A RUSSIAN BOURGEOIS'S ARCTIC ENLIGHTENMENT

2005 ◽  
Vol 48 (3) ◽  
pp. 623-640 ◽  
Author(s):  
ADRIAN JONES
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Indigenous Peoples ◽  
White Sea ◽  
Pacific Islanders ◽  
The Enlightenment ◽  
Settler Societies ◽  
History Of

Studies of Europe's Enlightenment have been enriched by attending to its real and imagined impacts on indigenous peoples and of indigenous peoples on Europeans. Applying these methods to new-settled eighteenth-century societies offers another standpoint on the Enlightenment. This study is a sample: a civic history of a relatively new – in European terms – place suggests the possibilities. In 1792, a bourgeois, Vasilii Krestinin, from Russia's White Sea shore, published a history of Archangel, founded in 1584. Krestinin's view from a new Arctic society is as far from Europe's elegant metropoles and eloquent lumières as the ship captains, Pacific Islanders, and cat killers in influential recent studies of the Enlightenment. Just as these studies – and others on readers and reading – transformed studies of the Enlightenment, historians can use sources from new societies to observe answers and actions of people casting themselves as Enlighteners. This study of enlightened sensibility in an Arctic society suggests how the Enlightenment – viewed from settler societies – became anxious, how it fanned nationalisms, and how it was ensnared by naïve presuppositions that progress was a prerequisite of power.

‹ Rococo › : du jargon à la catégorie de style

2017 ◽  
Vol 80 (4) ◽  
pp. 474-487
Author(s):  
Marie-Pauline Martin
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
The Enlightenment ◽  
History Of ◽  
Louis Xvi ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
Louis Xv ◽  
Objective Existence

Abstract Today there is a consensus on the definition of the term ‘rococo’: it designates a style both particular and homogeneous, artistically related to the reigns of Louis XV and Louis XVI. But we must not forget that in its primitive formulations, the rococo has no objective existence. As a witty, sneering, and impertinent word, it can adapt itself to the most varied discourses and needs, far beyond references to the eighteenth century. Its malleability guarantees its sparkling success in different languages, but also its highly contradictory uses. By tracing the genealogy of the word ‘rococo’, this article will show that the association of the term with the century of Louis XV is a form of historical discrimination that still prevails widely in the history of the art of the Enlightenment.

A ‘milky mass’ and ‘uniform material’: white marble in eighteenth-century French discourses on sculpture and geology

2021 ◽  
Vol 30 (2) ◽  
pp. 215-225
Author(s):  
Marthe Kretzschmar
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Grain Size ◽  
Denis Diderot ◽  
Art Theory ◽  
White Marble ◽  
The Enlightenment ◽  
The Earth ◽  
History Of ◽  
Interdisciplinary Network

Knowledge of the materiality of stone during the Enlightenment expanded following the exploration of mineralogical structure, to alter ideas about taxonomy and challenge the role of rocks in the history of the earth. Close studies of the material of marble sculpture generated expertise on grain size, surface varieties and stone deposits. This mode of reception became intertwined with contemporary controversies about the age of the earth. This article focuses on both French sculpture and geological discourses of the eighteenth century to reveal an international and interdisciplinary network centring on protagonists such as Denis Diderot, Paul-Henri Thiry d’Holbach and Étienne-Maurice Falconet; through these figures, debates can be connected concerning both geology and art theory. Within these contexts, the article discusses the translation processes between these artistic and geological interests.

Projecting the Enlightenment

2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert Wokler ◽  
Christopher Brooke
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Intellectual History ◽  
Intellectual Tradition ◽  
The Enlightenment ◽  
Enlightenment Project ◽  
History Of

This chapter retraces Alasdair MacIntyre's own construal of the Enlightenment Project's trajectory in order to show how his interpretation of an intellectual tradition depends above all on his assessment of its impact. It argues that MacIntyre's Enlightenment Project is largely unreconstructed, unredeemed, and undiminished in its failure, even after substantial embellishment. His three principal works comprise an extraordinary indictment of the theoretical and practical legacy of eighteenth-century philosophy. His account projects the Enlightenment's implications and influence as they stem from its aims. He holds it to blame for some of the most sinister aspects of a morally vacuous civilization, cursed by the malediction of unlicenced Reason. His intellectual history of the period forms one of the mainsprings of his own philosophy.

