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Showing papers on "Enlightenment published in 2011"


Book
01 Jan 2011
TL;DR: Pierro et al. as discussed by the authors argue that modernity and its cultural institutions are actually making us better people, and that humans have become progressively less, not more, violent from pre-history to today.
Abstract: Do we really care about each other less than we did in the past? This myth-destroying book shows that, contrary to popular belief, humankind has become progressively less, not more, violent from prehistory to today. Even the twentieth century, commonly perceived as the most brutal, is part of this trend. Debunking both the idea of the 'noble savage', and the Hobbesian notion of a 'nasty, brutish and short' life, and ranging over everything from the Enlightenment to warfare, art to religion, Steven Pinker argues that modernity and its cultural institutions is actually making us better people.

326 citations



Journal Article
TL;DR: Jodi Dean as mentioned in this paper argues that the once sharp edges of social movement vanguards have been dulled by their emersion in a cloud of meaningless and self-serving chatter that merely adds to the flow of digital detritus that she defines as the essence of communicative capitalism.
Abstract: Democracy and Other Neoliberal Fantasies: Communicative Capitalism and Left Politics. Jodi Dean. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2009, 232 pages. $74.95 hbk. $21.95 pbk. Jodi Dean is a multitasker. She teaches political science at Hobart and William Smith Colleges, and is the Erasmus Professor of the Humanities at Erasmus University in Rotterdam. She is also a critical scholar worthy of the title. Rather than following the well-worn path of criticism directed at the "powers that be," Dean directs her attention toward the infirmities within and among critics and activists on the political left in the United States. At the heart of her critique is her suggestion that the once-sharp edges of social movement vanguards have been dulled by their emersion in a cloud of meaningless and self-serving chatter that merely adds to the flow of digital detritus that she defines as the essence of "communicative capitalism." Despite the fact that most of the analyses that serve as core of her six tightly organized chapters were written before we had much experience with the "postpartisan" and "post-racial" versions of progressive politics as performed by the Obama administration, most readers could fiU in the blanks on what her assessment would likely be. Dean lays the groundwork for her attack on liberal capitulation to a neoliberal hegemony by identifying several core themes in the approach to social policy that achieved dominance during the Clinton years. Of particular significance is her suggestion that the discursive frameworks that supported progressive struggles for the "rights" of various oppressed groups served to reinforce the "position of the victim" at the heart of these movements. She then suggests that it is precisely the character and capacity of communicative capitalism that creates "ideal discursive habitats for the thriving of the victim identity." Although Dean gives a central place of honor to recent work in psychoanalytic theory, the examples, arguments, and illustrations that she provides throughout the book wUl still generate understanding and appreciation among those of us not well grounded in Lacanian Marxism. Dean explicates her take on the nature of communicative capitalism, appropriately enough, in a chapter on technology. In essence, she argues that rather than serving the democratic functions of enlightenment that we expect to find in a Habermasian public sphere, the everexpanding flow of commentary and personal expression exists as Uttle more than circulating content, something akin to a warm bath. For example, she suggests that pointed criticism "doesn't require an answer because it doesn't stick as criticism. It functions as just another opinion offered into the media-stream." Thus, her definition of communicative capitaUsm is "talk without response." In her view, communications technology helps to provide a "fantasy of participation" where taking poUtical action is reduced to an act of talking into the space of flows of which the Internet is the deepest end. …

