Spirit Of Enlightenment Research Articles

Reclaiming the Enlightenment: Toward a Politics of Radical Engagement

Reclaiming the Enlightenment: Toward a Politics of Radical Engagement. By Stephen Eric Bronner. New York: Columbia University Press, 2004. 224p. $29.50.Stephen Eric Bronner reclaims what he takes to be the genuine spirit of Enlightenment thought from a variety of contemporaneous and historical critics on the Left and Right, but first and foremost from Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno's Dialectic of Enlightenment (DE) (1947). Bronner contends that many criticisms of Enlightenment thought today can be traced to what he characterizes as Horkheimer and Adorno's brilliant but ultimately inaccurate and misleading analysis. The losses involved are not only scholarly but political, Bronner argues, for progressive activists and intellectuals today can benefit from the ethical orientations and philosophical temperaments that informed Enlightenment thinkers. Reclaiming the Enlightenment is also a response to historians of political thought who have too often, in Bronner's opinion, missed the forest for the trees. While the recent historiography of Enlightenment thought has deepened and broadened our understanding of particular figures, themes, and regional variants of eighteenth-century political philosophy, he contends that the contemporary emphasis on multiple Enlightenments can have the effect of obscuring what he takes to be the fundamental ethos of Enlightenment thought.

Aux origines du poeme en prose francais (1750-1850) (review)

Reviewed by: Aux origines du poème en prose français (1750-1850) Catherine Witt Vincent-Munnia, Nathalie, Simone Bernard-Griffiths, and Robert Pickering, eds. Aux origines du poème en prose français (1750-1850). Paris: Honoré Champion, 2003. Pp. 620. ISBN2-7453-0660-X Literary scholars view Baudelaire's Petits poèmes en prose (1869) as a seminal work that both crystallizes the generic identity of the modern prose poem and connects the precursory experiments of the Romantic poets with those later undertaken by the Symbolists. [End Page 149] However, it is also widely acknowledged that the prose poem emerged long before Baudelaire's time. Initially coined to designate prose epics in the style of Fénelon's Aventures de Télémaque (1699), the term poème en prose rapidly became associated with a variety of "unorthodox" literary practices such as novels and translations. By the mid-eighteenth century, this association resulted in the pervasive infiltration of the concept into the discursive spheres of poetry and æsthetics: it is notably invoked in Du Bos' Réflexions critiques sur la poésie et la peinture (1719), Jaucourt's article for the Encyclopédie (1765), and Marmontel's Essai sur les romans (1772). Positing a direct lineage between the classical epic in prose and the modern prose poem, the editors of this collection envision a history of the genre for the period spanning 1750 to 1850. The volume comprises forty contributions (most of which are by specialists in the field), and abounds in stimulating essays on literary works and topics typically ignored by critics. As such, it will surely become a scholarly reference for those interested in the poetic effervescence that followed the breakdown of Classicism. Missing, however, is a critical introduction conceptualizing the relations between the classical and the romantic prose poem in terms other than an impressionistic genealogy. As it stands, the preface gives a cursory and sometimes inaccurate summary of the contributions, foregrounding Fénelon, Chateaubriand, and Bertrand as key figures in the genre's chronological development. The editors' ostensible reluctance to break away from diachronic interpretative models is all the more surprising since many contributors provide them with the critical avenues to do so. Marc-Mathieu Münch, for instance, makes a case for an æsthetic approach to the prose poem, while Adriano Marchetti outlines an ontological hermeneutics based on Aristotelian conceptions of reflexivity and musicality. Part One, "Poésie et prose," which heeds the poetic investment of prose in the eighteenth century, begins with Jacques-Philippe Saint-Gérand's lexicological analysis of the syntagma poème en prose. In the subsequent survey of the Journal encyclopédique, Jacques Wagner reveals the extent to which, by the 1750s, versified poetry had become anathema to the spirit of Enlightenment. The next grouping of essays identifies instances of new poetic practices distinctive to the prose epic: cadence and harmony in Fénelon's Télémaque (Jean Foyard); the metapoetic value of the burlesque in Cazotte's Ollivier (Christian Leroy); the semantic and cultural modernity of Marmontel's Les Incas (Sylvain Menant); and the biblical intertext of Dugat's La Mort d'Azaël (Max Milner). A second section, devoted to the influence of new translation practices, attends to various adaptations of Ossian's verse both in Italian (Catherine O'Brien) and in French (Michel Bellot-Antony and Dany Hadjadj). The third section theorizes the relation between poetry and the arts. Robert Pickering explores the impact of new conceptions of phenomenal spatiality on the re-thinking of poetic space, while Gérard Loubinoux re-situates the question of poetic lyricism within the Querelle opposing Gluck and Piccinni. The fourth section examines the renewal of descriptive prose in light of a nascent pre-romantic sensibility. Here, case studies include analyses of the literal / corporeal manifestations of peripatetic thought in the Rêveries (Michel Philippon); the interplay between analytic and lyrical discourse in the first Promenade (Roger Barny); Bernardin de Saint-Pierre's ethnographic descriptions (Gabriel-Robert Thibault); the [End Page 150] breakdown of classical mimetic codes in Senancour's Oberman (Barbara Wright); and the function of Chateaubriand's tableaux in operating the shift from poetic prose...