Knowledge From Underground: Leibniz Mines the Enlightenment

1997 ◽  
Vol 16 (2) ◽  
pp. 77-99 ◽  
Author(s):  
E. Hamm
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Administrative Work ◽  
The Enlightenment ◽  
The Earth ◽  
History Of Geology ◽  
Late Eighteenth ◽  
Mining Machinery ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Fantastic

The history of geology has focused largely on the foundations of geology in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Considerable attention has also been given to grand theories of the earth, or cosmogonies, of the seventeenth century. This approach has left out most of eighteenth-century mineralogy; it has also left out mining. The argument here is that Leibniz's Protogaea is best understood in the context of the Harz mines, where Leibniz spent considerable energy doing administrative work and inventing new mining machinery. By looking to the mines we not only make sense of Protogaea, but of most of German mineralogy in the eighteenth century. J. G. Lehmann, J. F. W. Charpentier, C. G. Delius and many other practitioners working in and around mines were deeply concerned with mapping the subterranean structure of the earth's crust and they contrasted their work with the "fantastic" world of theorists. The Freiberg Mining Academy, other institutions, and the way vocabularies of mining changed will also be considered. Finally there are some concluding thoughts on why mining has almost disappeared from the history of geology.

The Encyclopedist and the Peruvian Princess: The Poetics of Illegibility in French Enlightenment Book Culture

PMLA ◽  
2006 ◽  
Vol 121 (1) ◽  
pp. 107-123
Author(s):  
Lorraine Piroux
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
History Of The Book ◽  
The Other ◽  
The Enlightenment ◽  
French Enlightenment ◽  
History Of ◽  
Book Culture

This study focuses on the French Enlightenment's fascination with the materiality of non-Western and nonalphabetic scripts in the broader context of the history of the book. By examining definitions of writing in the Encyclopédie as well as Françoise de Graffigny's novelistic appropriation of the Inca quipu script in Lettres d'une Péruvienne (1747), I argue that there emerges from these texts a conception of the literary sign capable of challenging the fundamental principles of the Enlightenment printed book: dematerialized textuality and absolute legibility. Shaped by the scriptural imagination of eighteenth-century book culture, literature was able to acquire full aesthetic legitimacy only insofar as it was defined as the other of the purely semantic text. (LP)

HOW THE STOICS BECAME ATHEISTS

2006 ◽  
Vol 49 (2) ◽  
pp. 387-402 ◽  
Author(s):  
CHRISTOPHER BROOKE
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
History Of Philosophy ◽  
Critical History ◽  
The Enlightenment ◽  
History Of ◽  
Ralph Cudworth ◽  
The Way

In the middle of the seventeenth century, scholarship on ancient Stoicism generally understood it to be a form of theism. By the middle of the eighteenth century, Stoicism was widely (though not universally) reckoned a variety of atheism, both by its critics and by those more favourably disposed to its claims. This article describes this transition, the catalyst for which was the controversy surrounding Spinoza's philosophy, and which was shaped above all by contemporary transformations in the historiography of philosophy. Particular attention is paid to the roles in this story played by Thomas Gataker, Ralph Cudworth, J. F. Buddeus, Jean Barbeyrac, and J. L. Mosheim, whose contributions collectively helped to shape the way in which Stoicism was presented in two of the leading reference works of the Enlightenment, J. J. Brucker's Critical History of Philosophy and the Encyclopédie of Diderot and d'Alembert.

