The Quest for a Global Age of Reason

2021 ◽  
Vol 31 (3) ◽  
pp. 113-131
Author(s):  
Dag Herbjørnsrud ◽  
Keyword(s):  
History Of Ideas ◽  
Global History ◽  
American Universities ◽  
Age Of Reason ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Enlightenment ◽  
Global Age ◽  
European Philosophy ◽  
History Of ◽  
India And China

This paper will contend that we, in the first quarter of the 21st century, need an enhanced Age of Reason based on global epistemology. One reason to legitimize such a call for more intellectual enlightenment is the lack of required information on non-European philosophy in today’s reading lists at European and North American universities. Hence, the present-day Academy contributes to the scarcity of knowledge about the world’s global history of ideas outside one’s ethnocentric sphere. The question is whether we genuinely want to rethink parts of the “Colonial Canon” and its main narratives of the past. This article argues that we, if we truly desire, might create “a better Enlightenment.” Firstly, by raising the general knowledge level concerning the philosophies of the Global South. Thus, this text includes examples from the global enlightenments in China, Mughal India, Arabic-writing countries, and Indigenous North America—all preceding and influencing the European Enlightenment. Secondly, we can rebuild by rediscovering the Enlightenment ideals within the historiography of the “hidden enlightenment” of Europe’s and North America’s past. In Part I, of two parts of this paper, a comparative methodology will be outlined. In addition, examples will be given from the history of ideas in India and China to argue that we need to study how these regions influenced the European history of ideas in the 16th and 17th centuries. Finally, towards the end of this text, a re-reading of the contributions from Egypt and Greece aspires to give a more global and complex context for Western Europe’s so-called Age of Reason.

GEOGRAPHY, ENLIGHTENMENT, AND IMPROVEMENT Geography and Enlightenment. Edited by David N. Livingstone and Charles W. J. Withers. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999. Pp. viii+455. ISBN 0-226-48720-2 (hb). $52·00. 0-226-48721-0 (pb). $25·00. Nature's government: science, imperial Britain, and the ‘improvement’ of the world. By Richard Drayton. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2000. Pp. xxi+346. ISBN 0-300-05976-0. £25·00. Enlightenment geography: the political languages of British geography, 1650–1850. By Robert J. Mayhew. London: Macmillan, 2000. Pp. viii+324. ISBN 0-333-79186-X. £45·00.

2002 ◽  
Vol 45 (1) ◽  
pp. 229-233 ◽  
Author(s):  
FELIX DRIVER
Keyword(s):  
History Of Ideas ◽  
The Political ◽  
New Haven ◽  
Yale University ◽  
Botanic Garden ◽  
The Enlightenment ◽  
Lecture Theatre ◽  
History Of ◽  
Historical Accounts ◽  
University Of Chicago Press

What is Enlightenment? Few questions in the history of ideas can have given rise to more controversy, sustained over more than two centuries and extending into the furthest reaches of contemporary thought. In comparison, the ‘where’ of Enlightenment – the sites from which philosophes garnered their evidence, the settings in which their ideas took shape, the networks through which they were disseminated, the contexts in which they were interpreted – has received much less attention. It is not that these geographies have been altogether neglected. Distinctions between different ‘national’ Enlightenments (French, Scottish, English, and so on) are familiar, perhaps all too familiar, to historians of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. At a smaller scale, it is difficult to imagine historical accounts of the Enlightenment world without some sort of tour of those paradigmatic sites – the coffee house, the botanic garden, the lecture theatre. There is a geography here, of sorts: but in truth it is often simply a stage for action, a passive background (sometimes ‘national’, sometimes ‘local’) to the real business of social and intellectual change. In recent years, however, intellectual historians in general, and historians of science in particular, have begun to pay more attention to these and many other sites, not simply as inert contexts but as vital components of the making and communication of new knowledge. Thus is a genuine geography of knowledge in the making.

