Haydn's Creation and Enlightenment Theology

2008 ◽  
Vol 39 ◽  
pp. 25-44
Author(s):  
Mark Berry
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Intellectual History ◽  
High Culture ◽  
The Enlightenment ◽  
Age Of Enlightenment ◽  
The Creation ◽  
Austrian Tradition

Haydn's two great oratorios, The Creation and The Seasons (Die Schöpfung and Die Jahreszeiten) stand as monuments—on either side of the year 1800—to the Enlightenment and to the Austrian Enlightenment in particular. This is not to claim that they have no connection with what would often be considered more “progressive”—broadly speaking, romantic—tendencies. However, like Haydn himself, they are works that, if a choice must be made, one would place firmly in the eighteenth century, “long” or otherwise. The age of musical classicism was far from dead by 1800, likewise the “Age of Enlightenment.” It is quite true that one witnesses in both the emergence of distinct national, even “nationalist,” tendencies. Yet these intimately connected “ages” remain essentially cosmopolitan, especially in the sphere of intellectual history and “high” culture. Haydn's oratorios not only draw on Austrian tradition; equally important, they are also shaped by broader influence, especially the earlier English Enlightenment, in which the texts of both works have their origins. The following essay considers the theology of The Creation with reference to this background and, to a certain extent, also attempts the reverse, namely, to consider the Austrian Enlightenment in the light of a work more central to its concerns than might have been expected.

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.

scholarly journals Introduction: “Speaking to the Eyes”—Reassessing the Enlightenment in the Digital Age

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-27
Author(s):  
Ileana Baird
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Public Sphere ◽  
Intellectual History ◽  
Data Visualization ◽  
Digital Humanities ◽  
Political Scientist ◽  
Use Of Data ◽  
The Enlightenment ◽  
New Findings ◽  
Data Visualizations

AbstractThis introduction provides a brief survey of the evolution of data visualization from its eighteenth-century beginnings, when the Scottish engineer and political scientist William Playfair created the first statistical graphs, to its present-day developments and use in period-related digital humanities projects. The author highlights the growing use of data visualization in major institutional projects, provides a literature review of representative works that employ data visualizations as a methodological tool, and highlights the contribution that this collection makes to digital humanities and the Enlightenment studies. Addressing essential period-related themes—from issues of canonicity, intellectual history, and book trade practices to canonical authors and texts, gender roles, and public sphere dynamics—, this collection also makes a broader argument about the necessity of expanding the very notion of “Enlightenment” not only spatially but also conceptually, by revisiting its tenets in light of new data. When translating the new findings afforded by the digital in suggestive visualizations, we can unveil unforeseen patterns, trends, connections, or networks of influence that could potentially revise existing master narratives about the period and the ideological structures at the core of the Enlightenment.

scholarly journals Lhitage des Lumies: The Enlightenment as an unfinished and morally demanding project

2011 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 26-30
Author(s):  
Charlotta Wolff
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Cultural History ◽  
Cultural Practices ◽  
Central Place ◽  
Political Debate ◽  
The Enlightenment ◽  
The Social ◽  
French Enlightenment ◽  
Age Of Enlightenment ◽  
Anglo American

The French Enlightenment and the Revolution of 1789 have commonly been seen as forerunners of modern Western European democracies and democratic values such as inalienable human rights, freedom from oppression, equality, religious tolerance, social security and happiness, inherited partly from the Anglo-American revolutions and partly from the radical French philosophes of the last third of the eighteenth century. Historians interested in the culture of the age of Enlightenment have long been looking for the movement in itself, studying the forms of participation and the places where Enlightenment ideals, described and impersonated by men like Voltaire, Rousseau and Diderot, were propagated. As much as ‘the Enlightenment’ itself is not a homogeneous philosophical trend, recent historical research has shown that the social and cultural practices of eighteenth-century philosophic-al circles were far from corresponding to the ideals of equality and liberty commonly associated with the Enlightenment. A second bias in our interpretations of the Enlightenment is the central place given to values commonly associated with it in the legitimisation of modern democracies, while in the meantime, other phenomena of the age of Enlightenment, such as cosmopolitanism, are misunderstood or rejected because of, for example, the idea of national primacy. This article is concerned with how the strengthening of the focus in cultural history on social practices has changed our picture of the Enlightenment as a movement, but also with the difficulties experienced by historians who are intellectually and morally indebted to the Enlightenment in constructing a credible picture of this movement in a time when its legacy is subject to political debate.