125 citations


Book
15 Apr 2011
TL;DR: The Shock of the Ancient World as discussed by the authors surveys the diverse array of aesthetic models presented in these ancient works and considers how they both helped to undermine the rigid codes of neoclassicism and pave the way for the innovative philosophies of the Enlightenment.
Abstract: The cultural battle known as the Quarrel of the Ancients and Moderns has most often been depicted as pitting antiquarian conservatives against the insurgent critics of established authority. One of the most public controversies of early modern Europe, the Quarrel served as a sly cover for more deeply opposed views about the value of literature and the arts. "The Shock of the Ancient" turns the canonical vision of those events on its head by demonstrating how the defenders of Greek literature - rather than clinging to an outmoded tradition - celebrated the radically different practices of the ancient world. At a time when the constraints of decorum and the politics of French absolutism quashed the expression of cultural differences, the ancient world presented a disturbing face of otherness. Larry F. Norman explores how the authoritative status of ancient Greek texts allowed them to justify literary depictions of the scandalous. "The Shock of the Ancient" surveys the diverse array of aesthetic models presented in these ancient works and considers how they both helped to undermine the rigid codes of neoclassicism and pave the way for the innovative philosophies of the Enlightenment. Broadly appealing to students of European literature, art history, and philosophy, this book is an important contribution to early modern literary and cultural debates.

117 citations


Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: The need to re-examine established ways of thinking about secularism and its relationship to feminism has arisen in the context of the confluence of a number of developments including: the increasing dominance of the "clash of civilizations" thesis; the expansion of postmodern critiques of Enlightenment rationality to encompass questions of religion; and sustained critiques of the ‘secularization thesis'.
Abstract: The need to re-examine established ways of thinking about secularism and its relationship to feminism has arisen in the context of the confluence of a number of developments including: the increasing dominance of the ‘clash of civilizations’ thesis; the expansion of postmodern critiques of Enlightenment rationality to encompass questions of religion; and sustained critiques of the ‘secularization thesis’. Conflicts between the claims of women's equality and the claims of religion are well-documented vis-a-vis all major religions and across all regions. The ongoing moral panic about the presence of Islam in Europe, marked by a preoccupation with policing Muslim women's dress, reminds us of the centrality of women and gender power relations in the interrelation of religion, culture and the state. Added to postmodern and other critiques of the secular-religious binary, most sociological research now contradicts the equation of modernization with secularization. This article focuses on the challenges that these developments pose to politically oriented feminist thinking and practice. It argues that non-oppressive feminist responses require a new critical engagement with secularism as a normative principle in democratic, multicultural societies. To inform this process, the author maps and links discussions across different fields of feminist scholarship, in the sociology of religion and in political theory. She organizes the main philosophical traditions and fault lines that form the intellectual terrain at the intersection of feminism, religion and politics in two broad groups: feminist critiques of the Enlightenment critique of religion; and feminist scholarship at the critical edges of the Enlightenment tradition. The author argues that notwithstanding the fragmented nature of feminist debates in this area, common ground is emerging across different politically oriented approaches: all emphasize ‘democracy’ and the values that underpin it as the larger discursive frame in which the principle of secularism can be redefined with emancipatory intent in a neo-secular age.

74 citations


Book
11 Nov 2011
TL;DR: Aravamudan as mentioned in this paper reveals how "Oriental" tales, pseudo-ethnographies, sexual fantasies, and political satires took Europe by storm during the eighteenth century.
Abstract: Srinivas Aravamudan here reveals how "Oriental" tales, pseudo-ethnographies, sexual fantasies, and political satires took Europe by storm during the eighteenth century. Naming this body of fiction "Enlightenment Orientalism", he poses a range of urgent questions that uncovers the interdependence of "Oriental" tales and domestic fiction, thereby challenging standard scholarly narratives about the rise of the novel. More than mere exoticism, "Oriental" tales fascinated ordinary readers as well as intellectuals, taking the fancy of philosophers such as Voltaire, Montesquieu, and Diderot in France, and writers such as Defoe, Swift, and Goldsmith in Britain. Aravamudan shows that "Enlightenment Orientalism" was a significant movement that criticized irrational European practices even while sympathetically bridging differences among civilizations. A sophisticated reinterpretation of the history of the novel, "Enlightenment Orientalism" is sure to be welcomed as a landmark work in eighteenth-century studies.

