Movatterモバイル変換

Export citation   Bookmark  

“RadicalEnlightenment” and “moderateEnlightenment” are general categories which, it has become evident in recent decades, are unavoidable and essential for any valid discussion of theEnlightenment broadly conceived (1650-1850) and of the revolutionary era (1775-1848). Any discussion of theEnlightenment or revolutions that does not revolve around these general categories, first introduced in Germany in the 1920s and taken up in the United States since the 1970s, cannot have any validity or depth either historically (...) or philosophically. “RadicalEnlightenment” was neither peripheral to theEnlightenment as a whole, nor dominant, but rather the “other side of the coin” an inherent and absolute opposite, always present and always basic to theEnlightenment as a whole. Several different constructions of “RadicalEnlightenment” have been proposed by the main innovators on the topic – Leo Strauss, Henry May, Günter Mühlpfordt, Margaret Jacob, Gianni Paganini, Martin Mulsow, and Jonathan Israel – but, it is argued here, the most essential element in the definition is the coupling, or linkage, of philosophical rejection of religious authority (and secularism - the elimination of theology from law, institutions, education and public affairs) with theoretical advocacy of democracy and basic human rights. (shrink)

Direct download(2 more)   Export citation   Bookmark  

Jonathan I. Israel claims that Christian ‘controversialists’ endeavoured first to obscure or efface Spinozism, materialism, and non-authoritarian free thought, and then, in the early eighteenth century, to fight these openly, and desperately. Israel appears to have adopted the view ofenlightenment as a battle against what Voltaire has called ‘l’infâme’, and David Hume has labelled ‘stupidity, Christianity, and ignorance’. These authors’ barbs were launched later in the century, however, in the period of the highEnlightenment, following polarizing controversies (...) of mid-century. This chapter argues that manyEnlightenment figures, including Hume and Voltaire, were far more involved within a culture in the second quarter of the century that was less divided against Christian interlocutors, less rigid, and more complex than these two wished to suggest, in retrospect, after mid-century. A Christian literary and scientific circle was productive and prominent in FrenchEnlightenment culture, particularly in the personages of François Prévost, Pierre Desfontaines, Samuel Formey and Noël Pluche, and in the pages of ubiquitous journals and occasional publications. Many of the Catholics among these lumières held the education and retained the status of ‘abbé’, a title with prophylactic properties that legitimated expansive inquiry – into topics such as libertinism and atheism – and facilitated in-print exchanges with Voltaire and other less orthodox figures. This wing of theEnlightenment developed a culture that reflected, and sometimes promoted, Christian theology – especially in the tradition of natural theology – and displayed broadly Christian and politically conservative values. The latter aspect served in part to motivate concerted efforts toward their marginalization by others, but the FrenchEnlightenment of the eighteenth century’s second quarter was actually very mixed, and not so veryradical; rather, it became polarized at mid-century, and in retrospect, the Christians of this wing were written out of the history by the likes of Voltaire and Hume. (shrink)

Direct download   Export citation   Bookmark  

Jonathan I. Israel claims that Christian ‘controversialists’ endeavoured first to obscure or efface Spinozism, materialism, and non-authoritarian free thought, and then, in the early eighteenth century, to fight these openly, and desperately. Israel appears to have adopted the view ofenlightenment as a battle against what Voltaire has called ‘l’infâme’, and David Hume has labelled ‘stupidity, Christianity, and ignorance’. These authors’ barbs were launched later in the century, however, in the period of the highEnlightenment, following polarizing controversies (...) of mid-century. This chapter argues that manyEnlightenment figures, including Hume and Voltaire, were far more involved within a culture in the second quarter of the century that was less divided against Christian interlocutors, less rigid, and more complex than these two wished to suggest, in retrospect, after mid-century. A Christian literary and scientific circle was productive and prominent in FrenchEnlightenment culture, particularly in the personages of François Prévost, Pierre Desfontaines, Samuel Formey and Noël Pluche, and in the pages of ubiquitous journals and occasional publications. Many of the Catholics among these lumières held the education and retained the status of ‘abbé’, a title with prophylactic properties that legitimated expansive inquiry – into topics such as libertinism and atheism – and facilitated in-print exchanges with Voltaire and other less orthodox figures. This wing of theEnlightenment developed a culture that reflected, and sometimes promoted, Christian theology – especially in the tradition of natural theology – and displayed broadly Christian and politically conservative values. The latter aspect served in part to motivate concerted efforts toward their marginalization by others, but the FrenchEnlightenment of the eighteenth century’s second quarter was actually very mixed, and not so veryradical; rather, it became polarized at mid-century, and in retrospect, the Christians of this wing were written out of the history by the likes of Voltaire and Hume. (shrink)

