Showing papers on "Enlightenment published in 1974"

The Rosicrucian Enlightenment

Abstract: A history of the role that the occult has played in the formation of modern science and medicine, The Rosicrucian Enlightenment has had a tremendous impact on our understanding of the western esoteric tradition. Beautifully illustrated, it remains one of those rare works of scholarship which the general reader simply cannot afford to ignore.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau dans la Révolution

Abstract: J.-J. Rousseau during the revolution. Like the philosophy of the Enlightenment in general, Rousseauism splintered during the Revolution. The democratic aspects of the Social Contract , which had been used to support parliamentary doctrine, now turned against it ; a ' patriotic ' interpretation developed against the social order and absolute monarchy. But soon ' aristocratic ' influence led to an emphasis on other aspects or reinterpreted aspects initially favourable to the Revolution. These developments were helped by the abstract nature of the bourgeois universalism found in the Social Contract and by the political compromises of the beginning of the Revolution. As long as one does not claim the existence of an abstract truth of Rousseauism distinct from the use made of it, we can accept Lakanal's paradox ' the Revolution taught us to undestand the Social Contract ' for the division of Rousseauism into contradictory doctrines corresponds to contradictions within Rousseau's thought.

A History of Judaism

Abstract: In the aftermath of World War II, the United States stood at a precipice The forces of modernity unleashed by the war had led to astonishing advances in daily life, but technology and mass culture also threatened to erode the country's traditional moral character As award-winning historian George M Marsden explains in The Twilight of the American Enlightenment, postwar Americans looked to the country's secular, liberal elites for guidance in this precarious time, but these intellectuals proved unable to articulate a coherent common cause by which America could chart its course Their failure lost them the faith of their constituents, paving the way for a Christian revival that offered America a firm new moral vision--one rooted in the Protestant values of the founders A groundbreaking reappraisal of the country's spiritual reawakening, The Twilight of the American Enlightenment shows how America found new purpose at the dawn of the Cold War

Franklin and Villarroel: Social Consciousness in Two Autobiographies

Abstract: SCHOLARS DEALING WITH THE ENLIGHTENMENT continue to recognize the documentary value of autobiography, a genre which discloses as much about collective social history as about individual private affairs. Not only does social consciousness weave itself into the autobiographical fabric, but the threads of class attitudes trace a sociomoral design of great subtlety. The perspectives suggested by this tapestry converge at the vanishing point of intellectual history, an infinitely large position capable of unifying all components of the picture. Among these perspectives, two important ones involve the relationship between the autobiographer's value system and the direction taken by his society's historical development. For example, Benjamin Franklin's personal code of behavior also summarized the ethos of a burgeoning society. The pragmatic character of American culture derived from the same axiological source as Franklin's. Therefore his autobiography may be taken as a gauge measuring his nation's bourgeois transformation and, eventually, its integration with the Enlightenment. In contrast, the problematic autobiography of Diego de Torres Villarroel1 raises other issues regarding Spain's class structure and the value system which sustained it. By Spanish standards. America's

Beethoven and the Enlightenment

Abstract: We all, I believe, accept Marx's 1843 exposition—in his Hegel-critique—of the revolutionary power of thought (“theory also becomes a material force as soon as it has gripped the masses”), of the disproportion between historical development and philosophical achievement (“as the ancient peoples went through their pre-history in imagination, in mythology, so we Germans have gone through our post-history in thought, in philosophy”), and of the manifold ways in which superstructural models (“dream history”) anticipate and help to bring about changes in the political process and in the mode of production itself (“you cannot abolish philosophy without making it a reality”).

Le barreau béarnais et la signification des Lumières en province (1770-1789)

Abstract: Bearnais lawyers and the Significance of the Enlightenment in the Provinces (1770-1789). The lawyers of Pau, conservative dignitaries of modest origins, can only be understood in relation to their position and the extent of their participation in the structures of the Ancien Regime. They mostly adopted the ideas of the Enlightenment but expressed them almost exclusively in literary and poetic forms. With one exception they ensured the spread of new ideas within the traditional framework. With the coming of the Revolution, political disillusionment was widespread and often precipitate ; 1789 halted the progress of the Enlightenment and sterilised thought in the provinces. The greater had been their participation in the spread of the Enlightenment, the briefer and more restrained was their participation in the Revolution.

Rousseau’s Men: As Nature Makes Them, and as They make Themselves

Abstract: For a time in the 1740s Rousseau moved in a circle of men whose literary achievements would soon gain for them the reputation of spokesmen for the French enlightenment. Among them were d’Alembert, author of the Preliminary Discourse to the Encyclopedia of Diderot, which was published at the beginning of the first volume of that Encyclopedia in 1751; Diderot, editor of the Encyclopedia; and Condillac, whose Essay Concerning the Origin of Human Knowledge, published in 1746, left its mark on d’Alembert’s Discourse and other writings of the Enlightenment.