scholarly journals O legislador entre “felicidade pública” e “máxima felicidade”: contribuição à história da filosofia jurídica às vésperas da era dos direitos

2019 ◽  
Vol 1 (41) ◽  
Author(s):  
Alexander Rodrigues de Castro
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Intellectual History ◽  
Fundamental Rights ◽  
The Public ◽  
Legal Thought ◽  
The Enlightenment ◽  
Public Happiness ◽  
History Of ◽  
History Of Law ◽  
Cesare Beccaria

RESUMOO presente trabalho é um estudo de história intelectual do direito e tem como objetivo descrever a evolução de alguns tópicos do pensamento jurídico-político setecentista. Na teoria política pró-absolutista do século XVIII, um dos tópicos mais importantes foi a figura do legislador, que aparece já no começo do século no âmbito do discurso da felicidade pública. Posteriormente, o tema volta a ser elaborado pela incipiente filosofia utilitarista que se desenvolvia ainda dentro do iluminismo com Claude-Adrien Helvétius e Cesare Beccaria. De tal forma, o tema do legislador contribuiu de forma decisiva para a transição à segunda modernidade no âmbito do pensamento jurídico, fundamentando a hegemonia da lei sobre as outras fontes de direito e facilitando a emergência dos direitos – direitos humanos, direitos fundamentais, direitos da personalidade – como centro da ordem jurídica. Procuramos seguir este itinerário, demonstrando como a questão do legislador e os temas a ele conectados vão sendo reelaborados ao longo do desenvolvimento do pensamento político setecentista. Demonstramos, assim, que no âmbito de uma fundamentação teórica do absolutismo monárquico, que se inicia com a metamorfose na compreensão do papel da coroa com relação à sociedade, o tema do legislador converte-se em pedra angular de algumas importantes tendências do pensamento jurídico moderno. Utilizamos os métodos propostos pela história conceitual.PALAVRAS-CHAVEHistória do pensamento jurídico. Legislador. Utilitarismo. Máxima felicidade. ABSTRACTThe present work is a study on the intellectual history of law and aims to describe the evolution of some topics of eighteenth-century legal-political thinking. In the eighteenth-century pro-absolutist political theory, one of the most important subjects of debate was the legislator, which appears already at the beginning of the century in the “public happiness” discourse. Subsequently, it continued to be discussed by the incipient utilitarian philosophy that started being developed within the Enlightenment with Claude-Adrien Helvétius and Cesare Beccaria. The debate on the legislator contributed decisively to the transition to the second modernity in the field of legal thought, laying the foundations for the hegemony of statutory law over other sources of law and facilitating the emergence of rights – human rights, fundamental rights, personality rights – as the center of the legal order. We seek to follow this itinerary, demonstrating how the legislator question evolved throughout the eighteenth-century political thought. We thus intend to demonstrate that within the framework of a theoretical justification for monarchical absolutism, the legislator subject became the cornerstone of some important trends in modern legal thought. We use the methods proposed by conceptual history.KEYWORDSHistory of legal thought. Legislator. Utilitarianism. Greatest happiness.