Export citation   Bookmark  

In the wake of the Scientific Revolution, the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries saw the complete demolition of traditional structures of authority, scientific thought, and belief by the new philosophy and the philosophes, including Voltaire, Diderot, and Rousseau. TheRadicalEnlightenment played a part in this revolutionary process, which effectively overthrew all justification for monarchy, aristocracy, and ecclesiastical power, as well as man's dominance over woman, theological dominance of education, and slavery. Despite the present day interest in the (...) revolutions of the eighteenth century, the origins and rise of theRadicalEnlightenment have received limited scholarly attention. The greatest obstacle to the movement finding its proper place in modern historical writing is its international scope: the RacialEnlightenment was not French, British, German, Italian, Jewish or Dutch, but all of these at the same time. In this wide-ranging volume, Jonathan Israel offers a novel interpretation of theRadicalEnlightenment down to La Mettie and Diderot, two of its key exponents. Particular emphasis is placed on the pivotal role of Spinoza and the widespread underground international philosophical movement known before 1750 as Spinozism. (shrink)

Direct download   Export citation   Bookmark   64 citations  

Gideon Freudenthal - TheRadicalEnlightenment of Solomon Maimon: Judaism, Heresy, and Philosophy - Journal of the History of Philosophy 45:4 Journal of the History of Philosophy 45.4 661-663 Muse Search Journals This Journal Contents Reviewed by Gideon Freudenthal Tel-Aviv University Abraham P. Socher. TheRadicalEnlightenment of Solomon Maimon: Judaism, Heresy, and Philosophy. Stanford Studies in Jewish History and Culture. Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press, 2006. Pp. xiii + 248. Cloth $55.00. With few philosophers (...) are life and work so intimately connected as with Salomon Maimon. Born in 1753 in Lithuania and raised in an orthodox Jewish community, Maimon "pilgrimaged" at the age of twenty-five to Berlin, the capital of the JewishEnlightenment. After some years of education in sciences and languages, Maimon produced, in less than ten years , a series of books and papers that today make up the seven volumes of his collected works. A.. (shrink)

Direct download(5 more)   Export citation   Bookmark  

Direct download(3 more)   Export citation   Bookmark   1 citation  

Direct download(3 more)   Export citation   Bookmark  

This volume includes fifteen chapters, case studies and broader reflections, on the notion of ‘radicalenlightenment,’ separated into three main sections entitled, respectively, “The Big Picture,” “Origins and Fate of theRadicalEnlightenment, ca. 1660–1720,” and “TheRadicalEnlightenment in Europe and the New World after ca. 1720.” It is presented as “the first stand-alone collection of studies in English on theRadicalEnlightenment.” It is worth mentioning, however, that two very similar (...) volumes already exist in French and German. Like its French and German... (shrink)

Direct download(3 more)   Export citation   Bookmark   1 citation  

No categories

Export citation   Bookmark   65 citations  

The central thesis defended here is that modernity can best be understood as a struggle between two main traditions of thought: theRadical or “True”Enlightenment celebrating the world and life as creative and promoting the freedom of people to control their own destinies, and the Moderate or “Fake”Enlightenment which developed to oppose the democratic republicanism and nature enthusiasm of theRadicalEnlightenment. While theRadicalEnlightenment has promoted democracy, the central concern (...) of the ModerateEnlightenment has been to promote “possessive individualism” and the control of nature and people by discovering their laws of behaviour. While it has on occasion promoted religious tolerance and freedom of expression, the greater concern of the ModerateEnlightenment has always been defence of property rights and the power of those with property. It is argued here that process philosophy is the highest development of the philosophy of theRadicalEnlightenment and needs to be appreciated as such if theRadicalEnlightenment is to be revived and process philosophy advanced. (shrink)

