Enlightenment

About: Enlightenment is a research topic. Over the lifetime, 6845 publications have been published within this topic receiving 116832 citations.

Sources of Architectural Form: A Critical History of Western Design Theory

Abstract: Contents. 1. Introduction: The central problem of design theory. Theories of form. A paradox in western theories of design. The subject-object problem 2. The Ancient World: The origins of design theory and education. The Greek revolution in philosophy. Greek Art and Architecture theory. Vitruvius 3. The Middle Ages: Shift from the secular to the divine. Medieval art and architecture theory. Scholasticism. Education in the guilds and universities 4. The Renaissance: The revival of ancient concepts. Art theory in the High Renaissance. The Mannerist extremes. The new art academies. The rise of Positivist science 5. The Baroque: The Baroque dualities. Rationalism and the priority of reason. Empiricism and the priority of sense. Art and architecture theory and the academics 6. The Enlightenment: Revolutionary foundations of the modern world. Positivism and the new deterministic sciences of man.The Romantic rebellion. Neo- Classicism and the academics. Immanual Kant and the synthesis of subject and object. 7. The Nineteenth century: Philosophical relativism and artistic eclecticism Classicism and The Ecole Des Beaux-Arts. German idealism, romanticism, and the Gothic revival. Positivism and artistic determinism. The shift to abstraction in art 8. The Twentieth Century (I): The reaction to the relativism in philosophy. The opposed sources of architectural form. the opposed sources of artistic form. The Bauhaus conflation. The Modern Movement 9. Twentieth Century (II): Late Modernism. Positivism and environmental design. Structuralism. Post-modernism and Post-structuralism List of illustrations Bibliography

Custom Today: Temporality, Customary Law, and Indigenous Enlightenment

Abstract: ‘‘Today, there is a different custom.’’ 1 So stated the native officials of the Zapotec pueblo of Santa Marı́a Yaviche, Oaxaca, in 1760. What they meant will become clearer at the end of this article; for now, their words invite us to ask: How can there be a different legal custom today? Isn’t custom supposed to be invariable over time? Isn’t the point that it is not new, but old? Indeed, whether revealing that a tradition was invented or tracing a practice’s perdurance, historians have told us that the power of customary law is precisely that it is above time, that it can defy obsolescence and, as such, resist modernity.2 Custom is distinguished not so much by its historical nature as by its ahistoricity.3 This article examines three exemplary instances of intracommunity civil disputes in eighteenth-century Spanish America to spotlight a turning point within native invocations of legal custom. Indigenous litigants living in the Spanish empire embedded multiple temporal schemata in their conceptions of costumbre (custom). Two of these temporal frames, which we might gloss as

Mozart and the Enlightenment: truth, virtue and beauty in Mozart's operas

Abstract: In this fascinating study of Mozart's operas, Nicholas Till shows that the composer was not a "divine idiot" but an artist whose work was informed by the ideas and discoveries of the Enlightenment. Examining the dramatic emergence of a modern society in eighteenth-century Austria, the author draws on such famous writers and thinkers of the time as Richardson, Voltaire, Rousseau, Kant, Goethe, Schiller, and Blake to reappraise the history and meaning of the Enlightenment and of Mozart's role within it. He evokes for us the Vienna of the 1780s, a world of intense intellectual argument, political debate, and religious inquiry, which deeply influenced the philosophical content of Mozart's operas. From the early La Finta Giardiniera, based on Richardson's Pamela, to Die Entfuhrung aus dem Serail, designed to support the political aims of Emperor Joseph II; from Le nozze di Figaro, a profound exploration of marriage as a human and social institution, to the post-Enlightenment Zauberflote, the operas bear witness to the era's changing views and to Mozart's own quest for personal and artistic identity.

Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress

Abstract: In Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress, Steven Pinker champions the modern enlightenment project against two types of opponents: (1) pre-modern religious faith a...

The Search for Modernity: Chinese Intellectuals and Cultural Discourse in the Post-Mao Era

Abstract: Part I Introduction: from the re-interpretation of humanistic Marxism to pragmatic neo-conservatism - Chinese intellectuals' pluralistic exploration of modernity. Part II Legitimation versus transcendence - the dilemmas facing China's neo-rationalists: Li Zehou and his enlightenment philosophy Wang Meng's hard porridge and the paradox of reform in China. Part III The avant garde and cultural iconoclasts - radical challenges to the official ideological and cultural order: Bei Dao's "13 Happiness Street" and the young generation's quest for the "Unknowable" absurdity, senselessness and alienation - Xu Xing's literary reflections on the contemporary human condition. Part IV Moral crusaders and idealists - the struggle for spiritual salvation: Liang Xiaosheng's moral critique of China's modernization process individual salvation and ultimate concerns - Liu Xiaofeng's pursuit of transcendent human universality. Part V Neo-nationalism a pragmatic new national ideology? from "River Elegy" to "China Can Say No" - China's neo-nationalism and the search for a collective national identity. Part VI Conclusion: from the center to the periphery - the development of Chinese intellectuals' "New Identity" and "Self awareness".