Topic
Enlightenment
About: Enlightenment is a research topic. Over the lifetime, 6845 publications have been published within this topic receiving 116832 citations.
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Book•
01 May 2009
TL;DR: Elmarsafy et al. as mentioned in this paper argue that Islam was still hugely influential in the 18th and early 19th Centuries, and that a number of key enlightenment figures -including Voltaire, Rousseau, Goethe and Napoleon - drew inspiration and ideas from the Qur'an.
Abstract: Iconoclastic and fiercely rational, the European Enlightenment witnessed the birth of modern Western society and thought. Reason was sacrosanct and for the first time, religious belief and institutions were open to widespread criticism. In this groundbreaking book, Ziad Elmarsafy challenges this accepted wisdom to argue that religion was still hugely influential in the era. But the religion in question wasn't Christianity - it was Islam. Charting the history of Qur'anic translations in Europe during the 18th and early 19th Centuries, Elmarsafy shows that a number of key enlightenment figures - including Voltaire, Rousseau, Goethe, and Napoleon - drew both inspiration and ideas from the Qur'an. Controversially placing Islam at the heart of the European Enlightenment, this lucid and well argued work is a valuable window into the interaction of East and West during this pivotal epoch in human history.
35 citations
01 Jan 2018
TL;DR: In this article, Awtrey et al. studied the sources of religious freedom in early Pennsylvania and found that Jews played active, not passive, roles in redrawing the boundaries around freedom and reshaping religious freedom to include religious groups beyond Protestant Christians alone.
Abstract: Degree Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) Department History Document Type Dissertation Abstract Historians’ traditional narrative regarding religious freedom in the colonial period and early republic focuses on Protestants and sometimes Catholics to the exclusion of other religious groups; the literature also emphasizes the legal dimensions of freedom at the expense of its cultural manifestations. This study, conversely, demonstrates that Jews, the only white non-Christian minority group in early Pennsylvania, experienced freedom far differently than its legality can adequately explain. Jews, moreover, reshaped religious freedom to include religious groups beyond Protestant Christians alone. But such grassroots transformations were neither quick nor easy. Like most of the AngloAmerican world, William Penn’s “Holy Experiment” excluded Jewish émigrés and other non-Protestants from citizenship and full participation in civil society. Jews, though, played active, not passive, roles in redrawing the boundaries around freedom. Jews participated in the secular marketplace, enlightenment culture, and newspaper politics, which normalized Jews and Judaism in public life and forged important relationships between Jews and economic and political patrons of cultural and political authority. Although Jews contended with prejudices, their activities in the public square and relationships with patrons granted them enough influence among enlightened elites to demand wider parameters for their public religious expressions and political participation. After about 1800, Jews enjoyed full religious freedom, cultural integration, and citizenship, but waves of nineteenth-century Jewish migrations revived dormant antiJewish and anti-Semitic sentiments. Despite pervasive prejudice that sometimes negated their statuses in civil society, Jews utilized cultural institutions to refashion their reputations, honor, and respectability in the eyes of their Protestant neighbors. As activists, not victims, Jews sat in the vanguard of the cultural transformations that made a meaningful religious pluralism in antebellum culture a reality. Date 4-3-2018 Recommended Citation Awtrey, Jonathon Derek, "Jews and the Sources of Religious Freedom in Early Pennsylvania" (2018). LSU Doctoral Dissertations. 4544. https://digitalcommons.lsu.edu/gradschool_dissertations/4544
35 citations
Book•
01 Jan 2004
TL;DR: Stark as discussed by the authors argues that social scientists and other observers of human society too often misunderstand and misrepresent the nature and role of religion in history and in daily life, from the supposed decline of religious attitudes in Western Europe to the very definition of religion, personal biases and an inadequate grasp of relevant data have led to the formulation and propagation of unsupportable views on the sacred.