Direct download   Export citation   Bookmark   1 citation  

TheRadicalEnlightenment refers to a fascinating movement within theEnlightenment that challenged traditional forms of religious, philosophical, and political authority and promoted social reform, freedom, democratic values, social equality, and libertas philosophandi. The study of theRadicalEnlightenment focuses on the thought of freethinkers, atheists, pantheists, Spinozists, political reformers, and other kindred spirits. Over the last thirty years scholarly writing on, and about the very notion of, aRadicalEnlightenment has proliferated and (...) research on the matter has moved in different directions. This research companion provides a timely and comprehensive overview of current research on this matter, gathering together leading experts who cross the boundaries of geographical terrain, of discipline, of intellectual position and of methodology. In addition to dealing with canonical authors and celebrated texts, such as Spinoza and his Tractatus Theologico-Politicus, authors discuss many less well-known figures and debates from the period whose importance is only now being appreciated. (shrink)

No categories

Direct download(2 more)   Export citation   Bookmark   6 citations  

Direct download   Export citation   Bookmark   1 citation  

Direct download(3 more)   Export citation   Bookmark   1 citation  

Arguably the most decisive shift in the history of ideas in modern times was the complete demolition during the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries - in the wake of the Scientific Revolution - of traditional structures of authority, scientific thought, and belief by the new philosophy and the philosophes, culminating in Voltaire, Diderot, and Rousseau. In this revolutionary process which effectively overthrew all justicfication for monarchy, aristocracy, and ecclesiastical power, as well as man's dominance over woman, theological dominance of education, (...) and slavery, substituting the modern principles of equality, democracy, and universality, theRadicalEnlightenment played a crucially important part. Despite the present day interest in the revolutions of the late eighteenth century, the origins and rise of theRadicalEnlightenment have been astonishingly little studied doubtless largely because of its very wide international sweep and the obvious difficulty of fitting in into the restrictive conventions of 'national history' which until recently tended to dominate all historiography. The greatest obstacle to theRadicalEnlightenment finding its proper place in modern historical writing is simply that it was not French, British, German, Italian, Jewish or Dutch, but all of these at the same time. In this novel interpretation of theRadicalEnlightenment down to La Mettie and Diderot, two of its key exponents, particular stress is placed on the pivotal role of Spinoza and the widespread underground international philosophical movement known before 1750 as Spinozism. (shrink)

Direct download   Export citation   Bookmark  

The Amsterdam theater society Nil Volentibus Arduum, which was founded in 1669 and remained active for some years, was not just a circle meeting regularly to discuss theater theory and practice, but was devoted to discussion of all the arts as well as language theory in relation to society. As far as the Amsterdam theater was concerned, its main purpose was to try to raise the level and provide more of a moral and socially improving direction to the stage. Arguably, (...) also, it had a certain impact on discussion and theorizing about late Dutch Golden Age painting. Two of its most active members, Lodewijk Meyer and Johannes Bouwmeester, were among the closest friends and allies of Spinoza. Opponents and detractors of the society took to associating it in the public mind with the “atheist” Spinoza. This article seeks to understand the theoretical concerns of the society and assess its relationship to its broader Dutch context and to Spinoza and Spinozism. (shrink)

Direct download(2 more)   Export citation   Bookmark   3 citations  

In this essay, I apply the Kantian interpretation ofenlightenment asradicalenlightenment to the enterprise of philosophy within the context of our contemporary world-situation, and try to answer this very hard quest ion: “As radically enlightened Kantian philosophers confronted by the double-whammy consisting of what I call The Hyper-State, together with the 2020-2021 COVID-19 pandemic, what should we dare to think and do?” The very hard problem posed by this very har d question is what I’ll (...) call The New Conflict of the Faculties. By way of a direct answer to this very hard question and by way of an effective solution to this very hard problem, I provide seven recommendations. (shrink)

