Enlightenment

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

Classical and Philosophical Hermeneutics

Abstract: Hermeneutics is a mantic art involved in the translation of the unintelligible into the intelligible. However, within modern contexts the term possesses a more methodological sense - ‘a universal doctrine for the interpretation of signs’. This conception of hermeneutics was given impetus during the Renaissance with the quest for theological objectivity, but it was with Schleiermacher and other philosophers of the Romantic movement that hermeneutics was viewed as a universal ‘dialogical’ condition. The Romantic conception of hermeneutics was psychologized by Dilthey and re-founded upon the principle of consciousness. With Heidegger became conceived as an ontological phenomenon identical to Existenz itself. For Gadamer, hermeneutics criticizes the ‘pale abstractions’ of Enlightenment conceptions of philosophy for neglecting the work of concepts in philosophy; concepts that have their origins in the self-critical communicative movement of human interpretation.

Placing the Enlightenment: Thinking Geographically about the Age of Reason

Abstract: The Enlightenment was the age in which the world became modern, challenging tradition in favor of reason, freedom, and critical inquiry. While many aspects of the Enlightenment have been rigorously scrutinized - its origins and motivations, its principal characters and defining features, its legacy and modern relevance - the geographical dimensions of the era have until now largely been ignored. "Placing the Enlightenment" contends that the Age of Reason was not only a period of pioneering geographical investigation but also an age with spatial dimensions to its content and concerns. Investigating the role space and location played in the creation and reception of Enlightenment ideas, Charles W. J. Withers draws from the fields of art, science, history, geography, politics, and religion to explore the legacies of Enlightenment national identity, navigation, discovery, and knowledge. Ultimately, geography is revealed to be the source of much of the raw material from which philosophers fashioned theories of the human condition. Lavishly illustrated and engagingly written, "Placing the Enlightenment" will interest Enlightenment specialists from across the disciplines as well as any scholar curious about the role geography has played in the making of the modern world.

The Chinese Enlightenment : Intellectuals and the Legacy of the May Fourth Movement of 1919

Abstract: It is widely accepted, both inside China and in the West, that contemporary Chinese history begins with the May Fourth Movement. Vera Schwarcz's imaginative new study provides China scholars and historians with an analysis of what makes that event a turning point in the intellectual, spiritual, cultural and political life of twentieth-century China.

Rewriting the self : histories from the Renaissance to the present

Abstract: Section 1: Renaissance and Early Modern 1. Representations of the self from Petrarch to Descartes, Peter Burke 2. Self and selfhood in the seventeenth century, Jonathan Sawday 3. Self-reflection and the self, Roger Smith Section 2: Enlightenment 4. Religions Experience and the Formation of the Early Enlightenment Self, Jane Shaw 5. The European enlightenment and the history of the self, E.J. Hundert 6. The Death and rebirth of character in the 18th century, Sylvana Tomaselli 7. `Another Self in the Case': Gender, Marriage, and the Individual in Augustan Literature, Carolyn Williams 8. Feelings and novels, John Mullan Section 3: Romanticism 9. Romantic Travel, Roger Cardinal 10. "...as a rule, I does not mean I": Personal Identity and the Victorian Woman Poet, Kate Flint 11. Mapping the Self: Gender, space and Modernity in mid-Victorian London, Lynn Nead 12. Stories of the Eye, Daniel Pick Section 4: Modern and Post-Modern 13. The Modern Auditory I, Steve Connor 14. Assembling the modern self, Nikolas Rose 15. Death and the self, Jonathan Dollimore 16. Self-Undoing Subjects, Terry Eagleton.

Three Dialogues Between Hylas and Philonous

Abstract: Throughout history, but most especially during the eighteenth-century Enlightenment, great minds of philosophy grappled with two thorny questions: What are the objects of knowledge? and How do we come to know them? Using the revealing dialogue technique, Berkeley shakes the very ground of those who believe that something called matter exists to support the sensible qualities we perceive. In his critique of this view, Berkeley argues for ideas in the mind as the only true reality about which one can have knowledge. His arguments for these conclusions, and for the ultimate foundation of all sensible things, can be found in this essential work of early modern philosophy.