Спроба виведення «нової породи» людей у Росії XVIII століття та російська самоідентифікація

The paradigm of the interaction of "own" and "foreign", Russia and Europe defined Russian culture during the 18th-20th centuries. The utopian idea of creating a "new kind" of people, which appeared in the circle of Catherine II under the influence of European Enlightenment ideas, accurately characterizes this paradigm. The Enlightenment was a radical rejection of the traditional feudal worldview, a rejection of the old foundations of life. The author emphasizes that Catherine II and her entourage were not determined to radically change the existing social order in the spirit of enlightenment, choosing a more conservative path of "enlightenment absolutism". In addition, the project of creating a "new person" through education in isolated institutions points to the paradoxical nature of this idea and its implementation in the history of Russia.

:Visions of Persia: Mapping the Travels of Adam Olearius

This work examines the travel account of a German baroque author who journeyed in search of silk from Northern Germany, through Muscovy, to the court of Shah Safi in Isfahan. Adam Olearius introduced literature, history and arts to the German-speaking public; his frank appraisal of customs foreshadows the enlightened spirit of the eighteenth century (influencing Montesquieu's Persian Letters as well as Goethe's West-Eastern Divan) and prepares the way for German Romanticism's infatuation with poetry. Brancaforte focuses on the visual and discursive nexus uniting Olearius's text with the numerous engravings that supplement the book. The emphasis falls on contextualized readings of Olearius's decorative frontispieces and his new and improved map of Persia and the Caspian Sea, as expressions of early modern subjectivity.

Friedrich Eberhard von Rochow's Education of_the Children in Rural Communities and its Impact on Urban Educational Reforms in the Eighteenth Century*

Friedrich Eberhard von Rochow (1734-1805) - squire, educational reformer, writer of textbooks and agricultural innovator - tried in the true spirit of Enlightenment to impart the concept of reason to the people, especially countryfolk. In Rochow's view, the rural population's situation had to be improved materially as well as intellectually in order to alleviate the misery of wide sections of the population and thus to achieve an improvement of public welfare. His Enlightenment interest was primarily aimed at pedagogical reforms in order to teach children in the rural communities "how to think" and - influenced through a moral-philosophical thinking at that time - to lay the foundations for moral judgement in their minds. The article deals with the question of what influence Rochow's pedagogical thoughts and school reforms had on other school projects of the Enlightenment. Taking the development of the School of Industry (1788-1811) in Hamburg as an example, I shall take a closer look at the transfer to urban areas of the educational ideas that originally related to the rural space. The development of the School of Industry highlighted the fact that Rochow's pedagogical thoughts could not simply be transferred to the urban space, even though the problem of poverty and a new work ethic had initiated the reform projects in both areas. The different life worlds of city and countryside and, especially, the specific situation and living conditions of the urban underclasses had to be considered for the institutional, organisational and curricular formation of the school project in the city.