Direct download(2 more)   Export citation   Bookmark   1 citation  

Using Australia to illustrate the case, in this paper it is argued that the transformation of universities into businesses and the undermining of the liberal arts is motivated by either contempt for or outright hostility to democracy. This is associated with a global managerial revolution that is enslaving nations and people to the global market and the corporations that dominate it. The struggle within universities is the site of a struggle to reverse the gains of theRadicalEnlightenment, (...) the tradition ofEnlightenment that, committed to upholding and developing the civic humanism of the Renaissance, strove for liberty, understood as democratic self-governance. The central place the liberal arts had in upholding this liberty is shown. Inspired by the Ancient Greek notion of paideia, the liberal arts, which originated in republican Rome, was the form of education required designed for free people, in opposition to the specialist education appropriate for slaves, to inspire them to maintain their liberty and enable them to govern themselves. While not always upholding this ideal, it is argued in this paper that the liberal arts always kept alive this quest for liberty, bequeathing this quest to the Renaissance philosophers and to the proponents of theRadicalEnlightenment. With managerialism and the undermining of democracy, such education and the questioning, creative people it produced, are now seen as a threat to the new global corporatocracy who, to achieve cultural hegemony, have coöpted university managers and academics to impose their agenda to cripple the liberal arts. Their goal, never fully articulated as such but successfully prosecuted, is a dumbed-down population. (shrink)

Direct download   Export citation   Bookmark   2 citations  

With extraordinary chutzpa and deep philosophical seriousness, Solomon ben Joshua of Lithuania renamed himself after his medieval intellectual hero, Moses Maimonides. Maimon was perhaps the most brilliant and certainly the most controversial figure of the late-eighteenth century JewishEnlightenment. He scandalized rabbinic authorities, embarrassed Moses Mendelssohn, provoked Kant, charmed Goethe, and inspired Fichte, among others. This is the first study of Maimon to integrate his idiosyncratic philosophical idealism with his popular autobiography, and with his early unpublished exegetical, mystical, and (...) Maimonidean work in Hebrew. In doing so, it illuminates the intellectual and spiritual possibilities open to a European Jew at the turn of the eighteenth century. (shrink)

Direct download   Export citation   Bookmark   3 citations  

Direct download(3 more)   Export citation   Bookmark   1 citation  

Export citation   Bookmark  

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Philosophy 40.3 (2002) 399-400 [Access article in PDF] Book ReviewRadicalEnlightenment: Philosophy and the Making of Modernity, 1650-1750 Jonathan I. Israel.RadicalEnlightenment: Philosophy and the Making of Modernity, 1650-1750. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001. Pp. xx + 810. Cloth, $45.00. Jonathan Israel's goal in this excellent book is to show that we cannot fully understand the high (...) class='Hi'>Enlightenment—the age of the philosophes and the French Revolution—without looking at the work and influence of that "most unusual and loneliest thinker" (to borrow a phrase from a later admirer): Spinoza. Israel gives us a detailed and nuanced account of the history of ideas in early modern Europe, focusing especially on the generations before Voltaire and Rousseau. Not only does Israel describe the general struggle betweenEnlightenment ideas and the status quo ante, he also discusses in depth the tensions between "mainstream"Enlightenment and its "radical" wing. More precisely and importantly, Israel argues that the highEnlightenment ought to be seen as the outcome of "a four-way conflict between Newtonians, neo-Cartesians, Leibnitio-Wolffians, and radicals" (715), a conflict that took place across Europe and whose dust had essentially settled by 1740. Thus, Israel is arguing against the view that the French philosophes were the dominant force in the intellectual world that led to the Revolution, against the view that Newton and Locke played a dominant role throughout Europe, and against the view that there were several distinct enlightenments with different national characters.What is meant by the term "radicalEnlightenment"? According to Israel,radicalEnlightenment comprises several views and tendencies in the realms of science, theology, and politics: in scientific matters, it embraces naturalism, mechanism, and materialism; in theological matters, it denies a moral order to the universe, a providential god, the Judeo-Christian(-Islamic) account of creation, miracles, and reward and punishment in an afterlife, and is critical of the idea of the divine inspiration of religious texts; in political matters, it unequivocally supports republicanism, even democracy; and, in all matters, it argues for the necessity of toleration and the "freedom to philosophize." For those who know Spinoza's philosophy, this ought to sound familiar.Israel's book is divided into five parts. In the first, he sketches the general intellectual milieu of early seventeenth-century Western Europe. The second part describes Spinoza and his circle and the philosophy of the Ethics and Tractatus Theologico-Politicus. In Parts III and IV, Israel discusses the immediate reactions to Spinozism, the varieties ofradicalEnlightenment made possible by Spinoza, and the "intellectual counter-offensive" to naturalism, materialism, atheism, and republicanism. Part V concerns the "clandestine progress" of Spinozism andradical ideas in different countries after the banning and censorship of so manyradical works, and, in a brief epilogue, Israel argues that it is Rousseau who effectively reconciled mainstreamEnlightenment thought with itsradical relative. This is a lot of territory to cover, and Israel covers it admirably, offering illuminating discussions of other key figures of the time: Leibniz, Malebranche, Bossuet, Locke, Bayle, Wolff, Vico, Diderot, and La Mettrie. Another strength of Israel's book is, however, the extent to which he portrays thinkers (some radicals, some reactionaries) and works that are less familiar to most working in the field today. We learn not only about such figures as Bredenburg, Fontenelle, Le Clerc, Leenhof, and Boulainvilliers, but also, in a charming but unfortunately short chapter, about Spinozistic novels from the eighteenth century.As someone trained in a philosophy department to work on the history of philosophy, I felt uneasy in one respect with this book. While Israel emphasizes the battles between philosophies and ideas, he does not concern himself so much with the process of doing philosophy. That is, if there is a failing in this book, it is that we are presented with descriptions of philosophical views without always being given an adequate account of why such views were held by individual thinkers or how the theses of theradicalEnlightenment, say, are related to each... (shrink)

