Berlin and Vienna

2019 ◽  
pp. 157-203
Author(s):  
Margaret C. Jacob
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Church And State ◽  
Space And Time ◽  
The Enlightenment ◽  
Personal Transformations ◽  
Political Structures ◽  
New Institutions

This epilogue argues that the meaning of the Enlightenment resides in political structures and personal transformations that emerged in the course of the eighteenth century. These are most visible in the lives and ideas found in its last quarter. Since the late 1680s into the 1790s, all sorts of people tried to break with tradition and find alternatives to absolutism in church and state. By 1800, space and time on earth were filled by fewer miracles, saints, and prophecies than had been the case in 1700. Ultimately, the eighteenth-century philosophes, despite their disagreements, shared a universal distrust of organized religion and the priests who enforced it. Indeed, the century ended with revolutions that focused minds on making new institutions, new laws, new hopes and dreams.

Prologue

2019 ◽  
pp. 1-5
Author(s):  
Margaret C. Jacob
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Art Music ◽  
Frame Of Reference ◽  
Western World ◽  
Space And Time ◽  
The Enlightenment ◽  
Secular World ◽  
Gradual Process ◽  
Point Of Departure ◽  
Secular Terms

This prologue provides an overview of the Secular Enlightenment. The Enlightenment was an eighteenth-century movement of ideas and practices that made the secular world its point of departure. It did not necessarily deny the meaning or emotional hold of religion, but it gradually shifted attention away from religious questions toward secular ones. By seeking answers in secular terms—even to many religious questions—it vastly expanded the sphere of the secular, making it, for increasing numbers of educated people, a primary frame of reference. In the Western world, art, music, science, politics, and even the categories of space and time had undergone a gradual process of secularization in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries; the Enlightenment built on this process and made it into an international intellectual cause. This book then aims to understand the major intellectual currents of the century that gave birth to the label “secular.”

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.

Epilogue

2019 ◽  
pp. 263-266
Author(s):  
Margaret C. Jacob
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Space And Time ◽  
The Enlightenment ◽  
To Come

This chapter explores the Enlightenment in the 1790s. By 1790, the writings of the philosophes, new enlightened attitudes among the educated, and the expansion of secular space and time seemed like old stories, less compelling than the revolutionary events emanating from Philadelphia, Brussels, and Amsterdam, and most dramatically from Paris. During the 1790s, French, British, German, Dutch, Italian, and American intellectuals and sympathizers with both enlightened and revolutionary ideals had to come to terms with a revolution that veered off into the Terror and the rise of Napoleon, and then ended in 1815 with a profound reaction against its ideals. Although battered, the Enlightenment lived on, particularly among writers and intellectuals—often described as Romantics—whose psyches were shaped by the bold ideas of the eighteenth century.

The Oxford History of Protestant Dissenting Traditions, Volume II

2018 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Church And State ◽  
Political Rights ◽  
Protestant Christianity ◽  
History Of ◽  
Degree Of Acceptance ◽  
Missionary Societies ◽  
Long Eighteenth Century ◽  
British State ◽  
The Relationship

This volume charts the development of protestant Dissent between the passing of the Toleration Act (1689) and the repealing of the Test and Corporation Acts (1828). The long eighteenth century was a period in which Dissenters slowly moved from a position of being a persecuted minority to achieving a degree of acceptance and, eventually, full political rights. The first part of the volume considers the history of various Dissenting traditions inside England. There are separate chapters devoted to Presbyterians, Congregationalists, Baptists, and Quakers—the denominations that traced their history before this period—and also to Methodists, who emerged as one of the denominations of ‘New Dissent’ during the eighteenth century. The second part explores the ways in which these traditions developed outside England. It considers the complexities of being a Dissenter in Wales and Ireland, where the state church was Episcopalian, as well as in Scotland, where it was Presbyterian. It also looks at the development of Dissent across the Atlantic, where the relationship between Church and state was rather more loose. The third part is devoted to revivalist movements and their impact, with a particular emphasis on the importance of missionary societies for spreading protestant Christianity from the late eighteenth century onwards. The fourth part looks at Dissenters’ relationship to the British state and their involvement in campaigns to abolish the slave trade. The final part discusses how Dissenters lived: the theology they developed and their attitudes towards Scripture; the importance of both sermons and singing; their involvement in education and print culture; and the ways in which they expressed their faith materially through their buildings.

The “New Empire of Common Sense”

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul B. Wood
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Common Sense ◽  
Atlantic World ◽  
Thomas Reid ◽  
The Enlightenment ◽  
Joseph Priestley ◽  
Common Sense Philosophy

Although the rise of Scottish common sense philosophy was one of the most important intellectual developments of the Enlightenment, significant gaps remain in our understanding of the reception of Scottish common sense philosophy in the Atlantic world during the second half of the eighteenth century. This chapter focuses on the British context in the period 1764–93, and examines published responses to James Oswald, James Beattie, and, especially, Thomas Reid. The chapter contextualizes the polemics of Joseph Priestley against the three Scots and argues that it was Joseph Berington rather than Priestley who was the first critic to claim that the appeal to common sense was the defining feature of “the Scotch school” of philosophy. It also shows that Reid was widely acknowledged to be the founder and most accomplished exponent of the “school”, whereas Beattie and Oswald were typically dismissed as being derivative thinkers.

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.

‹ 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.

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.

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