70 citations


Book
01 Dec 2011
TL;DR: The Sciences of the Soul as discussed by the authors is the first attempt to explain the development of the disciplinary conception of psychology from its appearance in the late sixteenth century to its redefinition at the end of the seventeenth and its emergence as an institutionalized field in the eighteenth Fernando Vidal traces this development through university courses and textbooks, encyclopedias, and non-academic books, as well as through various histories of psychology.
Abstract: "The Sciences of the Soul" is the first attempt to explain the development of the disciplinary conception of psychology from its appearance in the late sixteenth century to its redefinition at the end of the seventeenth and its emergence as an institutionalized field in the eighteenth Fernando Vidal traces this development through university courses and textbooks, encyclopedias, and nonacademic books, as well as through various histories of psychology Vidal reveals that psychology existed before the eighteenth century essentially as a "physics of the soul", and it belonged as much to natural philosophy as to Christian anthropology It remained so until the eighteenth century, when the "science of the soul" became the "science of the mind" Vidal demonstrates that this Enlightenment refashioning took place within a Christian framework, and he explores how the preservation of the Christian idea of the soul was essential to the development of the science Not only were most psychologists convinced that an empirical science of the soul was compatible with Christian faith; their perception that psychology preserved the soul also helped to elevate its rank as an empirical science Broad-ranging and impeccably researched, this book will be of wide importance in the history and philosophy of psychology, the history of the human sciences more generally, and in the social and intellectual history of eighteenth-century Europe

64 citations


Book
24 Oct 2011
TL;DR: Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer as mentioned in this paper describe a philosophical jam-session in which the two thinkers improvise freely, often wildly, on central themes of their work - theory and practice, labor and leisure, domination and freedom - in a political register found nowhere else in their writing.
Abstract: Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer wrote the central text of "critical theory," Dialectic of Enlightenment, a measured critique of the Enlightenment reason that, they argued, had resulted in fascism and totalitarianism. Towards a New Manifesto shows the two philosophers in a uniquely spirited and free-flowing exchange of ideas. This book is a record of their discussions over three weeks in the spring of 1956, recorded with a view to the production of a contemporary version of The Communist Manifesto. A philosophical jam-session in which the two thinkers improvise freely, often wildly, on central themes of their work - theory and practice, labor and leisure, domination and freedom - in a political register found nowhere else in their writing. Amid a careening flux of arguments, aphorisms and asides, in which the trenchant alternates with the reckless, the playful with the ingenuous, positions are swapped and contradictions unheeded, without any compulsion for consistency. A thrilling example of philosophy in action and a compelling map of a possible passage to a new world.

62 citations


Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: Atheism, as a subject in its own right, has received comparatively little scholarly attention in the past as discussed by the authors, and the main players are shown to be individuals, with different foci that cannot be encapsulated by labels such as ‘Enlightenment’.
Abstract: Atheism, as a subject in its own right, has received comparatively little scholarly attention in the past. This study begins by unpacking the term ‘atheism’, specifying an appropriate timescale and limiting the scope of the investigation to the work of four key authors. Their critiques of religion are considered and common themes under the appellation ‘dangerous religion’ are discerned. The author then pursues a closer reading of the texts, discerning what agenda is promoted in opposition to the heavily criticised ‘religion’, and discussing contemporary atheism in relation to Enlightenment values. Finally, the author examines why contemporary atheism fails to state its agenda more explicitly. The main players are shown to be individuals, with different foci that cannot be encapsulated by labels such as ‘Enlightenment’. Indications emerge of a ‘consciousness raising’ agenda, resulting from various factors that make contemporary unbelief a particularly organisationally ‘precarious’ phenomenon – a precariousness enhanced by an implicit ambivalent attitude to certain aspects of Christianity, and a correlation with Enlightenment, Romantic and New Age concerns.

