Secular Discontents

Worldview ◽  
1981 ◽  
Vol 24 (3) ◽  
pp. 5-8
Author(s):  
James Finn
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Military Power ◽  
The West ◽  
Classical Greece ◽  
Age Of Reason ◽  
Equality Rights ◽  
Greco Roman ◽  
The Enlightenment

The West is today what it has been for a number of decades, the center and source of powerful ideas incarnated in institutions and practices from whose effects no corner of the globe is wholly immune. It is the great disturber of other cultures. Thus, mutatis mutandis, the West takes its place with the ancient Orient, with classical Greece, with Islam, with the great civilizations that extended and imposed themselves through differing proportions of military power, commerce, and high cultural confidence.In its development the West has been informed by the profound contributions of the Greco-Roman and JudeoChristian traditions, and it cannot be understood without reference to them. But the factors that allowed the West first to become a great economic force and second to extend that force into the ecumene have their immediate causes in the eighteenth century. This period in Europe, variously termed the Enlightenment or the Age of Reason, elevated to prominence and gave particular meaning to such abstract social concepts as “liberty,” “equality,” “rights,” and “authority.”

Classical Learning in Britain, France, and the Dutch Republic, 1690-1750

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Floris Verhaart
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Ancient Greece ◽  
Classical Antiquity ◽  
General Point ◽  
Classical Literature ◽  
Sources Of Information ◽  
Literary Value ◽  
Age Of Reason ◽  
Renaissance Humanism ◽  
The Enlightenment

The Quarrel of the Ancients and the Moderns in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries was a moment when scholars and thinkers across Europe reflected on how they saw their relationship with the past, especially classical antiquity. Many readers in the Renaissance had appreciated the writings of ancient Latin and Greek authors not just for their literary value, but also as important sources of information that could be usefully applied in their own age. By the late seventeenth century, however, it was felt that the authority of the ancients was no longer needed and that their knowledge had become outdated thanks to scientific discoveries as well as the new paradigms of rationalism and empiricism. Those working on the ancient past and its literature debated new ways of defending their relevance for society. The different approaches to classical literature defended in these debates explain how the writings of ancient Greece and Rome could become a vital part of eighteenth-century culture and political thinking. Through its analysis of the debates on the value of the classics for the eighteenth century, this book also makes a more general point on the Enlightenment. Although often seen as an age of reason and modernity, the Enlightenment in Europe continuously looked back for inspiration from preceding traditions and ages such as Renaissance humanism and classical antiquity. Finally, the pressure on scholars in the eighteenth century to popularize their work and be seen as contributing to society is a parallel for our own time in which the value of the humanities is a continuous topic of debate.

Russian Enlightenment as a Source of National Philosophy Formation

2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (2-1) ◽  
pp. 213-236
Author(s):  
Ivan Kokovin ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Methodological Approach ◽  
Analytical Description ◽  
Russian Philosophy ◽  
The West ◽  
Xviii Century ◽  
The Enlightenment ◽  
Russian Soil ◽  
Cultural Origins ◽  
Philosophical Understanding

The study is devoted to the philosophical understanding of the problem of the cultural origins of Russian philosophy. In the author’s opinion, the source of diversity of modern approaches to the phenomenon of Russian Philosophy is, first of all, the absence of a unified methodological approach. The diversity of research on the phenomenon of the Russian philosophy origins is also a consequence of research susceptibility to certain methodological influences. The paper aims to identify a number of philosophical, historical, literary approaches to the problem of the genesis of the eighteenth century Russian Enlightenment. It is necessary to clarify the mechanisms and procedures for the reception of Western European ideas and concepts by Russian Enlightenment during the eighteenth century. On the basis of adaptation of natural law terms, the author considers certain trends in the theory of reconstruction of the Enlightenment phenomenon in Russia. He reveals a number of significant features of the process of reconstruction of the Enlightenment ideology formation on Russian soil, including the idea that European concepts and theories are assimilated by the domestic semiosphere in the form in which they existed in the culture of the West. The author highlights the idea, that researchers were convinced that Russia of the XVIII century already had a national philosophy. The paper also draws attention to the lack of analytical interest in the problems of transformation of the language of expression of political phenomena. In the same row, there is also the idea that the process of reception of the enlightenment heritage of the West had a revolutionary, not an evolutionary, specificity, and was devoid of cultural prerequisites. Basing on the material of historical and historical-philosophical studies, the author considers the possibilities of constructing a methodologically integral reconstruction, chronologically covering the entire period of the XVIII century. The research methodology is based on the approach that includes an analytical description of the problems of the thematic fields of discourse, concepts and theories of the Enlightenment on the Russian soil. The result of the analysis is the systematization of contradictions in the process of analyzing the phenomena of the Russian Enlightenment in the XVIII century.