Direct download(5 more)   Export citation   Bookmark  

Calls for a new philosophy of emancipation that escapes the false binaries imposed on us.

Direct download   Export citation   Bookmark  

Direct download   Export citation   Bookmark  

Drawing on new manuscript sources, this volume offers seven contributions on Hermann Samuel Reimarus, the most significant biblical critic in eighteenth-century Germany, as well as an eminentEnlightenment philosopher, a renowned classicist ...

Direct download   Export citation   Bookmark  

Direct download(3 more)   Export citation   Bookmark  

Direct download(3 more)   Export citation   Bookmark  

In his Philosophical Inquiry concerning Human Liberty (1717), the English deist Anthony Collins proposed a complete determinist account of the human mind and action, partly inspired by his mentor Locke, but also by elements from Bayle, Leibniz and other Continental sources. It is a determinism which does not neglect the question of the specific status of the mind but rather seeks to provide a causal account of mental activity and volition in particular; it is a ‘volitional determinism’. Some decades later, (...) Diderot articulates a very similar determinism, which seeks to recognize the existence of “causes proper to man” (as he says in the Réfutation d’Helvétius). The difference with Collins is that now biological factors are being taken into account. Obviously both the ‘volitional’ and the ‘biological’ forms of determinism are noteworthy inasmuch as they change our picture of the nature of determinism itself, but my interest here is to compare these two determinist arguments, both of which are broadly Spinozist in nature – and as such belong to what Jonathan Israel called in his recent book “theradicalEnlightenment,” i.e. a kind of undergroundEnlightenment constituted by Spinozism – and to see how Collins’ specifically psychological vision and Diderot’s specifically biological vision correspond to their two separate national contexts: determinism in France in the mid-1750s was a much more medico-biological affair than English determinism, which appears to be on a ‘path’ leading to Mill and associationist psychology. (shrink)

Direct download   Export citation   Bookmark   7 citations  

In this paper, I differentiate “two Enlightenments,” the mainstreamEnlightenment and what I call the “radicalEnlightenment,” that is,Enlightenment theory (rationalism, humanism, objectivism) informed by the fact of social oppression. Marxism can be seen as the pioneering example ofradicalEnlightenment theory, but it is, of course, relatively insensitive to gender and race issues, so we also need to includeEnlightenment versions of feminism and critical race theory. I defend theradical (...)Enlightenment against (on one front) the mainstreamEnlightenment criticism that it is either already included in the latter, or if excluded, justifiably so, and (on the other front) against anti-Enlightenment criticisms (poststructuralism and some multiculturalists) that in whatever form,Enlightenment theory cannot adequately address social oppression. (shrink)