Recreating Prometheus

Recreating Prometheus

L'urbanisme à Guérande au XVIIIe siècle

A commonplace, worthy heir of the first pages of the novel by Honore de Balzac « Béatrix » want that the spirit of Enlightenment touched very superficially the elites of the town of Guerande. Nevertheless, new ideas notably in matters of town planning not let indifferent the community of inhabitants or the representatives of central power and some of them wanted after to change overturns the face of the city. However, paraphrasing William Shakespeare there was only : « Much ado about nothing. »

Postmodernizmas ir pozityvizmas

Straipsnyje analizuojamas pozityvizmo ir postmodernizmo santykis, jų nurodomi panašumai ir skirtumai. Pozityvizmas buvo mėgstamas postmodernistų kritikos objektas: jie laikė pastarąjį visų galimų blogybių įsikūnijimu, pirmiausia epistemologinio fundamentizmo, optimizmo, progresyvizmo. Straipsnyje parodomas šios kritikos nepagrįstumas. Aptariama postmodernizmo sąvoka, postmodernaus mąstymo paradigmos bruožai, jos santykis su modernizmu, skiriamas nuosaikusis ir radikalusis postmodernizmas. Pozityvizmo ir postmodernizmo panašumais laikytina filosofijos socialinė orientacija, antimetafizinė nuostata, taip pat kai kurie svarbūs epistemologiniai bruožai, pretenduojantys būti antipozityvistiniais – reliatyvizmas ir falibilizmas, t. y. įsitikinimas, kad visos tiesos yra santykinės ir jas galima paneigti. Daroma išvada, kad nėra pagrindo postmodernizmo laikyti revoliuciniu lūžiu filosofijoje, įveikusiu visas modernistines, tarp jų ir pozityvistinę, filosofijas. Pozityvizmas (ypač loginis empirizmas) gerokai susilpnino švietėjišką tikėjimą absoliučiomis tiesomis ir įrodomomis vertybėmis, o postmodernizmas tik tęsė šį darbą.

Constructing 'epilepsy': a case study of medical student texts from 1894-1994

This study examined the disease label 'epilepsy' and the social processes that have shaped and legitimated the concept. Using the methodology of content analysis, medical student textbooks listed in Calendars and Handbooks at an Australian univer sity were sampled at ten year intervals over the period 1894-1994. The findings of this research show medical knowledge concerning 'epilepsy' has not been a linear progression of medical enlightenment and humanitarian spirit. To the contrary, the journey was fraught with dissimulation and despair. A hidden curriculum of eugenics permeates medical texts. Clinical definitions of 'epilepsy' remain problematic as physicians grapple with a widely held but false notion that their predecessors helped to generate.

Lafayette in Two Worlds: Public Cultures and Personal Identities in an Age of Revolutions.

in Two Worlds: Public Cultures and Personal Identities in an Age of Revolutions. By Lloyd Kramer. (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1996. Pp. xii, 345. Illustrations. Cloth $39.95; paper $19.95.) had a truly remarkable life. Best known for playing key roles in both American and French revolutions, returned from his Austrian captivity in 1799 to become center of an international network of liberals. He capped this latter career with his pivotal involvement in 1830 French Revolution, ensuring and legitimating Louis Phillipe's peaceful ascension to throne of France. In this valuable book, Lloyd focuses on last thirty years of Lafayette's life, when he served as intellectual mediator and political symbol for liberals on both sides of Atlantic. Initially, it must be noted begins his study of with a pair of exceedingly unusual chapters. Fortunately, they are both brief. correctly notes for the American Revolution was definitive experience of his life (22). Yet devotes just twelve pages to those heroic events, finding Lafayette's significance in serving as an eminent 'other' whose praise and support validated Revolution for Americans (19). Likewise, finds Lafayette's more controversial role in French Revolution worthy of only a few pages. Instead of first forty-three years of Lafayette's life, these opening chapters set forth notion was a text. claims to work on assumption that biographical narratives come closer to historical realities when they resemble cubist paintings (8). To construct form of art, pays homage to worst excesses of trendy literary theory. Chapter two is titled a Dumbbell or a Shredded Text? (131). How about neither? Was not a historical actor, doing best he could with enormous sincerity and consistency, and accomplishing more in his lifetime than a convention full of pretentious academics? Kramer's own view of is muddled by his introductory pages. Lafayette (in quotation marks), the man who flourished as a text, self consciously adjusted his adroitly enough to remain a best-seller (33). Did Lafayette know he was a living in overlapping 'worlds' (12)? Kramer's subject becomes a pale shadow of reality as hostile readers of 'Lafayette' unraveled text (34). It is Kramer's begins to unravel, as his transformation of into a contradicts rest of book, which does a wonderful job presenting human. The early effort to negate Lafayette's humanity is inexplicable, unless intends to construct a narrative of Kramer as postmodern historian. recovers from contagion of literary theory and rest of book settles into a solid and fascinating examination of Lafayette's intellectual life. comes alive to modem reader as a dedicated idealist and political activist and as a very good man who remained true to his beliefs and his friends. began his second career as intellectual mediator in opposition to Napoleon's government. For thirty years, his home at La Grange served as a vital transit point for liberals from throughout Europe fighting for political reform and seeking allies in a myriad of struggles. Kramer, following on John Stuart Mill's observation was the living representative of whatever was best and purest in spirit of Enlightenment (7), perceives as embodiment of eighteenthcentury ideas and most effective defender of natural rights. Yet also comes across as one of most positive and forwardlooking men of his age. …