Introduction

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-23
Author(s):  
Guy G. Stroumsa
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Paradigm Shift ◽  
Late Antiquity ◽  
Formative Period ◽  
Traditional Model ◽  
Early Modernity ◽  
Age Of Reason ◽  
New Science ◽  
The Enlightenment

This book is a sequel to A New Science: The Discovery of Religion in an Age of Reason, where I analyzed new intellectual approaches to religion in early modernity, from the sixteenth to the eighteenth century.1 In the present work, I study some major aspects of the scholarly study of religion during the long nineteenth century. More precisely, I seek here to understand the implications, in a secular age, which was also the formative period of the new discipline, of a major paradigm shift. The nineteenth century witnessed the transformation of the taxonomy of religions. According to the traditional model, in place since late antiquity, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam were cognate religions, all stemming from the biblical patriarch Abraham’s discovery of monotheism. This model was largely discarded during the Enlightenment, and would be later replaced by a new one, according to which Christianity, the religion of Europe, essentially belonged to a postulated family of the Aryan, or Indo-European religions, while Judaism and Islam were identified as Semitic religions....

Review Article : Ancien Regime and Enlightenment. Some Recent Writing on Seventeenth- and Eighteenth-Century Europe Review Article Jeremy Black Roger Bartlett and Janet M. Hartley, eds, Russia in the Age of the Enlightenment. Essays for Isabel de Madariaga, London, Macmillan, 1990; x + 253 pp.; £45.00. Otto Büsch and Monika Neugebauer-Wölk, eds, Preussen und die Revo lutionäre Herausforderung seit 1789. Ergebnisse einer Konferenz, Berlin and New York, Walter de Gruyter, 1991; xv + 371 pp.; DM 168,-. Heinz Duchhardt, Altes Reich und europäische Staatenwelt 1648-1806, Munich, Oldenbourg, 1990; viii + 125 pp.; DM 64,- hardback, DM 28, paperback. Lindsey Hughes, Sophia, Regent of Russia 1657-1704, New Haven and London, Yale University Press, 1990; xvii + 345 pp.; £19.95. Peter Hulme and Ludmilla Jordanova, eds, The Enlightenment and its Shadows, London, Routledge, 1990; viii + 232 pp.; £35.00. Bernhard R. Kroener, ed., Europa im Zeitalter Friedrichs des Grossen: Wirtschaft, Gesellschaft, Kriege, Munich, Oldenbourg, 1989; 316 pp.; DM 48,-. Jerzy Lukowski, Liberty's Folly. The Polish—Lithuanian Commonwealth in the Eighteenth Century, London, Routledge, 1991; xx + 316 pp.; £40.00. Peter Nitschke, Verbrechensbekämpfung und Verwaltung. Die Entstehung der Polizei in der Grafschaft Lippe (1700-1814), Münster, Waxman, 1990; 222 pp.; DM 49,90. Robert A. Schneider, Public Life in Toulouse, 1463-1789. From Munici pal Republic to Cosmopolitan City, Ithaca, Cornell University Press, 1990; xiii + 395 pp.; US $49.95. H. M. Scott, ed., Enlightened Absolutism. Reform and Reformers in Later Eighteenth-Century Europe, London, Macmillan, 1990; x + 385 pp.; £35.00. Franco Venturi, The End of the Old Regime in Europe, 1776-1789: Vol. I: The Great States of the West, Vol. II: Republican Patriotism and the Empires of the East, translated by R. Burr Litchfield; Princeton, Prince ton University Press, 1991; xiv + 1044 pp.; US $75.00 together, or I: $42.50, II: $39.95

1992 ◽  
Vol 22 (2) ◽  
pp. 247-255 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jeremy Black
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Public Life ◽  
Review Article ◽  
New Haven ◽  
Yale University ◽  
Old Regime ◽  
The West ◽  
Cornell University ◽  
The Enlightenment

Samuel Clain and the Rumanian Enlightenment in Transylvania

Slavic Review ◽  
1964 ◽  
Vol 23 (4) ◽  
pp. 660-675 ◽  
Author(s):  
Keith Hitchins
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Eastern Europe ◽  
Social Contract ◽  
Natural Law ◽  
The West ◽  
Local Conditions ◽  
The Enlightenment ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Relationship

In the second half of the eighteenth century the leavening effects of the Enlightenment began to be felt among the Rumanians of Transylvania. The Enlightenment in Transylvania—and in Eastern Europe generally —was a curious blend of natural law, rationalism, and optimism, drawn from the West, and nationalism, a response to local conditions. It is no coincidence that the first tangible signs of national awakening among the Rumanians manifested themselves at this time. In the thought of the Enlightenment they discovered new justification for their claims to equality with their Magyar, Saxon, and Szekler neighbors. For example, they applied the notion of “natural” civil equality between individuals to the relationship between whole peoples, and they accepted wholeheartedly the myth of the social contract as the foundation of society and as the guarantee of the rights of all those who composed it.