Direct download(4 more)   Export citation   Bookmark  

This article argues that what was understood as democracy in the eighteenth century differs fundamentally from modern democracy. While modern democratic states take locally born or naturalized personhood as the criterion of citizenship, eighteenth-century advocates of democracy demanded proof of political competence to allow participation in politics. While the requirement of competence to engage in any activity is not unreasonable, if defined, as it was by mostEnlightenment thinkers, as a combination of independence, cultural standing and wealth, it is (...) clearly elitist.Enlightenment criticisms of birth and status as criteria of political standing should not be mistaken for demands for broadly inclusive, modern conceptions of equality and democracy. Rather, mostEnlightenment thinkers and publicists, fully aware of the implications of widespread and debilitating poverty, expressed reservations about granting the ‘people’ an effective role in politics. Far from being ‘radical’,Enlightenment political theory called for the replacement of an elitism based on status and privilege with an elitism of ability and wealth. (shrink)

Direct download(2 more)   Export citation   Bookmark  

Export citation   Bookmark  

From Hegel to Engels, Sartre and Ruyer (Ruyer, 1933), to name only a few, materialism is viewed as a necropolis, or the metaphysics befitting such an abode; many speak of matter’s crudeness, bruteness, coldness or stupidity. Science or scientism, on this view, reduces the living world to ‘dead matter’, ‘brutish’, ‘mechanical, lifeless matter’, thereby also stripping it of its freedom (Crocker, 1959). Materialism is often wrongly presented as ‘mechanistic materialism’ – with ‘Death of Nature’ echoes of de-humanization and hostility to (...) the Scientific Revolution (which knew nothing of materialism!), also a powerful Christian theme in Cudworth, Clarke and beyond (Overhoff, 2000). Here I challenge this view, building on some aspects of Israel’sRadicalEnlightenment concept (Israel, 2001), which has been controversial but for my purposes is a useful claim about the dissemination of a home-grown Spinozism, sometimes reformulated as an ontology of the life sciences, an aspect Israel does not address (compare Secrétan et al., eds., 2007; Citton, 2006). First, I examine some ‘moments’ ofradicalEnlightenment materialism such as La Mettrie and Diderot (including his Encyclopédie entry “Spinosiste”), but also anonymous, clandestine texts such as L’Âme Matérielle, to emphasize their distinctive focus on the specific existence of organic beings. Second, I show how this ‘embodied’, non-mechanistic character ofEnlightenment ‘vital materialism’ makes it different from other episodes, and perhaps more of an ethics than is usually thought (also via the figure of the materialist as ‘laughing philosopher’). Third, I reflect on what this implies for our image of theEnlightenment – no longer a Frankfurt School and/or Foucaldian vision of ‘discipline’, regimentation and order (as in Mayr, 1986) – but ‘vital’, without, conversely, being a kind of holist vitalism “at odds with the universalizing discourse of Encyclopedist materialism, with its insistence on the uniformity of nature and the universality of physical laws” (Williams, 2003): vital materialism is still materialism. Its ethics tends towards hedonism, but its mostradical proponents (Diderot, La Mettrie and later Sade) disagree as to what this means. (shrink)

Direct download(4 more)   Export citation   Bookmark   1 citation  

No categories

Direct download   Export citation   Bookmark  

Margaret Jacob and Jonathan Israel have offered somewhat different accounts of what they call the ‘RadicalEnlightenment’, that is those elements ofenlightenment thought which resulted in theradical political upheavals of the late eighteenth century and the rise of democratic republicanism. Jonathan Israel, in particular, insists that theradicalenlightenment wasradical both in its secular rejection of all providentialist and teleological metaphysics, as well asradical in its democratic tendencies. This (...) paper looks at the way in which Catharine Macaulay’s very influential defence of the equal rights of men, during the lead up to the American and French revolutions, poses problems for Israel’s account of theradicalenlightenment and argues that the religious foundation of her political radicalism was characteristic of many of her contemporaries and fits in better with Jacob’s more ecumenical account of theradicalenlightenment than with Israel’s purely secular characterisation. (shrink)