Hegel's Critique of the Triumph of Verstand in Modernity

In his lectures on the philosophy of history Hegel passes this famous judgement on the French Revolution. “Anaxagoras had been the first to say that nous governs the world; but only now did humanity come to recognize that thought should rule spiritual actuality. This was thus a magnificent dawn”. What first gave rise to discontent in France, in Hegel's view, were the heavy burdens that pressed upon the people and the government's inability to procure for the Court the means of supporting its luxury and extravagance. But soon the new spirit of freedom and enlightenment began to stir in men's minds and carry them forward to revolution. “One should not, therefore, declare oneself against the assertion”, Hegel concludes, “that the Revolution received its first impulse from Philosophy” (VPW, p 924).However, Hegel points out that the legacy of the revolution is actually an ambiguous one. For, although the principles which guided the revolution were those of reason and were indeed magnificent – namely, that humanity is born to freedom and self-determination – they were held fast in their abstraction and turned “polemically”, and at times terribly, against the existing order (VPW, p 925). What ultimately triumphed in the revolution was thus not concrete reason itself, but abstract reason or understanding (VPW, p 923). In Hegel's view, the enduring legacy of such revolutionary understanding was, not so much the Terror, but the principle that “the subjective wills of the many should hold sway” (VPW, p 932). This principle, which Hegel calls the principle of “liberalism” and which we would call the principle of majority rule, has since spread from France to become one of the governing principles of modern stat. It has been used to justify granting universal suffrage, to justify depriving corporations and the nobility of the right to sit in the legislature, and in some cases to justify abolishing the monarchy. What is of crucial importance for Hegel, however, is that such measures have not rendered the state more modern and rational, but have in fact distorted the modern state.

Dissatisfied Enlightenment: Certain Difficulties Concerning The Public Use Of One's Reason

“Have the courage to use your own understanding!”. Thus Kant explicates the motto of enlightenment, sapere aude, inviting perhaps the readers of the Berlinische Monatschrift to follow suit. “[B]e for yourselves what you all are in yourselves – reasonable”. Thus Hegel introduces the pure insight of enlightened Spirit which addresses its emancipatory call to every consciousness. The apprised readers of the Phenomenology would know to temper their enthusiasm. Those who manage to get that far without doubting the clarity and simplicity of the Wahlspruch of enlightenment, are likely to be dissappointed by Hegel's subsequent analysis, which is largely intended to test such convictions. At the very least, the determined Aufklärer will have to consider whether the normative confidence of ‘dare to know’ is premised on unqualified theoretical certainty, and whether this instruction does not have an altogether more sombre half in the uncertainties of enlightened practice, let alone the terrifying certainty of the guillotine. In the following, I will argue that Kant modifies his initial definition of enlightenment by emphasising the collective and discursive dimensions of the enlightening process, the “freedom to make public use of one's reason in all matters”. I will then argue that Hegel adopts a similar approach in the Phenomenology but evaluates differently the problems involved in establishing a public for reason and in assessing the rationality of this public and proposes a different model of public debate.