52 citations


Book
07 Apr 2011

43 citations


Book
01 Jan 2011
TL;DR: 1. The Varieties of Popular Medicine around 1700: anything new?
Abstract: 1. The Varieties of Popular Medicine around 1700: anything new? Andrew Wear 2. Acquiring Surgical Know-How: Occupational and lay instruction in early eighteenth-century London Phillip Wilson 3. Popularization and Vernacular Medicine: The reader and the text Mary Fissel 4. The Popularization of Medicine in France, 1650-1900 Matthew Ramsey 5. The Non-Naturals Made Easy Antoinette Emch-Deriaz 6. Popularizing Medicine During the Spanish Enlightenment Enrique Periguero 7. Tissot as Part of Medical Enlightenment in Hungary Maria Szlatky 8. "All those Authors are Foreigners": The Americanization of domestic medical literature Norman Gevitz 9. "Mr Scott's Case: A view of London medicine in 1825 Stephen Jacyna

Book
01 Nov 2011
TL;DR: Rivett as discussed by the authors argues that empiricism and natural philosophy combined with Puritanism to transform the scope of religious activity in colonial New England from the 1630s to the Great Awakening of the 1740s.
Abstract: The Science of the Soul challenges long-standing notions of Puritan provincialism as antithetical to the Enlightenment. Sarah Rivett demonstrates that, instead, empiricism and natural philosophy combined with Puritanism to transform the scope of religious activity in colonial New England from the 1630s to the Great Awakening of the 1740s. In an unprecedented move, Puritan ministers from Thomas Shepard and John Eliot to Cotton Mather and Jonathan Edwards studied the human soul using the same systematic methods that philosophers applied to the study of nature. In particular, they considered the testimonies of tortured adolescent girls at the center of the Salem witch trials, Native American converts, and dying women as a source of material insight into the divine. Conversions and deathbed speeches were thus scrutinized for evidence of grace in a way that bridged the material and the spiritual, the visible and the invisible, the worldly and the divine. In this way, the "science of the soul" was as much a part of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century natural philosophy as it was part of post-Reformation theology. Rivett's account restores the unity of religion and science in the early modern world and highlights the role and importance of both to transatlantic circuits of knowledge formation. | The Science of the Soul challenges long-standing notions of Puritan provincialism as antithetical to the Enlightenment. Sarah Rivett demonstrates that, instead, empiricism and natural philosophy combined with Puritanism to transform the scope of religious activity in colonial New England from the 1630s to the Great Awakening of the 1740s.

Book
01 Feb 2011
TL;DR: The Floracrats: State-Sponsored Science and the Failure of the Enlightenment in Indonesia as discussed by the authors examines in sharp and engaging detail the relationship between science, state and society in modern Indonesia.
Abstract: In The Floracrats: State-Sponsored Science and the Failure of the Enlightenment in Indonesia, Andrew Goss examines in sharp and engaging detail the relationship between science, state and society in modern Indonesia. Goss follows the professional careers of state-sponsored naturalists or “Floracrats” as they sought to expand their scientific knowledge and authority and examines how their Enlightenment vision to achieve societal transformation through science became absorbed or “co-opted” by the colonial and postcolonial state. In carefully researched chapters spanning from the mid-nineteenth century to the present day, Goss argues that the integration of scientists into the state bureaucracy has characterized the enduring failure of the Enlightenment in Indonesia. This book, while part of a blossoming literature on the history of science and technology in modern Southeast Asia, represents an important departure from existing work in its attempt to address the legacy of colonial science for postcolonial societies 1) (Moon 2007; Mrazek 2002; Pols 2009). In contrast to recent studies that examine the political uses of science to reinforce authoritarian regimes or to fashion the self-identity of nationalists who protested against them, Goss instead focuses his work around the question of why science became so readily available for the colonial and postcolonial state’s use and how this relationship imposed critical limits on scientific innovation. 2) This work therefore serves as an important contribution not only to the history of science in Indonesia but to its social and political history as well. Across a series of richly detailed episodes, Goss analyzes how science, particularly botany and natural history, developed into a tool of the Indonesian state. Most interesting are the chapters on the establishment of the Buitenzorg Gardens and their transformation into a scientific empire under the careful stewardship of naturalist Melchior Treub. Treub was tasked with the challenge of both promoting the international status of the Gardens and making the plant and animal collections at Buitenzorg “legible” to colonial bureaucrats who sought to affect more practical changes at home. In the chapter on “Quinine Science,” Goss explores the emergence of this notion that scientists prove their value to colonial capitalism by creating economically useful knowledge.