Abstract: Though religion is for most people one of the most important aspects of their lives, social scientists and other observers of human society too often misunderstand and misrepresent the nature and role of religion in history and in daily life. From the supposed decline of religious attitudes in Western Europe and the venal motivations attributed to the Christian Crusaders to the very definition of religion, personal biases and an inadequate grasp of relevant data have led to the formulation and propagation of unsupportable views on the sacred. In Exploring the Religious Life, Rodney Stark boldly overturns much received wisdom within the social sciences about religion, drawing on a wide range of sources to reassess a diverse selection of topics in the study of religion. In his first essay, Stark addresses the carelessness with which scholars use the term religion and the conviction that the belief in divinity evolved from the practice of magic in primitive cultures. In subsequent chapters, he challenges the widespread attitude among social scientists that religion is nothing more than a mask for material realities and examines the effectiveness of religious doctrines in attracting converts and influencing individuals; uncovers the surprising prevalence of upper-class asceticism in medieval Christianity; and explores the relationship between gender, piety, and criminal activity. Divine revelation is a central aspect of many religions, and Stark next applies empirical research to the phenomenon to assess its meaning in Judaism, Christianity, Islam, and Mormonism. He then turns to the confusion between faith and practice in debates over the secularization of the developed world before investigating the validity of the classic proposition within the social sciences that religion functions to sustain the moral order. He does so, examining the correlation between criminal behavior and depth of religious belief. Stark concludes with an essay on the ingenious methods he uses to unearth data about the popularity of new religions in California and northern Europe, the decline of Christian Science in America, the spread of Christianity in the Roman world, and the execution patterns during the antiwitchcraft frenzy of Enlightenment Europe. Together, the essays that constitute Exploring the Religious Life offer an engaging introduction to Rodney Stark's provocative insights and a fearless challenge to academic perceptions about religion's place in history, society, and private life.
35 citations
Book•
29 Mar 2004
TL;DR: The authors explores the dialectical reversal from the occult to the scientific realm that entered physiognomic thought in the late eighteenth century, beginning with the positivistic writings of Swiss pastor Johann Caspar Lavater, and explains how physiognomics had by then become a highly respected "super-discipline" that embraced many prominent strands of German thought: the Romantic philosophy of nature, the "life philosophy" propagated by Dilthey and Nietzsche, the cultural pessimism of Schopenhauer, Husserl's method of intuitive observation, Freudian psychoanalysis, and early-
Abstract: Once associated with astrology and occultist prophecy, the art of interpreting personal character based on facial and other physical features dates back to antiquity. About Face tells the intriguing story of how physiognomics became particularly popular during the Enlightenment, no longer as a mere parlor game but as an empirically grounded discipline. The story expands to illuminate an entire tradition within German culture, stretching from Goethe to the rise of Nazism. In About Face, Richard T. Gray explores the dialectical reversal - from the occult to the scientific realm - that entered physiognomic thought in the late eighteenth century, beginning with the positivistic writings of Swiss pastor Johann Caspar Lavater. Originally claimed to promote understanding and love, physiognomics devolved into a system aimed at valorizing a specific set of physical, moral, and emotional traits and stamping everything else as "deviant." This development not only reinforced racial, national, and characterological prejudices but also lent such beliefs a presumably scientific grounding. In the period following World War I, physiognomics experienced yet another unprecedented boom in popularity. Gray explains how physiognomics had by then become a highly respected "super-discipline" that embraced many prominent strands of German thought: the Romantic philosophy of nature, the "life philosophy" propagated by Dilthey and Nietzsche, the cultural pessimism of Schopenhauer, Husserl's method of intuitive observation, Freudian psychoanalysis, and early-twentieth-century eugenics and racial biology. A rich exploration of German culture, About Face offers fresh insight into the intellectual climate that allowed the dangerous thinking of National Socialism to take hold.
35 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, the figure of the Antiquary in Scott is discussed. But the focus is on the question of "the question of Enlightenment history" and not on the person of Scott.
Abstract: (2002). Pedantry And The Question Of Enlightenment History: The Figure Of The Antiquary In Scott. European Romantic Review: Vol. 13, No. 3, pp. 273-283.
35 citations