Beyond the Enlightenment Mentality: A Confucian Perspective on Ethics, Migration, and Global Stewardship

The American Heritage Dictionary(1992:611) defines the as [a] philosophical movement of the eighteenth century that emphasized the use of reason to scrutinize previously accepted doctrines and traditions and that brought about many humanitarian reforms. This definition seems, in light of recent discussions on multiculturalism, not only inadequate but simple-minded. Even Immanuel Kant's impassioned characterization of the Enlightenment spirit as dare to know! is perceived to signal conflicts of interpretation rather than a straightforward assertion of human rationality. As Martin Jay (1984:30) comments, the Enlightenment is

Dworkin, Abortion, Religious Liberty, and the Spirit of Enlightenment

Dworkin, Abortion, Religious Liberty, and the Spirit of Enlightenment

The Practice of Education and the Courtship of Youthful Sensibility

Traditionally,‘education’ in Western civilisation has involved those controlling the enterprise securing a privileged status for certain beliefs and outlooks. This proprietorial assumption of rights over the sensibilities of pupils, as it is described here, has, it is argued, survived the Enlightenment spirit of critique of power and enjoyed a renaissance in the recent ‘practical’ educational reforms in some Western countries. A case is made for saying that understanding educational practice must attend not to disembedded ‘concepts’ but to what actually befalls our human experience when teaching and learning take place. This experience, it is argued, is inescapably a courtship, but courtships can be honourable or dubious, imprisoning or emancipating. Taking its cue from the historical Socrates, the paper suggests that the articulation and defence of emancipatory cultural courtships are among the most overlooked, promising and practical of tasks for the philosophy of education.

The Ethics of Enlightenment: Goya and Kant

Anthony J. Cascardi THE ETHICS OF ENLIGHTENMENT: GOYA AND KANT The drama of the Enlightenment has typically been staged as a struggle between the secular illuminations ofreason and the archaic forces of darkness, superstition, and deceit whose resurgence threatens to demonize the rational world. On the one side stands the Kantian vision of the human subject as guided by rational ideals, as obedient to the claims of reason, and as respectful of the inward call of duty and the moral law; in contrast stands a figure like Goya, whose work is usually read as an attempt to confront rational ideals with the overwhelming force of all that is archaic, demonic, and repressed in enlightened cultural life. Indeed, it may well seem that a figure like Goya roundly contradicts or simply refuses Kant, thus rejecting out of hand the Enlightenment culture project and its attempt to justify morality on the basis of reason.1 In Arthur Danto's review of Goya and the Spirit ofEnlightenment (Madrid, Boston, and New York, 1988-89), for instance, the Caprichos are described as the complete antithesis of the Enlightenment 's moral world; they show us "whores and fools, bawds and ninnies, thieves and asses, all engaged in mutual exploitation, with menacing birds and animals as witnesses . . . there is not even a God to save us. The best we can do is acknowledge the black truth."2 Similarly, it is customary to regard paintings like The Third of May and the etchings in the Disasters of War as Goya's anticipatory attempt to disclose what Horkheimer and Adorno would later describe as the self-canceling effects of the Enlightenment on social and political life.3 While it may be tempting to see Goya's work as the result of such a rejection of the Enlightenment, it remains nonetheless unclear how this work might then be seen as ethical. Having undertaken such a thorPhilosophy and Literature, © 1991, 15: 189-211 190Philosophy and Literature oughgoing critique of the Enlightenment, is it possible for Goya's work to reclaim an ethical force? In the pages that follow I hope to trace out a somewhat more complex pattern in which Enlightenment culture is seen as a contradictory or "detotalized" whole and in which the problem ofethics is defined in terms ofa series ofcontradictory internal demands, such that the various frameworks in terms of which obligations are established cannot be reconciled. By viewing the Enlightenment as a field of internal contradictions rather than as the site of a simple opposition (Goya / Kant), it may be possible to account for the interpretive resistance offered by a painter who respects the Enlightenment's demands in the genre ofportraiture while thoroughly challenging its world in the "black" paintings of the Quinta del Sordo. Thus rather than resolve the apparent contradictions within Goya's work by reference to personal and biographical factors quite alien to the painting (e.g., his shifting political fortunes; his increasing deafness), I propose to accept the various categories in which Goya demands interpretation as themselves irreducible and to view the obligations they impose on the viewer as internal to his work, even though the responses they demand may prove unsustainable by it. Accordingly, I hope to present a picture of Enlightenment culture as a field in which conflicting and sometimes irreconcilable obligations are felt, regardless of the medium through which they may be transmitted. The interpretive model I have in mind would thus displace the importance of the overarching contrast between light and dark in favor of a view in which the structural allegory of enlightenment is subordinated to the various frameworks in which the dramatic encounter between darkness and light takes place. Far from merely contextualizing an opposition that remains otherwise invariant throughout the work, these contexts in fact provide the terms in which the drama of enlightenment can be seen as having an ethical force. Thus despite the fact that critics have for many years interpreted works like Truth Rescued by Time, Witnessed by History (1797-98; fig. 1) along strictly allegorical lines, I would suggest that a fundamental resistance to allegorization reveals the ethical significance of the contradictions embedded within Goya's work. The contradictions just referred...

