment, Saint-Pierre did not adhere to anticlericalism. He believed that the other states would join gradually join united Europe, although this process would certainly be very long. Saint-Pierre attached exceptional importance to the legal side of the issue, to the formal agreement, and he definitely underestimated economic differences among nations.

Suicide, Melancholia, and Manic Defense in Byron’s Manfred

Richard Lansdown, “Suicide, Melancholia, and Manic Defense in Byron's Manfred” (pp. 1–32) This essay presents a literary-critical account of Lord Byron’s verse drama Manfred (1817) from the perspective of Freudian and Object Relations psychological theories, in particular as regards the distinction between melancholia and mourning and the presence of part-objects within the psyche. It argues that whereas it is important to preserve a distinction between the poet and his works, such a distinction can never be total: like Childe Harold, Manfred is clearly in part a personal projection, given Byron’s state of mind at the time of composition. To provide context for these discussions the essay surveys both Byron’s personal views concerning suicide and the history of self-slaughter in Western culture, with Romanticism as a particular focus. The poet’s attitudes were many and various, depending on which cases he had in mind. Furthermore, the Romantic tradition initiated by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s The Sorrows of Young Werther (1774) and continued by Byron’s numerous treatments of suicide mark a complication of the attitudes we find voiced by Enlightenment philosophers and, indeed, by Sigmund Freud himself.

Morality: Restoring the Common Good in Divided Times

Morality: Restoring the Common Good in Divided Times

Hegel dans son rapport à la conception du monde des Lumières

Emil Lask’s conference “Hegel in his relation to the Enlightenment’s Worldview”, translated and introduced by Emmanuel Chaput, clarifies Hegel’s ambivalent relation toward Enlightenment. According to Lask, German Idealism, Hegel included, carries on the Enlightenment’s program according to which the merely-given reality should be submitted to an absolute and rational value. In opposition to Kant and Fichte however, Hegel refuses to understand value as a simple ought to (Sollen), an asymptotic ideal we thrive to reach. As such, Lask describes Hegel not as the philosopher of Restauration, but as a philosopher of Enlightenment who distinguishes values from norms, unlike his predecessors.

GOYA’S BLACK PAINTINGS AND ANALYSIS OF HIS PAINTING NAMED “THE DOG”

Francisco Goya (1746-1828), 18. yüzyılın ikinci ve 19. yüzyılın ilk yarısında yaşamış bir sanatçı olarak, İspanya’nın sancılı bir dönemine tanıklık etmiştir. Sanatçı, iç savaşın ve Fransız işgalinin yaşandığı bu dönemden çok etkilenmiş ve yaşadıkları sanatına doğrudan yansımıştır. Çarpıcı ve sanatsal değeri yüksek olan resimleri bu nedenle belge niteliği taşımaktadır. Goya’nın resimleri, savaş ve şiddet konusunda toplumsal hafızayı uyarıcı ve tetikte olmayı gerektiren bir işlev üstlenmişlerdir.
 Neoklasizm’den Romantizm’e geçiş sürecinde yaşamış olan Goya, geleneksel yaklaşımdan uzaklaşarak; içselliğini, heyecan ve duygularını resimlerine yansıtmış olan ilk sanatçılardan birisidir. Sanatçı Aydınlanma Felsefe’sinin etkisiyle Avrupa’da sosyal ve politik değişimlerin hız kazandığı bir dönemde yaşamış; özgürlükçü ve eleştirel tutumunu resimlerine taşımıştır.
 Bu makalede, Goya’nın 1819-1823 yılları arasında yaşadığı evin duvarlarına yaptığı Kara Resimler ve bu resimler içerisinde belirgin bir şekilde öne çıkan Köpek adlı resmi incelenmiştir. Sanatçının yaşamı ve yaşadığı dönemin öne çıkan olayları, resimlerine etkisi bağlamında genel hatlarıyla ele alınmış ve Köpek adlı resmin ayrıntılı analizi yapılmıştır. Resimde yer alan imgelerin metaforik açılımları ve köpek imgesi ekseninde gelişenler incelenmiştir.