Book
01 Apr 2011
TL;DR: In this article, an insightful survey of the history of Biblical criticism is presented, which explores how the curious figure of the Biblical scholar was created during the Enlightenment and how contemporary Biblical scholarship continues to pursue Enlightenment goals.
Abstract: This is an insightful survey of the history of Biblical criticism. The book explores how the curious figure of the Biblical scholar was created during the Enlightenment and how contemporary Biblical scholarship continues to pursue Enlightenment goals.

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: Molisa et al. as discussed by the authors argue that internal value change and external institutional change cannot be separated in a process of emancipation, and that in seeking "accounting and emancipation" we must question our own values, assumptions and motives.

BookDOI
22 Nov 2011
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors present a survey of character and cosmopolitanism in the Scottish Enlightenment, including the Not-So-Prodigal Son, the letters between Boswell and his son, and a discussion of the possibility of character formation.
Abstract: Reid and Hume on the Possibility of Character J.A.Harris Adam Smith's Rhetorical Art of Character S.McKenna The Moral Education of Mankind: Character and Religious Moderatism in the Sermons of Hugh Blair T.Ahnert The Not-So-Prodigal Son: James Boswell and the Scottish Enlightenment A.La-Vopa Character, Sociability and Correspondence: Elizabeth Griffith and The Letters between Henry and Frances E.T.Bannet Smellie's Dreams: Character and Consciousness in the Scottish Enlightenment P.M.William Aspects of Character and Sociability in Scottish Enlightenment Medicine N.Vickers The 'Peculiar Colouring of the Mind': Character and Painted Portraiture in the Scottish Enlightenment V.Coltman National Characters and Race: A Scottish Enlightenment Debate S.Sebastiani Character and Cosmopolitanism in the Scottish-American Enlightenment H.Spahn Historical Characters: Biography, the Science of Man, and Romantic Fiction S.Manning Necessity, Freedom, and Character Formation from the Eighteenth Century to the Nineteenth J.Seigel

Book
30 Sep 2011
TL;DR: Bond of the Dead as discussed by the authors explores the crisis brought on by public debate over the status, treatment, and location of the dead and investigates what changing burial forms reveal about the ways temple Buddhism is perceived and propagated in contemporary Japan.
Abstract: Despite popular images of priests seeking enlightenment in snow-covered mountain temples, the central concern of Japanese Buddhism is death. For that reason, Japanese Buddhism's social and economic base has long been in mortuary services - a base now threatened by public debate over the status, treatment, and location of the dead. "Bonds of the Dead" explores the crisis brought on by this debate and investigates what changing burial forms reveal about the ways temple Buddhism is perceived and propagated in contemporary Japan. Mark Michael Rowe offers a crucial account of how religious, political, social, and economic forces in the twentieth century led to the emergence of new funerary practices in Japan and how, as a result, the care of the dead has become the most fundamental challenge to the continued existence of Japanese temple Buddhism. Far from marking the death of Buddhism in Japan, Rowe argues, funerary Buddhism reveals the tradition at its most vibrant. Combining ethnographic research with doctrinal considerations, this is a fascinating book for anyone interested in Japanese society and religion.

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this article, the authors examine Buddhist clergy communication within the context of established religious organizations with an integrationist perspective on interpersonal communication and new and old media connections, and find that constituting Buddhist religious epistemic authority in wired organizational contexts rests on coordinating online-offline.
Abstract: In light of expanding epistemic resources online, the mediatization of religion poses questions about the possible changes, decline and reconstruction of clergy authority. Distinct from virtual Buddhism or cybersangha research which relies primarily on online observational data, this paper examines Buddhist clergy communication within the context of established religious organizations with an integrationist perspective on interpersonal communication and new and old media connections. Drawing on in-depth interviews with Buddhist leaders in Singapore, this paper illustrates ways in which priests are expanding their communicative competency, which we label ‘strategic arbitration’ to maintain their authority by restructuring multimodal representations and communicative influence. This study expands upon previous research by Cheong et al. (in press, Journal of Communication) and finds that constituting Buddhist religious epistemic authority in wired organizational contexts rests on coordinating online–offline ...