Intellectual Change before the Enlightenment: Scotland, the Netherlands and the Reception of Cartesian Thought, 1650–1700

2015 ◽  
Vol 94 (1) ◽  
pp. 24-47 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alasdair Raffe
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
The Netherlands ◽  
Intellectual History ◽  
Dutch Republic ◽  
Intellectual Life ◽  
Scottish Enlightenment ◽  
The Enlightenment ◽  
History Of ◽  
United Provinces

This article argues that intellectual historians' fascination with a narrative of the emerging Scottish enlightenment has led to a neglect of ideas that did not shape enlightenment culture. As a contribution to a less teleological intellectual history of Scotland, the article examines the reception of the philosophy of René Descartes (1596–1650). Cartesian thought enjoyed a brief period of popularity from the 1670s to the 1690s but appeared outdated by the mid-eighteenth century. Debates about Cartesianism illustrate the ways in which late seventeenth-century Scottish intellectual life was conditioned by the rivalry between presbyterians and episcopalians, and by fears that new philosophy would undermine christianity. Moreover, the reception of Cartesian thought exemplifies intellectual connections between Scotland and the Netherlands. Not only did Descartes' philosophy win its first supporters in the United Provinces, but the Dutch Republic also provided the arguments employed by the main Scottish critics of Cartesianism. In this period the Netherlands was both a source of philosophical innovation and of conservative reaction to intellectual change.

FROM THE ENLIGHTENMENT TO THE TERROR: NEW GENEALOGIES

2013 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 153-162
Author(s):  
ANNELIEN DE DIJN
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Intellectual History ◽  
French Revolution ◽  
Recent Literature ◽  
Stanford University ◽  
Prolific Author ◽  
Natural Right ◽  
The Enlightenment ◽  
The University ◽  
University Of Chicago Press

Dan Edelstein is a prolific author. In less than two years he has produced not one but two books. His first, The Terror of Natural Right: Republicanism, the Cult of Nature, and the French Revolution, was published by The University of Chicago Press in October 2009. Its Irish twin, The Enlightenment: A Genealogy, appeared with the same press in the fall of 2010. Each of these books deals with a much-studied subject—respectively the Terror and the Enlightenment—the kind of subject, in other words, about which even the most recent literature alone can fill entire libraries. Yet in both cases, Edelstein manages to make a contribution of startling originality and importance. It is clear that this literary scholar—Edelstein is a professor of French and Italian at Stanford University—is one of the most important new voices in the field of eighteenth-century French intellectual history. In this review, I will start by discussing both of his books separately. I will then conclude with some reflections on what Edelstein's work contributes to our understanding of eighteenth-century intellectual history when read as a whole.

scholarly journals Travelling to improve yourself and to increase common good of humankind and your country: recommendations of Leopold von Berchtold in the context of the Enlightenement discourse

2021 ◽  
Vol 4 ◽  
pp. 5-13
Author(s):  
Kateryna Dysa
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Intellectual History ◽  
Common Good ◽  
The People ◽  
Before And After ◽  
History Of ◽  
Economic State ◽  
Age Of Enlightenment ◽  
The Public Sphere ◽  
Talented Artist

The recommendations of the Bohemian philanthropist of the late eighteenth century Leopold von Berchtold to travelers were not unique: there were others before and after. In the previous centuries other authors also tended to recommend their readers to pay attention to the economic state of foreign countries and provided them with a long list of questions they had to ask the people in the country of their destination. However, Berchtold’s recommendations were the product of his time, the age of Enlightenment, and they mentioned numerous topics and problems characteristic for that period. For instance, the author believed that self-improvement of a traveler had to begin long before the start of the trip. In Berchtold’s opinion, a traveler prepared for the journey was a kind of ideal, universal superhuman who was physically proficient, expert in all spheres of science, mechanics, economics, and medicine, who knew many languages, and was a talented artist and musician. Among the topics related to the Enlightenment, to which the author paid attention, were, for instance, patriotism of the traveler, which he understood as civil virtue, destined to improve not only his own country but also the whole of humankind. Moreover, patriotism in Berchtold’s interpretation did not contradict cosmopolitanism but rather it based itself on it. Philanthropy – which in the eighteenth century was a kind of secular religion – also featured a lot in Berchtold’s recommendations. Finally, the theme of doubt, as a basis for a critical assessment of reality and verification of authorities, pierced through the whole text of Leopold Berchtold. So did the topic of the public sphere, especially sociability and creation of social networks. The recommendations of Berchtold are thus valuable as a source that can tell a lot about the age of Enlightenment – not only about the practical side of traveling but also about the intellectual history of that period.

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