Historische Vergleichung als Erkenntnismethode. Die vergleichende Beobachtung von Recht und Staat im 18. Jahrhundert

The comparison and comparation (also comparatio, comparative studies) present today a general method of cognition for determining similarities and differences in society. Most sciences (law, anatomy, politics, languages, culture etc.) have their own comparative foundations, although these form separate disciplines or methods. Comparative law has been developing as a science since the 19th century. The historical background and discussion about the purpose and benefits of comparison are discussed in this article. They originate mostly in the universalism of the Enlightenment philosophy, the practical approach of which, is based on comparative methodological principles, which it uses for legal development of the state and society. In the 18th century, this mainly involved determination of the “interest” of the state and creation of a systematic codification.

The elements of public administration theory in the “projects” of Count P. I. Shuvalov

The subject of this research is the development of theoretical representations on the mechanism of public administration in Russia of the XVIII century. The goal is to determine in the texts of draft reforms prepared by Count P. I. Shuvalov the provisions on the objectives and principles of public administration, as well as to analyze his views on the process of reforming state and social institutions. In the texts of P. I. Shuvalov examines such elements of public administration theory as the administrative objectives, its subject matter, instruments, and administrative decision-making process. It allowed establishing correlation between the two concepts: “the good of the state” and “the common good”, as the goals pursued by public administration. The formulated by Shuvalov principles of public administration fully corresponded to the principles advanced by the philosophers of the European Enlightenment. The conducted analysis decision-making mechanism reveals a universal algorithm, which implies several stages of development of the reforms: a) outlining the problem that needs to be solved using the instruments of public administration ; b) determining the causes of this problem; c) proposing solution to the problem, d) discussing the proposed solution, indicating the instruments that need to be implemented by the state.

The idea of religion and sacrifice from Grotius to Diderot’s Encyclopédie

ABSTRACT This article outlines the concept of the early modern idea of religion through the notion of sacrifice, from Socinus on through Grotius and Spinoza to Diderot’s Encyclopedia. It is generally held that the philosophical representation of religion of the seventeenth century ‘set the stage’ for later Enlightenment philosophers. My argument runs in a different direction. I intend to show that the Enlightenment philosophers’ concept of religious history stemmed not only from the philosophical tradition, but also from their knowledge of antiquarianism. In order to understand the genealogy of the Enlightenment idea of religion it is essential to acknowledge its roots in the antiquarian history of religions of the seventeenth century when a new idea of religious belief emerged with practice of sacrifice at its core. Grotius and the antiquarians inquired into whether religion was a universal phenomenon, what were its categories – such as belief and sacrifice – and the truth and falsehood of these. Diderot considered this history of sacrifice and ceremonies as the fundamental ‘deed’ of the religious experience, which he analysed employing both the philosophical and the historical perspectives through the category of fetishism.

The mind’s magic lantern: David Brewster and the scientific imagination

ABSTRACT The imagination has always been thought to operate primarily in conjunction with the sense of vision, imagined objects and scenes being conjured up before the ‘mind’s eye’. In early nineteenth-century Scotland the natural philosopher David Brewster developed a theory of the imagination that explained its operation through a reversal of the normal processes of visual perception. These ideas were rooted in the mental philosophy of the eighteenth-century Scottish Enlightenment. For Brewster the mind’s eye was also the eye of the body, and images from the memory and imagination were projected onto the retina in the same manner that images were projected onto the screen in a magic lantern show. This theory underpinned his belief that imagination played an essential role in scientific discovery. Brewster believed that this process was as essential to the discoveries of science as it was to the creation of great poetry. The writings of Brewster can tell us a great deal about the connections between science and literature in the early nineteenth century, as well as showing that the philosophy of science in contemporary Britain was far from monolithic.

Mary Astell’s radical criticism of gender inequality

ABSTRACT This paper aims to bring to light the radical and subversive ideas of the British Enlightenment philosopher Mary Astell. It will be argued that Astell, despite her strict Anglicanism and affiliation with the rather conservative Tories, articulates radical thoughts on questions of gender equality. As will be shown, she is highly critical of contemporary sexual hierarchies, which is evident from her fierce criticisms of customary, natural, and scriptural defenses of patriarchalism. Part of her review of such hierarchies entails her ruthless assessment of the contemporary condition of marriage and the subordination of women therein. Besides reviewing and systematizing her critical positions, it is a further aim of this paper to compare these with her otherwise conservative ideas, such as denying a right to resistance or disobedience; a tension other commentators have tried to solve as well. I argue that, what we find in Astell, is a thinker who holds views many radicals would have concurred with, concerning both the spiritual and political equality of women.