The Quest for a Global Age of Reason. Part II: Cultural Appropriation and Racism in the Name of Enlightenment

2021 ◽  
Vol 31 (3) ◽  
pp. 133-155
Author(s):  
Dag Herbjørnsrud ◽  
Keyword(s):  
White Supremacy ◽  
18Th Century ◽  
Founding Fathers ◽  
Phillis Wheatley ◽  
Age Of Reason ◽  
Methodological Nationalism ◽  
The Enlightenment ◽  
Late 18Th Century ◽  
Global Age ◽  
Age Of Enlightenment

The Age of Enlightenment is more global and complex than the standard Eurocentric Colonial Canon narrative presents. For example, before the advent of unscientific racism and the systematic negligence of the contributions of Others outside of “White Europe,” Raphael centered Ibn Rushd (Averroes) in his Vatican fresco “Causarum Cognitio” (1511); the astronomer Edmund Halley taught himself Arabic to be more enlightened; The Royal Society of London acknowledged the scientific method developed by Ibn Al-Haytham (Alhazen). In addition, if we study the Transatlantic texts of the late 18th century, it is not Kant, but instead enlightened thinkers like Anton Wilhelm Amo (born in present-day’s Ghana), Phillis Wheatley (Senegal region), and Toussaint L’Ouverture (Haiti), who mostly live up to the ideals of reason, humanism, universalism, and human rights. One obstacle to developing a more balanced presentation of the Age of the Enlightenment is the influence of colonialism, Eurocentrism, and methodological nationalism. Consequently, this paper, part II of two, will also deal with the European Enlightenment’s unscientific heritage of scholarly racism from the 1750s. It will be demonstrated how Linnaeus, Hume, Kant, and Hegel were among the Founding Fathers of intellectual white supremacy within the Academy. Hence, the Age of Enlightenment is not what we are taught to believe. This paper will demonstrate how the lights from different “Global Enlightenments” can illuminate paths forward to more dialogue and universalism in the 21st century.

scholarly journals Aristocratic libraries in Slovakia – status, research, history

2021 ◽  
Vol 15 (3) ◽  
pp. 427-441
Author(s):  
Michaela Sibylová
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Public Libraries ◽  
Adverse Impact ◽  
World War ◽  
The Past ◽  
Research History ◽  
The Enlightenment ◽  
The Status ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Times

The author has divided her article into two parts. The first part describes the status and research of aristocratic libraries in Slovakia. For a certain period of time, these libraries occupied an underappreciated place in the history of book culture in Slovakia. The socialist ideology of the ruling regime allowed their collections (with a few exceptions) to be merged with those of public libraries and archives. The author describes the events that affected these libraries during and particularly after the end of World War II and which had an adverse impact on the current disarrayed state and level of research. Over the past decades, there has been increased interest in the history of aristocratic libraries, as evidenced by multiple scientific conferences, exhibitions and publications. The second part of the article is devoted to a brief history of the best-known aristocratic libraries that were founded and operated in the territory of today’s Slovakia. From the times of humanism, there are the book collections of the Thurzó family and the Zay family, leading Austro-Hungarian noble families and the library of the bishop of Nitra, Zakariás Mossóczy. An example of a Baroque library is the Pálffy Library at Červený Kameň Castle. The Enlightenment period is represented by the Andrássy family libraries in the Betliar manor and the Apponyi family in Oponice. 

scholarly journals Making the States’ Translation (1637): Orthodox Calvinist Biblical Criticism in the Dutch Republic

2017 ◽  
Vol 110 (3) ◽  
pp. 440-463
Author(s):  
Dirk van Miert
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Thomas Hobbes ◽  
Dutch Republic ◽  
Biblical Text ◽  
Biblical Criticism ◽  
New Science ◽  
The Past ◽  
Biblical Scholarship ◽  
The Enlightenment ◽  
History Of

In the study of the history of biblical scholarship, there has been a tendency among historians to emphasize biblical philology as a force which, together with the new philosophy and the new science of the seventeenth century, caused the erosion of universal scriptural authority from the mid-seventeenth century onwards. A case in point is Jonathan Israel's impressive account of how biblical criticism in the hands of Spinoza paved the way for the Enlightenment. Others who have argued for a post-Spinozist rise of biblical criticism include Frank Manuel, Adam Sutcliffe, and Travis Frampton. These scholars have built upon longer standing interpretations such as those of Hugh Trevor-Roper and Paul Hazard. However, scholars in the past two decades such as Anthony Grafton, Scott Mandelbrote and Jean-Louis Quantin have altered the picture of an exegetical revolution inaugurated by Thomas Hobbes (1588–1679), Spinoza (1632–1677), and Richard Simon (1638–1712). These heterodox philosophers in fact relied on philological research that had been largely developed in the first half of the seventeenth century. Moreover, such research was carried out by scholars who had no subversive agenda. This is to say that the importance attached to a historical and philological approach to the biblical text had a cross-confessional appeal, not just a radical-political one.