Direct download(2 more)   Export citation   Bookmark   2 citations  

_ Source: _Volume 35, Issue 1, pp 19 - 31 Grotius has often been cited as a crucial link between the ‘Erasmian tradition’ of the Renaissance and Reformation era and theEnlightenment. But there is perhaps a case for identifying him more specifically with the roots of the ‘RadicalEnlightenment’. This was partly because of his widely-suspected and commented on tendency towards Socinianism. But it was also due to the uses to which he put his highly sophisticated (...) humanist philology. During the eighteenth century, Grotius’s Bible criticism was seen by some as the root of some of the most subversive criticism of the era. The German deist Reimarus, for instance, author of one of the most vitriolic attacks on Christian revelation of the age, more frequently mentions Grotius’s revisions in his footnotes than he does the criticism of Hobbes, Spinoza, Collins or Toland. This article surveys the aspects of Grotius that significantly contributed to shaping what developed into the ‘RadicalEnlightenment’. (shrink)

Direct download(4 more)   Export citation   Bookmark   1 citation  

The arts have been almost completely marginalized - at a time when, arguably, they are more important than ever. Whether we understand by “the arts” painting, sculpture and architecture, or more broadly, the whole aesthetic realm and the arts faculties of universities concerned with this realm, over the last half century these fields have lost their cognitive status. This does not mean that there are not people involved in the arts, but they do not have the standing participants in these (...) fields once had. The arts lost the battle of the “two cultures”; science prevailed over the arts and humanities. Architecture is being redefined as an applied science rather than one of the arts. The arts were then finally routed (with hardly a fight) by economists. They have been absorbed into the advertising, entertainment, decoration and building industries, and, as universities have been transformed into transnational business corporations, arts faculties have lost their reason for existence. This paper challenges this marginalization. (shrink)

Direct download   Export citation   Bookmark   1 citation  

ABSTRACTThis article probes Jonathan Israel’s theory about ‘RadicalEnlightenment’ inaugurating political modernity by way of explicating the thought of Joseph Priestley. In Israel’s view, despite the inconsistencies plaguing Socinian thought, Priestley, a monist, emerged as an ardent supporter of religious toleration and democratic republicanism. This article seeks to restore the fundamental coherence of Priestley’s theological and metaphysical views, arguing that they were produced as parts of a system founded on the simultaneous adherence to providentialism and necessitarianism. Prized as (...) a prerequisite of the unfolding of the divine plan, the unobstructed expression of religious opinions was the centre of the conception of civil society and civil liberty that Priestley articulated based on these premises and his forays into politics aimed to secure its permanence. A comparison of Priestley’s stance on the issue of manhood suffrage with that of Richard Price reveals not the materialist Priestley, but Price, a dualist, as an advocate of democratization and casts into doubt the applicability of Israel’s scheme in the case of England. The article closes with some suggestions towards reappraising the relationship betweenEnlightenment and modernity. (shrink)

Direct download(2 more)   Export citation   Bookmark   3 citations  

Direct download(3 more)   Export citation   Bookmark  

Direct download(2 more)   Export citation   Bookmark   1 citation  

Direct download(5 more)   Export citation   Bookmark   2 citations  

Direct download(6 more)   Export citation   Bookmark  

Direct download(3 more)   Export citation   Bookmark  

No categories

Direct download(3 more)   Export citation   Bookmark  

Export citation   Bookmark  

Export citation   Bookmark  

Cross-culturally two widely observed forms of social structure are individualism and ascribed hierarchies. Associated with these two types of social structure are a wide range of recurrent concomitant features. It is proposed that these two forms of social structure are common, in part, because they are associated with modular forms of understanding that lend intuitive support to them. In particular, it is proposed that individualistic open societies are associated with a folk-physics mode of construal whereas closed societies are associated with (...) a folk-biological mode of construal. These distinctions are illustrated with the EuropeanEnlightenment as a hypothesized transition from closed to open societies. (shrink)

No categories

Direct download(2 more)   Export citation   Bookmark  

No categories

Export citation   Bookmark  

Export citation   Bookmark  

Direct download(3 more)   Export citation   Bookmark  

Direct download(3 more)   Export citation   Bookmark