Enlightenment

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

Seeing with the Hands, Touching with the Eyes: Vision, Touch and the Enlightenment Spatial Imaginary

Abstract: Blindness has been a topic of great interest for philosophers, and the centrality of the so-called Molyneux problem explicitly raises questions concerning visual and tactile experience of the blind. Begun as a purely speculative philosophical exercise before ophthalmic operations could be performed, the debate continues and is examined here in relation to current work in psychology and neuropsychology. From debates and correspondence in the seventeenth century onwards, sparked by this hypothetical question, first-person accounts of the blind were sought to bolster the philosophical speculations. The question asked by Molyneux is crucial in Enlightenment philosophy, and is discussed in a series of dialogs between philosophers such as Locke, Berkeley, Descartes and especially Diderot. This paper shows how a philosophical debate rooted in a distinct period in history has continued to excite the attention of those who attempt to draw together a psychological philosophy of sensory-spatial experience. I...

Geography and Enlightenment in the German states, c.1690 – c.1815

Abstract: .................................................................................................................................... ii Acknowledgements .................................................................................................................. iv Declaration ................................................................................................................................. v

Towards a Christian Republic: Antimasonry and the Great Transition in New England, 1826-1836

Abstract: This is a study of the Antimasonry Party, but it is also a sweeping reinterpretation of America between 1820 and 1840 in social, political, cultural, and religious terms. The Order of the Masons became important in Europe and America in the wake of the American and French Revolutions. It was a cosmopolitan and tolerant Order that reflected the best aspects of the Enlightenment in many ways. But it was also a secret society, open only to men, that stressed sociability and appealed particularly to middle-class and upper-class members in small towns. When a former Mason, William Morgan, disappeared in western New York in 1826, the Antimasonary movement was fuelled and soon became a presence in state and national politics. The opposition was partly class inspired (against the ruling and upper classes) and partly religious (for an open religion with more emotional content). Part of the book provides a detailed account of Antimasonry politics in the six New England states. Scholars and students of American history; those interested in Masronry.