scholarly journals Transition, Flow, and Divergent Times

2013 ◽  
Vol 45 (3) ◽  
pp. 581-584
Author(s):  
Avinoam Shalem
Keyword(s):  
21St Century ◽  
North Africa ◽  
Arab World ◽  
The Political ◽  
Global History ◽  
Transition Flow ◽  
Recording Time ◽  
The Past ◽  
Historical Processes ◽  
History Of

The Western academy's growing interest in the contemporary arts in the Arab world illustrates the desire to map “Islam”—problematic as this term is—within the global history of cultures and to integrate it into “Western” models of the writing and documenting of the past. As positive and corrective as these academic approaches may seem, the notion of recording time—that is, writing history—is still firmly bound at the beginning of the 21st century to the idea of continuity, and the pattern of “Western”-centric thinking imposes that notion upon contemporary artists and art historians. Yet the political changes and spontaneous eruptions that the Middle East and North Africa are experiencing, especially since the beginning of 2011, defy and resist conventional interpretations of historical processes and therefore demand a rethinking of the configuration of the past.

Provincializing memory studies: Polish approaches in the past and present

2017 ◽  
Vol 11 (4) ◽  
pp. 391-404 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kornelia Kończal ◽  
Joanna Wawrzyniak
Keyword(s):  
Memory Studies ◽  
The United States ◽  
Historical Consciousness ◽  
History Of Ideas ◽  
Social Sciences And Humanities ◽  
The Past ◽  
Research Perspectives ◽  
The Social ◽  
History Of ◽  
Key Terms

The history of memory studies has usually been told through research perspectives advanced in France, Germany and the United States. This well-established cartography and, thus, chronology of the field can be challenged while taking into account other provinces of thought. The example of Polish sociology and history shows that the Western memory boom took off just at the time when the golden age of the biographical method reached its apex in Poland and most research on historical consciousness had already been carried out. Furthermore, the Polish case illustrates how since 1989 researchers have been abandoning key terms previously used in the social sciences and humanities in favour of terminology related to memory. On the whole, the article argues for the exploration of continuities, ruptures and transformations of categories developed in non-mainstream research traditions to question the beaten tracks of the history of ideas.

Recent research in the history of international law

2016 ◽  
Vol 84 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 313-334
Author(s):  
Frederik Dhondt
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
International Law ◽  
Historical Research ◽  
Global History ◽  
Intercultural Awareness ◽  
The Past ◽  
History Of ◽  
Legal Thinking ◽  
History Of International Law ◽  
Interdisciplinary Scholarship

This review article treats the booming scholarship on the history of international law over the past decade. Works with a broader view (1), including the recent big-book syntheses and collective works, are contrasted with monographs (2), from studies of treaties and doctrine, over diplomatic practice to scholarship by historians and, finally, interdisciplinary scholarship. This texts provides a personal panorama of the wide array of scholarly perspectives on a common object: rules recognised in the community or society of states. New insights from history and social sciences, especially the turn to global history, open fresh prospects for ‘traditional’ legal historical research. Studying the encounter between ‘European’ international law and other continents rises our indispensable intercultural awareness. Yet, it should also serve to better understand the specificity of European legal thinking or diplomatic practice, and does not render research on the latter obsolete or redundant.


Philosophie als Konfliktgeschehen

2016 ◽  
Vol 20 (1) ◽  
pp. 121-136
Author(s):  
Ludwig Stockinger
Keyword(s):  
History Of Ideas ◽  
Historical Interpretation ◽  
The Enlightenment ◽  
Modern Period ◽  
The Social ◽  
History Of ◽  
Interpretation Of Literature

Abstract The reception of Panagiotis Kondylis’ depiction of the Enlightenment published in 1981 was determined by its reduction to the thesis of the ›rehabilitation of sensuality‹ (Sinnlichkeit). In addition, the objection raised by critics against ›decisionism‹ impaired an adequate reception of Kondylis’ work. This article attempts to reconstruct Kondylis’ argument and clarify its social-anthropological presuppositions, by interpreting the history of ideas as a history of the struggle for power between philosophy and theology. Employed as an agent in this struggle, the ›rehabilitation of sensuality‹ generates a second problem: the danger of relativizing all values as in nihilism. This article identifies work on this problem, which remains ultimately unresolved, as the central goal of the Enlightenment movement. Understood in this light, Kondylis’ these can be contextualized in the social-historical interpretation of literature and culture grounded in theories of secularization and history of problems in the modern period.

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