Enlightenment

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

Women and spirit: two nonfits in psychology

Abstract: The 17th century is historically key to the development of the rules for legitimate knowing: rationality and empiricism. Each of these has many earlier and later developments. But it is the 17th century which holds the victory of the secular claims of sensory observation and reason as the way to knowledge over the religious claims of knowledge by authority. The scientific method derives from 17th century assumptions about nature, universal laws, and how they may be known. The scientific revolution and the follow­ ing enlightenment confirms the course of western intellectual and political development, and sets the agenda of patriarchy: material reality, science/logic, power/control. This agenda impacts upon contemporary western disciplines, intellectual and political world views, values, and cultural patterns. While it has allowed techno­ logical and economic development for some, unparalleled in recorded civilization, it has also encouraged disregard, unjust treatment and exclusion of many peoples and alternative ways of functioning and valuing and has devalued other modes of know­ ing. Accessing reality through direct experience, intuition, insight, connection with patterns, personal knowledge, and other experien­ tial knowing modes is not considered legitimate within patriar­ chy’s control of reality and its methods of knowledge generation. Just as the narrow view of material reality and a controllingscience restricts the methods of knowing, so too have they misun­ derstood and misevaluated indigenous cultural practices, values, and world views. These contentions have been amply discussed within the philosophy of science, feminist epistemology, feminist and liberation theology, interdisciplinary women’s studies, AfricanAsian-Latin-Native American gender studies, critical analyses within traditional disciplines, and, to a lesser extent, in some femi­ nist psychology.

‘Race’, Women and Progress in the Scottish Enlightenment

Abstract: A great deal of thinking in Scotland during the second half of the eighteenth century was devoted to the problem of the diversity and differences among peoples of the earth. The idea of ‘progress’, which has been considered the specific contribution of the Scottish Enlightenment to the European Enlightenment, was one result.1 Adam Smith, Adam Ferguson, William Robertson, John Millar and Lord Kames all contributed to a new historical approach, which shifted attention from chronology to manners, and from kings and heroes to the path of peoples towards civilization. Through the comparison of different societies, progress was shown to emerge from changes across economic, political, social and cultural spheres. Differences between peoples were explained within a scheme of historical development: from simple, rough and lawless to refined, polite and commercial societies.2

Epicurus in the Enlightenment

Abstract: Eighteenth-century Epicureanism is often viewed as radical, anti-religious, and politically dangerous. But to what extent does this simplify the ancient philosophy and underestimate its significance to the Enlightenment? Through a pan-European analysis of Enlightenment centres from Scotland to Russia via the Netherlands, France and Germany, contributors argue that elements of classical Epicureanism were appropriated by radical and conservative writers alike. They move beyond literature and political theory to examine the application of Epicurean ideas in domains as diverse as physics, natural law, and the philosophy of language, drawing on the work of both major figures (Diderot, Helvetius, Smith and Hume) and of lesser-known but important thinkers (Johann Jacob Schmauss and Dmitrii Anichkov).