scholarly journals Enlightenment or Counter-Enlightenment in Russia? Enlightenment or Counter-Enlightenment in Russia? Century

2019 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 1089-1120
Author(s):  
Natalie Bayer
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
The Enlightenment ◽  
Late Eighteenth Century ◽  
Late Eighteenth ◽  
The Mind

The article explores the themes of Enlightenment and Counter-Enlightenment through the lens of Freemasonry, and, more specifically, Freemasons in Russia who wrote history. It tests the approaches of Masonic history writers against Berlin’s definitions of the Enlightenment and Counter-Enlightenment. Whilst a definitive break between the Enlightenment and Counter-Enlightenment seems attractive, the article advances a more nuanced picture of the plurality of religious and secular discourse in Russia. Instead of opposing the Enlightenment, many late eighteenth-century Masonic writers of history provided their own, alternative interpretative models of history as a way out of the perceived crisis between the mind and the soul.

THE “HARD FORM” OF SCULPTURE: MARBLE, MATTER AND SPIRIT IN EUROPEAN SCULPTURE FROM THE ENLIGHTENMENT THROUGH ROMANTICISM

2008 ◽  
Vol 5 (3) ◽  
pp. 455-486 ◽  
Author(s):  
LINDA WALSH
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Theory And Practice ◽  
Early Nineteenth Century ◽  
External Appearance ◽  
The Enlightenment ◽  
Late Eighteenth Century ◽  
Late Eighteenth ◽  
Familiar World ◽  
A Site ◽  
Aesthetic Values

The apparently distinct aesthetic values of naturalism (a fidelity to external appearance) and neoclassicism (with its focus on idealization and intangible essence) came together in creative tension and fusion in much late eighteenth-century and early nineteenth-century sculptural theory and practice. The hybrid styles that resulted suited the requirements of the European sculpture-buying public. Both aesthetics, however, created difficulties for the German Idealists who represented a particularly uncompromising strain of Romantic theory. In their view, naturalism was too closely bound to the observable, familiar world, while neoclassicism was too wedded to notions of clearly defined forms. This article explores sculptural practice and theory at this time as a site of complex debates around the medium's potential for specific concrete representation in a context of competing Romantic visions (ethereal, social and commercial) of modernity.

Are we Really Past Truth? A Historian’s Perspective

2021 ◽  
Vol 43 (2) ◽  
pp. 265-283
Author(s):  
Sophia Rosenfeld
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Public Life ◽  
The Enlightenment ◽  
Late Eighteenth Century ◽  
Late Eighteenth

Abstract The prevalence of the term post-truth suggests that we have, in the last few years, moved from being members of societies dedicated to truth to being members of ones that cannot agree on truth’s parameters and, even worse, have given up trying. But is this really what has happened? The author argues that, under the sway of the Enlightenment, truth has actually been unstable and a source of contention in public life ever since the founding moment for modern democracies in the late eighteenth century; the ‘post’ in ‘post-truth’ elides this complex history even as it accurately describes some of the conditions of our moment. What that means, though, is that rather than attempt to turn the clock back to past models and practices for restoring the reign of truth, we should be looking for new, post-Enlightenment paradigms for how to define and locate truth in the context of democracy, as well as new mechanisms for making this possible.

Hamann, Johann Georg (1730–88)

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Frederick Beiser
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
Friedrich Schlegel ◽  
Sturm Und Drang ◽  
German Enlightenment ◽  
Late Eighteenth Century ◽  
The Social ◽  
Late Eighteenth ◽  
The Mind

Hamann was one of the most important critics of the German Enlightenment or Aufklärung. He attacked the Aufklärung chiefly because it gave reason undue authority over faith. It misunderstood faith, which consists in an immediate personal experience, inaccessible to reason. The main fallacy of the Aufklärung was hypostasis, the reification of ideas, the artificial abstraction of reason from its social and historical context. Hamann stressed the social and historical dimension of reason, that it must be embodied in society, history and language. He also emphasized the pivotal role of language in the development of reason. The instrument and criterion of reason was language, whose only sanction was tradition and use. Hamann was a sharp critic of Kant, whose philosophy exemplified all the sins of the Aufklärung. Hamann attacked the critical philosophy for its purification of reason from experience, language and tradition. He also strongly objected to all its dualisms, which seemed arbitrary and artificial. The task of philosophy was to unify all the various functions of the mind, seeing reason, will and feeling as an indivisible whole. Although he was original and unorthodox, Hamann’s critique of reason should be placed within the tradition of Protestant nominalism. Hamann saw himself as a defender of Luther, whose reputation was on the wane in late eighteenth-century Germany. Hamann was also a founder of the Sturm und Drang, the late eighteenth-century literary movement which celebrated personal freedom and revolt. His aesthetics defended creative genius and the metaphysical powers of art. It marked a sharp break with the rationalism of the classical tradition and the empiricism of late eighteenth-century aesthetics. Hamann was a seminal influence upon Herder, Goethe, Jacobi, Friedrich Schlegel and Kierkegaard.