Book
01 Nov 2011
TL;DR: Howard as discussed by the authors discusses the relationship between the concept of the political and the rule of law in the Autonomous State and the Origin of the Political in Montesquieu's System of Sovereignty.
Abstract: Foreword by Dick HowardPrefaceIntroduction: Constitutional Violence and Enlightenment Thought1. The Autonomous State and the Origin of the Political2. States of Reasoning: Modern Natural-Law Theory3. Locke's Natural History of the Political4. Systems of Sovereignty in Montesquieu5. Rousseau's Cybernetic Political BodyConclusion: From the Concept of the Political to the Rule of LawNotesIndex

Dissertation
01 Jan 2011
TL;DR: In this article, a study of self and authority in the popular spiritual field is presented, focusing on four international enlightenment cultures, each with a guru (Andrew Cohen, Gangaji, Tony Parsons, and Steven Saunders of Holigral ).
Abstract: This is a study of self and authority in the popular spiritual field. Since Heelas's The New Age Movement (1996), the notion of a common Self-spirituality in which seekers trust the authority of the Self has been familiar within academe. Yet, contrary to the direction of Heelas's earlier work on indigenous psychologies and self-religions, the different ways participants conceive terms like seeker and self has largely escaped analysis. This omission allows scholars to homogenise diverse activities and portray broad cultural trends. But, it also black boxes the self, side-lines how authority actually works, and obscures conflicts between participants. I address such gaps by examining four international enlightenment cultures, each with a guru (Andrew Cohen; Gangaji; Tony Parsons; and Steven Saunders of Holigral ). Research materials include field experiences, recorded events, and participants printed and online publications. Combining multi-site ethnography with sociological conversation and discourse analysis, and drawing upon science and technology studies throughout, my argument addresses three themes: seekers; gurus; and truths. Developing Heelas's earlier work, I show seekers are not pre-constituted but configured in interactional practices which draw upon various cultural idealisations of the self. An enlightened self is likewise configured differently in each culture. I show such mundane local practices constitute gurus as experiential experts through associating their personas with participants configured experiences of self. Different configurations of self are consequential, implying differing modes of engagement with wider society and figuring in credibility contests between different cultures. I provide a way of understanding enlightenment cultures which avoids homogenising them, considers their respective potentials to promote social change, and accounts for antagonisms between them. As tangential themes, through a literary Seeker Self voice, I address issues of distance and engagement in studying spirituality and the often transparent penetration of academic discourse by the discourse of spirituality, or its spiritual repertoire.

01 Jan 2011
TL;DR: In this article, the authors present a Table of Table of Tables of the Table of the Contents, Table of Contents, and Table of Abstractions, and acknowledgments of the authors.
Abstract: ............................................................................................................................. iii Acknowledgments............................................................................................................... v Table of


Book
15 Jul 2011
TL;DR: Weir as mentioned in this paper argues that unlike their European counterparts, Americans did not treat the East simply as a site of imperialist adventure; on the contrary, colonial subjugation was an experience that early Americans shared with the peoples of China and India.
Abstract: Surveying the American fascination with the Far East since the mid-eighteenth century, this book explains why the Orient had a fundamentally different meaning in the United States than in Europe or Great Britain. David Weir argues that unlike their European counterparts, Americans did not treat the East simply as a site of imperialist adventure; on the contrary, colonial subjugation was an experience that early Americans shared with the peoples of China and India. In eighteenth-century America, the East was, paradoxically, a means of reinforcing the enlightenment values of the West: Franklin, Jefferson, and other American writers found in Confucius a complement to their own political and philosophical beliefs. In the nineteenth century, with the shift from an agrarian to an industrial economy, the Hindu Orient emerged as a mystical alternative to American reality. During this period, Emerson, Thoreau, and other Transcendentalists viewed the "Oriental" not as an exotic other but as an image of what Americans could be, if stripped of all the commercialism and materialism that set them apart from their ideal. A similar sense of Oriental otherness informed the aesthetic discoveries of the early twentieth century, as Pound, Eliot, and other poets found in Chinese and Japanese literature an artistic purity and intensity absent from Western tradition. For all of these figures the Orient became a complex fantasy that allowed them to overcome something objectionable, either in themselves or in the culture of which they were a part, in order to attain some freer, more genuine form of philosophical, religious, or artistic expression.