Against the Death Penalty: Writings from the First Abolitionists—Giuseppe Pelli and Cesare Beccaria ed. by Peter Garnsey

Reviewed by: Against the Death Penalty: Writings from the First Abolitionists—Giuseppe Pelli and Cesare Beccaria ed. by Peter Garnsey Germano Maifreda Peter Garnsey, translator and editor, Against the Death Penalty: Writings from the First Abolitionists—Giuseppe Pelli and Cesare Beccaria (Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press, 2020). Pp. 226. $35.00 cloth. The interest of Anglophone historiography in late eighteenth-century Italian intellectual life has markedly increased in the last two decades. The recent publication of philologically rigorous critical editions—which stand on the shoulders of Franco Venturi's tireless commitment in the second half of the twentieth century—have contributed significantly to this recuperation. These include new and ongoing editions of the complete works of Cesare Beccaria and Pietro Verri, which, with path-breaking tomes such as Sophus A. Reinert's The Academy of Fisticuffs: Political Economy and Commercial Society in Enlightenment Italy (2018) and The Economic Turn: Recasting Political Economy in Enlightenment Europe, coedited by Reinert and Steven L. Kaplan (2019), indicate the important and expanding field in which Peter Garnsey's Against the Death Penalty is a welcome and valuable addition.1 Garnsey's recent interest in the Italian Enlightenment developed from his previous work on the ideology of slavery and related debates about property among philosophers, jurists, and theologians from classical antiquity to the late nineteenth century. His insightful book Thinking about Property: From Antiquity to the Age of Revolution (2007) highlighted the historical interrelation of the ideas of slavery and property crimes. His interest in the ways that property crimes were punished in the early modern era has developed into Against the Death Penalty, both a study of imprisonment as a punishment and a history of the concept of penal servitude, with particular attention to both Cesare Beccaria's conceptualization [End Page 116] of it as a form of slavery and his proposal that hard labor replace capital punishment in his pioneering On Crimes and Punishments (original publication 1764, definitive edition 1766). This stance against the death penalty underlies Garnsey's term of reference in the book—abolitionist—for both Beccaria (1738–1794) and Giuseppe Pelli (1729–1808). Garnsey emphasizes that the aim of Against the Death Penalty is not to draw comparisons between the writings of Pelli and Beccaria. In fact, their differences, reflective of their different intellectual traditions, are certainly more interesting than the similarities: Pelli's thought was shaped by Catholicism and the natural jurists, and Beccaria, by French Enlightenment philosophers. The book instead aims, first, to offer translations of the relevant texts, including the first English translation of Pelli's works. Against the Death Penalty additionally explores the historical and intellectual contexts in which Pelli and Beccaria lived and wrote. In both of these aims, the volume succeeds admirably. The book is bipartite. Its first section sees the translation of Pelli's Against the Death Penalty, some fragments on the punishment of talion and on vengeance, and Pelli's correspondence with Beccaria of 1766–67. This material is followed by a contextualization and analysis of Pelli's argument. The book's second section contains Garney's translation of both the chapters of Beccaria's On Crime and Punishment in which the founding father of modern criminal-law reform pronounced himself against the death penalty and for forced labor, and the Opinion ("Voto"), written in opposition to the death penalty by Beccaria, his pupil Francesco Gallarati Scotti, and the judge Paolo Risi as part of the 1792 imperial Commission for Legal Reform in Lombardy. Garnsey's analysis of the political-cultural context in the second half of the eighteenth century Lombardy follows, together with his critical reconsideration of Beccaria's argument against death penalty. The volume is closed by a postscript that closely considers the significance of Beccaria's advocacy of life imprisonment and that describes the reception and revision of these views by successors including Jeremy Bentham and Thomas Jefferson. Contemporaries and near neighbors, Pelli and Beccaria were unaware of each other's existence and intellectual activities: Pelli was a minor aristocrat from Florence who pursued a career within the Austrian Habsburg administration in the Gran Duchy of Tuscany, finally rising to the position of director of the Uffizi Gallery. He wrote...