Norman Bowie and Richard Rorty on multinationals: Does business ethics need ?metaphysical comfort??

Norman Bowie wrote an article on the moral obligations of multinational corporations in 1987. This paper is a response to Bowie, but more importantly, it is designed to articulate the force and substance of the pragmatist philosophy developed by Richard Rorty. In his article, Bowie suggested that “moral universalism’ (which he endorses) is the only credible method of doing business ethics across cultures and that “cultural relativism’ and ‘ethnocentrism’ are not. Bowie, in a manner surprisingly common among contemporary philosophers, lumps Rorty into a ‘bad guy’ category without careful analysis of his philosophy and ascribes to him views which clearly do not fit. I attempt to provide both a more careful articulation of Rorty's views, and to use his pragmatism to illustrate an approach to business ethics which is more fruitful than Bowie's. This brand of philosophy follows the Enlightenment spirit of toleration and attempts to set aside questions of ‘Truth,’ whether religious or philosophical, and have ethics centered around what James called ‘that which is good in the way of belief.’ Rather than looking for ‘metaphysical foundations’ or some type of external justification, ethicists perform their craft from within the cultural traditions, narratives and practices of their society.

Goya and the Spirit of Enlightenment

The works on exhibition in Goya and the Spirit of Enlightenment spanned the artist's career from 1770 to 1828 and—in contrast to other recent exhibitions dedicated to Goya—were securely attributable to the artist. Some, such as the portrait of Mariana de Pontejos (cat. 9; 1786; Washington, National Gallery of Art) have long been familiar to U.S. audiences. Several genre scenes, originally conceived as cabinet paintings, that had been exhibited in Madrid in 1983 now made their American debut. The selection of portraits, ranging from the official to the intimate, was laudable; regrettably absent was the early group portrait of The Family of Don Luis de Borbon (cat. 5; 1784; Parma, Fondazione Magnani Rocca), which did not arrive in Boston (where I saw the show).

Goya and the spirit of enlightenment

Goya and the spirit of enlightenment

Goya and the Spirit of Enlightenment

The works on exhibition in Goya and the Spirit of Enlightenment spanned the artist's career from 1770 to 1828 and—in contrast to other recent exhibitions dedicated to Goya—were securely attributable to the artist. Some, such as the portrait of Mariana de Pontejos (cat. 9; 1786; Washington, National Gallery of Art) have long been familiar to U.S. audiences. Several genre scenes, originally conceived as cabinet paintings, that had been exhibited in Madrid in 1983 now made their American debut. The selection of portraits, ranging from the official to the intimate, was laudable; regrettably absent was the early group portrait of The Family of Don Luis de Borbon (cat. 5; 1784; Parma, Fondazione Magnani Rocca), which did not arrive in Boston (where I saw the show).