01 Jan 2011
TL;DR: The meaning and Triumphs of the Radical Enlightenment this paper was defined as a "war between moderate, radical, and the counterenlightenment" (see, e.g., this paper ).
Abstract: .. vi PREFACE ... viii PART I: INTRODUCTION: RADICAL VERSUS RELIGIOUS ENLIGHTENMENT 2 Introduction 2 Chapter One: Defining the “Enlightenment” 2 Introduction: Defining the “Enlightenment”: the need for clarity on the use of this term 8 Defining the “Enlightenment”: first definition 8 Defining the war between moderate, radical, and the counterenlightenment 12 The Counter Enlightenment and its definition of “enlightenment” 15 The Counter-Enlightenment 15 Defining “Enlightenment”: second definition 20 Defining the history of the “Enlightenment” 25 The Meaning and Triumphs of the Radical Enlightenment 27 PART II: PRECURSORS TO THE RADICAL ENLIGHTENMENT: THE GREEK ENLIGHTENMENT 34 Chapter Two: The Greeks as Precursors 34 Introduction: subject and plan of chapter 34 Jonathan Israel’s account of the Greeks as precursors to the Radical Enlightenment via Renaissance humanist scholarship to Enlightenment new scholarship 36 The Greeks as precursors to the Radical Enlightenment via humanist scholarship 37 The Greeks as precursors to the Radical Enlightenment via early Enlightenment scholarship 40 Enlightenment thinkers see rationalist Greek philosophy as a source for human enlightenment 43 The Greek Enlightenment in further context: from mythology to rationalism 47 The Greek Enlightenment of Socrates and Plato in comparison to orthodox Greek religious dogma (with some comparisons to the Bible) 52 Greek religious orthodoxy and Socrates’-Plato’s philosophical enlightenment 52 Plato versus the orthodox Greek religious world view 55 How enlightened were Socrates and Plato? 59 Transition to Hellenism and the regression of Greek thought 62 The decline of Greek Enlightenment thought after Aristotle 64 i


Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this article, the authors offer an account of the historical development of Kant's understanding of belief from its early ties to George Friedrich Meier's Auszug aus der Vernunftlehre through various stages of refinement.
Abstract: Abstract This paper offers an account of the historical development of Kant's understanding of belief (Glaube) from its early ties to George Friedrich Meier's Auszug aus der Vernunftlehre through various stages of refinement. It will be argued that the Critique of Pure Reason reflects an important but not final stage in Kant's understanding of belief. Its structure is further refined and its scope narrowed in later works, including the Critique of Practical Reason and Critique of Judgment. After charting these stages, an analysis of how belief relates to the Fact of Reason will be presented.

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: The philosophy of technology has a substantive role in constructing ethical universals during an era of globalization as discussed by the authors, and it makes two major contributions to a new generation of media ethics: a critique of the prevailing view of technology as neutral and a human-centered theory of technology.
Abstract: The philosophy of technology has a substantive role in constructing ethical universals during an era of globalization. It makes two major contributions to a new generation of media ethics: a critique of the prevailing view of technology as neutral and a human-centered theory of technology. Three applications are pertinent: (1) it prevents us from universals in the Enlightenment tradition; (2) it advocates including alternative technologies in universal theory; and (3) it demonstrates the need for transforming values through education.