Mourning the Nation to Come: Creole Nativism in Nineteenth-Century American Literatures by Jillian J. Sayre

Reviewed by: Mourning the Nation to Come: Creole Nativism in Nineteenth-Century American Literatures by Jillian J. Sayre Asselin Charles Mourning the Nation to Come: Creole Nativism in Nineteenth-Century American Literatures. By Jillian J. Sayre. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University, 2019. x + 243 pp. $50.00 cloth/$34.00 e-book. The modern concept of the nation, by which we designate discrete human populations, might seem quite logical. Yet the understanding of the nation as a natural collectivity is a recent historical development. It is the culmination of political, cultural, and psychological processes fostered by demographic dynamics in Europe beginning in the late Renaissance, the ruminations of Enlightenment philosophers, the creations of Romantic poets, the social and political churnings of the age of revolutions, and the political arrangements of statesmen and diplomats. By the end of the nineteenth century these processes ultimately midwifed this unprecedented entity, the nation, whose members felt a sense of shared identity with countless others by virtue of their living in the same territory and sharing a common language, culture, and history. Such a sense of personal and collective identity that takes one beyond the more logical and natural feeling of connection to kin and neighbors required overlooking [End Page 160] all sorts of contradictions and realities that challenged the sense of community. It required, as Benedict Anderson theorizes in his classic study of the nation, Imagined Communities (1983), imagination. Although the nation today is a reigning paradigm of individual and collective identity, its definition is still fluid and fraught with contradictions arising from its coexistence with other modes of belonging and community, such as religion and ethnicity. The concept continues, therefore, to solicit the attention of scholars and political philosophers bent on explaining those contradictions. With Mourning the Nation to Come: Creole Nativism in Nineteenth-Century American Literatures, literary scholar Jillian J. Sayre offers one of the most insightful disquisitions on the construction and meaning of the concept with due attention to its inherent contradictions. In this most engaging work—topical rather than broadly philosophical, part historical analysis and part literary criticism—Sayre explores how the nation, a European historical development, has been translated in the Americas where the “creole nativists,” the descendants of European settlers, conceived and formed national polities while navigating the contradictions of the erasure or displacement of the Indigenous peoples, some still surviving on the same territory with incongruent cultural practices, languages, and collective memories. In this exploration of the construction of the nation in the Americas, Sayre takes an original route. She parses literary texts in a wide-ranging multilingual randonnée through such writings as the Book of Mormon and the works of authors such as the Brazilian poet and novelist José de Alencar, the Ecuadoran poet José Joaquín de Olmedo, the New England Pequot historian William Apess, and the white American novelists Lydia Maria Child, Herman Melville, and James Fenimore Cooper. Sayre reads these representative texts, particularly those in the Indian romance genre, as prophetic announcements of the nation and interprets them as symbolic appropriation by their creole nativist authors of Indigenous claims to the land. Based on the evidence of what she calls the scryptural—tomb inscriptions, books, and other writings mentioned above—Sayre understands New World nationalism as a construction of creole nativists whose foundations are collective acts of mourning and remembrance. This is an idea inspired by Anderson’s finding of “‘the cultural roots’ of nationalism by first pausing at memorials of loss, the forceful ‘cenotaphs and tombs of Unknown Soldiers’” (1). Another source of inspiration for Sayre’s approach to the concept of the nation is the French historian Jules Michelet, for whom “history structured the present as endlessly entangled with and by a past that functioned as a prepolitical genealogy, rewriting present national identity as a culmination of previous sacrifice and so a debt owed to the dead, a debt acknowledged and [End Page 161] addressed through the shared consumption of these figures as the narrative of national history” (5). Notwithstanding this formulation of the nation as a unitary community held together by a coherent narrative that integrates the past and the present and connects the dead to the living, the...