Beattie, James (1735–1803)

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul Wood
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Common Sense ◽  
Modern Literature ◽  
Thomas Reid ◽  
Late Eighteenth Century ◽  
Late Eighteenth ◽  
Common Sense Philosophy ◽  
The Mind

James Beattie was famed as a moralist and poet in the late eighteenth century, and helped to popularize Scottish common-sense philosophy. At Marischal College, Aberdeen, Beattie cultivated a lecturing style which differed significantly from that of his Aberdonian predecessors. Because he believed that the form of abstract analysis characteristic of the science of the mind in his day often led students into the morass of Humean scepticism, Beattie endeavoured to inculcate sound moral and religious principles through the study of ancient and modern literature. Consequently his version of common-sense philosophy diverged from that developed by Thomas Reid. Beattie was more of a practical moralist than an anatomist of the mind, and his treatment of common-sense epistemology lacked the philosophical range and rigour of Reid’s.

Book Ownership in Late Eighteenth-Century Scotland: a Local Case Study of Dumfriesshire Inventories

2012 ◽  
Vol 91 (2) ◽  
pp. 265-286 ◽  
Author(s):  
Vivienne Dunstan
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Scottish Enlightenment ◽  
The Enlightenment ◽  
Late Eighteenth Century ◽  
Print Material ◽  
Local Case ◽  
Late Eighteenth ◽  
Different Types ◽  
Scholarly Attention

Late eighteenth-century Scotland saw a period of growth in the availability of print material set against the backdrop of the Scottish Enlightenment. Yet despite much scholarly attention having been paid to the Enlightenment and an increasing interest in the books people were reading, little attention has been paid to the books that would have been found in individual Scottish houses and what they reveal about Scottish mindsets in these years. This paper addresses this topic, using a local case study of after-death inventories of personal possessions. These rich records reveal the size of household libraries, the varieties of books they contained, variation by occupation and social class, and the extent to which their owners engaged with and were influenced by debates and ideas of the time. In addition, the evidence allows us to consider the uses to which different types of books were put, examine differences between urban and provincial Scotland, and consider how and where people bought their books.

Touching Books: Diderot, Novalis,and the Encyclopedia of the Future

2011 ◽  
Vol 114 (1) ◽  
pp. 65-102 ◽  
Author(s):  
Chad Wellmon
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
The Enlightenment ◽  
Late Eighteenth Century ◽  
Late Eighteenth ◽  
The Future

This article considers the reinvention of the Enlightenment encyclopedic tradition in a late eighteenth-century Germany overwhelmed by the proliferation of print. In particular, it traces a shift in the very metaphors of encyclopedic knowledge from those of vision that characterized Diderot and D'Alembert's Encyclopédie to those of touch that characterized the German poet Novalis's Allgemeine Brouillon.

Amores perritos: Puppies, Laughter and Popular Catholicism in Bourbon Mexico City

2014 ◽  
Vol 46 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-28 ◽  
Author(s):  
FRANK ‘TREY’ PROCTOR
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Mexico City ◽  
Colonial Mexico ◽  
The Enlightenment ◽  
Late Eighteenth Century ◽  
Late Eighteenth ◽  
The Face ◽  
Bourbon Reforms ◽  
Popular Classes

AbstractIn late eighteenth-century Mexico City, Spanish colonials, particularly members of the urban middle and popular classes, performed a number of weddings and baptisms on puppies (which were wearing clothes or bejewelled collars) in the context of fandangos or dance parties. These ceremonies were not radical challenges to orthodoxy or conservative reactions in the face of significant economic, political, religious and cultural Bourbon reforms emanating from Spain. Employing Inquisitorial investigations of these ceremonies, this article explores the rise of pet keeping, the meanings of early modern laughter and the implications of the cultural and religious components of the Enlightenment-inspired Bourbon reforms in late colonial Mexico.

Unveiling Nature: Wonder and Deception in Eighteenth-Century London Shows and Exhibitions

Nuncius ◽  
2012 ◽  
Vol 27 (1) ◽  
pp. 56-80 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lavinia Maddaluno
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
The Public ◽  
Late Eighteenth Century ◽  
Late Eighteenth ◽  
Natural Philosophers ◽  
The Mind ◽  
Philosophical Understanding

This paper examines six exhibitions of machines, clocks, and automata which were performed in the squares, salons and coffee-houses of late eighteenth-century London. It does not take into account those natural philosophers whose enquiries were acknowledged by institutional science, rather focusing on those mechanicks, illusionists, and circus owners (Gulielmo Pittachio, John Joseph Merlin, Benjamin Rackstrow, Henry Breslaw, Philip Astley and James Cox), often collocated in the category of charlatans. By taking into account original advertisements, catalogues and pamphlets, it argues that these shows, with their moments of veiling and unveiling, their dissimilar “methods” to astonish and induce credulity in the beholders, and their separation from institutional venues, were still conceived as places to enlighten and edify the mind, and conveyed concepts such as wonder, deception, curiosity and philosophical understanding to the public.

The Context

2019 ◽  
pp. 15-22
Author(s):  
Steven J. Osterlind
Keyword(s):  
Probability Theory ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Industrial Revolution ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
Probability Estimation ◽  
The Enlightenment ◽  
Late Eighteenth Century ◽  
Late Eighteenth ◽  
In The Beginning

This chapter introduces the historical context that gives meaning to the contemporaneous developments in probability theory. It shows how one can only realize the true meaning of quantification by realizing how history set the context for the great number of mathematical developments. The period is defined as the “long century,” starting with the rise of the Enlightenment and lasting well into the age of the Industrial Revolution: roughly 1790 to 1920. Most of this relatively short chapter describes the main historical events that took place during the late-eighteenth century, throughout the nineteenth century, and in the beginning of the twentieth century. This chapter sets the stage for the rest of the book, in which those who invented probability theory and developed the methods of probability estimation will be examined within their historical context.

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