Book
14 Dec 2011
TL;DR: The Stillbirth of Capital as discussed by the authors examines every work about British India written by a major author from 1670 to 1815, a period that coincides not only with the Enlightenment but also with the institution of a global economy.
Abstract: This book targets one of the humanities' most widely held premises: namely, that the European Enlightenment laid the groundwork for modern imperialism. It argues instead that the Enlightenment's vision of empire calls our own historical and theoretical paradigms into question. While eighteenth-century British India has not received nearly the same attention as nineteenth- and twentieth-century empires, it is the place where colonial rule and Enlightenment reason first became entwined. The Stillbirth of Capital makes its case by examining every work about British India written by a major author from 1670 to 1815, a period that coincides not only with the Enlightenment but also with the institution of a global economy. In contrast to both Marxist and liberal scholars, figures such as Dryden, Defoe, Voltaire, Sterne, Smith, Bentham, Burke, Sheridan, and Scott locate modernity's roots not in the birth of capital but rather in the collusion of sovereign power and monopoly commerce, which used Indian Ocean wealth to finance the unfathomable costs of modern war. Ahmed reveals the pertinence of eighteenth-century writing to our own moment of danger, when the military alliance of hegemonic states and private corporations has become even more far-reaching than it was in centuries past.

Book
17 Oct 2011
TL;DR: For example, the authors analyzed the three works that make up the philosopher's middle period: "Human, All too Human", "Daybreak", and "The Gay Science" and concluded that they reveal a rational Nietzsche, one who preaches moderation instead of passionate excess and Dionysian frenzy.
Abstract: While much attention has been lavished on Friedrich Nietzsche's earlier and later works, those of his so-called middle period have been generally neglected, perhaps because of their aphoristic style or perhaps because they are perceived to be inconsistent with the rest of his thought. With "Nietzsche's Enlightenment", Paul Franco gives this crucial section of Nietzsche's oeuvre its due, offering a thoughtful analysis of the three works that make up the philosopher's middle period: "Human, All too Human"; "Daybreak"; and, "The Gay Science". It is Nietzsche himself who suggests that these works are connected, saying that their "common goal is to erect a new image and ideal of the free spirit". Franco argues that in their more favorable attitude toward reason, science, and the Enlightenment, these works mark a sharp departure from Nietzsche's earlier, more romantic writings, and differ in important ways from his later, more prophetic writings, beginning with "Thus Spoke Zarathustra". The Nietzsche these works reveal is radically different from the popular image of him and even from the Nietzsche depicted in much of the secondary literature; they reveal a rational Nietzsche, one who preaches moderation instead of passionate excess and Dionysian frenzy. Franco concludes with a wide-ranging examination of Nietzsche's later works, tracking how his outlook changes from the middle period to the later and how the commitment to reason and intellectual honesty in his middle works continues to inform his final writings.

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: The Surfacing, a novel written by Margaret Atwood in 1972, portrayed the domination of western civilization as a masculinist ideology over nature and woman in parallel as discussed by the authors, is about the degeneration of the core ideas of the Enlightenment into brute domination, colonization and the rift between nature and culture.
Abstract: Surfacing, a novel written by Margaret Atwood in 1972, portrays the domination of western civilization as a masculinist ideology over nature and woman in parallel. The novel is about the degeneration of the core ideas of the Enlightenment – rationalism and progress – into brute domination, colonization and the rift between nature and culture. This study attempts to demonstrate the centrality of this critique to the novel. Atwood scathingly criticizes the rampant consumerism and capitalism of the modern age embodied in the threat posed by American culture, or American mentality, to Canada and nature which runs parallel to the masculine rationality which wills to ‘submerge’ (as the central metaphor of ‘surfacing’ has it) the feminine and the natural. The paper also discusses a number of other related dualisms represented in the novel. Key words : Margaret Atwood; Surfacing; The Enlightenment; reason; ecofeminism; nature; power