The Enlightenment

2020 ◽  
pp. 179-206
Author(s):  
Tomás McAuley
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Case Studies ◽  
Scientific Revolution ◽  
Musical Harmony ◽  
The Enlightenment ◽  
History Of ◽  
Mechanical Approach ◽  
Modes Of Interaction

This chapter traces the history of music and philosophy in the Enlightenment, with a particular focus on English thinkers in the years 1660–1750. It identifies three modes of interaction between musical and philosophical ideas: music as object of philosophy, music as inspiration for philosophy, and music as corroboration for philosophy. The chapter hones in particularly on the significance of the new, “mechanical” approach to philosophy that emerged in the later seventeenth century and on changing explanations of music’s fabled ability to cure the bite of the tarantula. Through all of this, it uncovers how ideas about musical harmony and music’s affective power were intertwined in this period. It also includes two eighteenth-century case studies showing how these ideas played themselves out in the French “high” Enlightenment and in German Idealist philosophy at the close of the Enlightenment. The chapter closes with an examination of the relative merits, in this context, of the terms “Baroque,” “scientific revolution,” and “Enlightenment.”

Education

2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dorinda Outram
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Educational Change ◽  
Church And State ◽  
History Of Education ◽  
Third Republic ◽  
Rapid Expansion ◽  
International Competition ◽  
Young Learners ◽  
The Enlightenment ◽  
History Of

The history of education is enmeshed with the growth and final crisis of the Ancien Régime. The rapid expansion of the state, and the vigour of international competition in the eighteenth century, interlocked with educational change. Struggles between church and state for the control of schools and pupils were vital for the making of well-trained armies and docile peasants. The vast and complex international intellectual movement known as the Enlightenment is incomprehensible without a history of education. It is from sectarian conflicts under the French Third Republic that the history of education has evolved many of its traditional themes: institutions, literacy, ideologies, religion, curriculum, personnel, and young and not so young learners.

The History of Catholic Exegesis, 1600–1800

2014 ◽  
pp. 74-88
Author(s):  
Marius Reiser
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Textual Criticism ◽  
Biblical Hermeneutics ◽  
Sharp Distinction ◽  
The Enlightenment ◽  
History Of

Modern critical exegesis began with Erasmus of Rotterdam. During the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, it was predominantly Jesuits who emphasized a literal exegesis. The most prominent commentators included Benito Perera (Pererius) (1535–1610) on Genesis, Juan Maldonado (1533–83) on the four Gospels, and Luis de Alcázar (1554–1613) on Revelation. The founder of biblical hermeneutics and the discipline of exegetical introduction, Richard Simon (1638–1712), drew a sharp distinction between textual criticism and theology. The scandal surrounding exegete Johann L. Isenbiehls demonstrated how hard it was to maintain such a separation. During the eighteenth century, Dom Augustin Calmet (1672–1757) was undoubtedly the most distinguished Catholic exegete, although despite his erudition, he falls short of Simon’s achievements. The Catholic hierarchy was very cautious and anxious about exegetes who worked with the philosophical premises of the Enlightenment, and often persecuted even orthodox exegetes or impeded their work.

Religious Themes in Contemporary Art

2016 ◽  
pp. 188-218
Author(s):  
Codrina Laura Ionita
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Contemporary Art ◽  
The Political ◽  
Modern Times ◽  
Bolshevik Revolution ◽  
The Enlightenment ◽  
History Of Art ◽  
History Of ◽  
Entire History ◽  
The Relationship

The relationship between art and religion, evident throughout the entire history of art, can be deciphered at two levels – that of the essence of art, and that of the actual theme the artist approaches. The mystical view on the essence of art, encountered from Orphic and Pythagorean thinkers to Heidegger and Gadamer, believes that art is a divine gift and the artist – a messenger of heavenly thoughts. But the issue of religious themes' presence in art arises especially since modern times, after the eighteenth century, when religion starts to be constantly and vehemently attacked (from the Enlightenment and the French or the Bolshevik Revolution to the “political correctness” nowadays). Art is no longer just the material transposition of a religious content; instead, religion itself becomes a theme in art, which allows artists to relate to it in different ways – from veneration to disapproval and blasphemy. However, there have always been artists to see art in its genuine meaning, in close connection with the religious sentiment. An case in point is the work of Bill Viola. In Romanian art, a good example is the art group Prolog, but also individual artists like Onisim Colta or Marin Gherasim, who understand art in its true spiritual sense of openness to the absolute.

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