Orthodoxy, rationalism and the world in eighteenth-century Holland

1973 ◽  
Vol 10 ◽  
pp. 173-192
Author(s):  
J. Van Den Berg
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Well Being ◽  
The Other ◽  
Knowledge Of God ◽  
The Road ◽  
Age Of Reason ◽  
The Enlightenment ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
The World ◽  
Revival Movements

As far as the protestant countries are concerned the eighteenth century, the ‘age of reason’, might as well be called ‘the age of revival’. On the one hand, we meet with a strong desire to escape the snares of this world by concentrating upon the mysteries of salvation: the road to sanctity is a narrow road, to be trodden in fear and trembling. On the other hand there are those for whom this world is a world full of new and unexpected possibilities, a world to be explored and to be made instrumental to the fulfilment of the divine plan with regard to the development of humanity in its secular context. Naturally, also in the eighteenth century ‘sanctity’ and ‘secularity’ were not seen as in themselves mutually exclusive concepts. While many revivalists looked forward to the enlightenment of this world by the knowledge of God, many men of the enlightenment saw before them the prospect of the sanctification of the world by the combined influences of reason and revelation. Some of the fathers of the enlightenment - notably Locke and Leibniz - were essentially committed to the cause of Christianity, while on the other hand protagonists of the pietist and revival movements such as Francke and Edwards cannot in fairness be accused of an anti-rational attitude and of a lack of interest in the well-being of this world. Nevertheless, within the circle of eighteenth-century protestant Christianity there were conspicuous differences with regard to the evaluation of and the attitude towards the world in which the Christian community, while living in the expectation of the kingdom, still had to find its way and its place.

LIVING THE ENLIGHTENMENT AND THE FRENCH REVOLUTION: JAMES WATT, MATTHEW BOULTON, AND THEIR SONS

1999 ◽  
Vol 42 (1) ◽  
pp. 157-182 ◽  
Author(s):  
PETER M. JONES
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Cultural History ◽  
French Revolution ◽  
Steam Engine ◽  
The West ◽  
The Enlightenment ◽  
West Midlands ◽  
History Of ◽  
James Watt ◽  
Discrete Family

This article is a contribution to the cultural history of English Enlightenment. It examines the formation of a discrete ‘family’ of philosophes in the West Midlands who maintained close links with their counterparts on the continent. Birmingham's role as a magnet for ‘industrial tourists’ in the second half of the eighteenth century helped to propagate the influence of this local intelligentsia who were mostly members of the Lunar Society. None the less, it is argued that the activities of the Society correspond more closely to an Enlightenment than to a proto-industrial pattern of inquiry. The events of 1789 in France disrupted this philosophic ‘family’. Their impact is explored through the medium of a real family; that of James Watt, the engineer, who came to Birmingham to manufacture the steam engine in partnership with Matthew Boulton. The vicissitudes of the Watt family, and of other prominent members of the Lunar Society, are unravelled to illustrate the dilemmas faced by men raised in the values of the Enlightenment when confronted with the reality – and the proximity – of a far-reaching political revolution.

The Career of Colonel Polier and Late Eighteenth-Century Orientalism

2000 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 43-60 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sanjay Subrahmanyam
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Early History ◽  
The West ◽  
Large Measure ◽  
Oxford University ◽  
The Enlightenment ◽  
Late Eighteenth Century ◽  
Late Eighteenth ◽  
History Of ◽  
Manuscript Collections

This essay is concerned with the career of a somewhat obscure figure in the early history of Orientalism, Colonel Antoine-Louis-Henri Polier, who is however known both to aficionados of the early European manuscript collections in the West, as well as to historians of the more obscure aspects of the Enlightenment on the Continent. The occasion for the research on which this essay is based is, in large measure, a project intended to translate the extensive Persian letter-book that Polier (together with his amanuensis, or munshī, Kishan Sahay) produced during his long stay in India; this translation, of a text entitled I jāz-i-Arsalānī (which is preserved in the Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Paris), has recently been brought to partial fruition by Muzaffar Alam and Seema Alavi, through the auspices of Oxford University Press (Delhi). In this context, it may be useful to reflect somewhat on the rather extraordinary career, and fascinating milieu, of Colonel Polier.

Catherine II’s Anglophilia and Lord Cathcart’s “Extraordinary Embassy” in St. Petersburg, 1768–1772

2019 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 224-244
Author(s):  
Elena Borisovna Smilianskaia
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Great Britain ◽  
The West ◽  
Leading Role ◽  
The Enlightenment ◽  
Peculiar Character ◽  
British Culture

Looking at eighteenth-century relations between Russia and the West through the prism of diplomatic culture and rituals, this article concentrates on a “happy period” in Anglo-Russian contacts in 1768–1772, when Sir Charles Cathcart was dispatched to St. Petersburg to negotiate a treaty between the British and Russian Empires. The article argues that close relations between Great Britain and Russia at that time influenced ceremonial practices, individual contacts, and the transfer of the British culture to the Russian court. Study of the Cathcart’s archive points to the peculiar character of his mission – to the leading role that he, as British ambassador, played among diplomats in Russia; to the role of his wife, who became the first ambassadrice officially presented to Catherine ii; to their residence, which they transformed into an exemplar of “British taste” in St. Petersburg. The Cathcart case study opens up new perspectives on the diplomats in the Age of the Enlightenment.

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