Philosophical Dissertations on Mind and Body by Anton Wilhelm Amo

Reviewed by: Philosophical Dissertations on Mind and Body by Anton Wilhelm Amo Yual Chiek Anton Wilhelm Amo. Philosophical Dissertations on Mind and Body. Edited and translated by Stephen Menn and Justin E. H. Smith. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020. Pp. 252. Cloth, $74.00. Replete with insightful historical commentary on the life of Ghanaian-German Enlightenment philosopher Anton Wilhelm Amo, this fascinating volume by Stephen Menn and Justin Smith (henceforth "MS") offers a detailed study of two of Amo's most important works. In addition, the book offers a careful study of both the intellectual and political context in which Amo wrote and the reception of his work in the centuries following. The book is divided into four parts. The first part houses a substantial introduction, while the second part is devoted to notes on the texts and translations of Amo's dissertations. The third part contains the Latin text alongside MS's English translations of Amo's Inaugural Dissertation on the Impassivity of the Human Mind (Impassivity). The fourth part houses Amo's Philosophical Disputation Containing a Distinct Idea of Those Things That Pertain Either to the Mind or to Our Living and Organic Body (Distinct Idea), with, likewise, the Latin text and MS's translation. Section 1 of the introduction begins with a brief general overview of Amo's life and philosophical achievements. MS then take the reader through a discussion of the complex and rapidly changing social status of Africans in eighteenth-century Germany. In this section, MS discuss not only Amo but other notable Africans in eighteenth-century Germany and Europe. Here we find an examination of Amo's life, including a careful analysis of documents [End Page 686] bearing on the circumstances surrounding Amo's arrival in Germany, his identification in Germany, and the financial difficulties that befell him as a result of the death of Duke Ludwig Rudolph of Braunschweig-Lüneburg, the last of his patrons. In this section too is a discussion of his entrance into the University of Halle, his studies at the University of Wittenberg, and his tenure at the University of Jena. We are also introduced to Amo's two principal works: De Jure Maurorum in Europa (On the Right of Moors in Europe), and Tractatus de Arte Sobrie et Accurate Philosophandi (Treatise on the Art of Philosophizing Soberly and Accurately). Section 2 gives an in-depth discussion of the history of the reception of Amo's life and work. MS trace the reception of Amo, from the mention of him by eighteenth-century white antiracists like Johann Friedrich Blumenbach to twentieth-century African and African-American writers like Kwame Nkrumah and William E. B. Du Bois, and the use of his work in twentieth-century debates about the delineation of African philosophy (49). MS argue convincingly that attempts to cast Amo as an African philosopher are mistaken: Amo was an early modern German philosopher. As such, Amo's philosophical views should be assessed against the intellectual context in which they were written (44–51). Section 3 treats of the political and intellectual climates at Halle and Wittenberg, the two institutions Amo was most closely affiliated with, by giving a fascinating study of the complex interplay between the more conservative Pietists and the liberal advocates of Enlightenment sensibilities in eighteenth-century Protestant Germany. MS trace the development of the two camps, starting from the founding of Wittenberg and Halle universities, to well-known controversies between Leibniz and Wolff and Pietistic thinkers like Georg Ernst Stahl. Considered "one of the most prominent Wolffians," Amo was affiliated with Leibnizian-Wolffianism (30). MS emphasize, however, that the two schools were not clearly delineated sects, and that antagonism was often confined to individual thinkers. Section 4 adumbrates the conventions and purposes of eighteenth-century dissertations, and their differences with modern-day dissertations. Sections 5 and 6 are devoted to a discussion of ancient and modern debates on action, passion, and sensation, as well as an explanation of the arguments of Impassivity and Distinct Idea. It is in this section that MS offer their interpretation of Amo's dissertations. MS situate both of Amo's dissertations in the modern debates about action/passion and...

Jean-Jacques Rousseau in the Context of the Enlightenment and the Contemporary Era

Jean-Jacques Rousseau is a special personage in the history of Enlightenment philosophy and European thought in general. This is so, because, on the one hand, he propounded ideas that were typical for the Enlightenment and greatly influenced his contemporaries—after all, it was he who inspired Kant with the idea of the autonomy of the will as a source of moral and juridical law, a conception which became the foundation of Kantian practical philosophy—but on the other criticised many popular ideas of his day, which from our contemporary perspective appear to have been the superstitions of the Enlightenment period. Rousseau rejected the uncritical apology of (universalistically understood) reason together with the “ethical universalism” professed by rationalists since Socrates. In his claim that human history ran in a circle (from nature in its primeval purity to nature as the expression of civilisational decay), he contested the Enlightenment’s widespread belief that it was a linear, continuous, cumulative and by nature unchangeably progressive process. Because of his transgression of the Enlightenment paradigm, Rousseau is sometimes considered to have been the first modern philosopher. And, in my opinion, rightly so, because his thought stood ahead of its time, and in many ways anticipated contemporary philosophy. I believe that especially the Frankfurt School owes a lot to his achievements. Rousseau’s thought already carried the main seeds of critical theory: the intertwinement of progress and regression over human history, emphasis on the mastering of nature and the destruction of the human element in the course of civilisational evolution, a social-historical (and not purely theoretical, as in Kant’s case) critique of reason for the sake of reason and not from the position of irrationality. Long before Max Horkheimer and his associates at the Institute of Social Research, and even ahead of Sigmund Freud, he saw reasons to ambivalently evaluate the results of human self-creation and to highlight the regressive tendencies present in human history.