scholarly journals Johan Ernst Gunnerus and the Quest for the Soul in the Eighteenth Century

2015 ◽  
Vol 12 ◽  
pp. 132-160
Author(s):  
Friedemann Stengel
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Present Article ◽  
Salient Feature ◽  
Political Scientist ◽  
Clear Cut ◽  
The Enlightenment ◽  
European Culture ◽  
Interdisciplinary Nature ◽  
Immortality Of The Soul ◽  
Shed Light

The Norwegian bishop, theologian, philosopher, political scientist, and naturalist, Johan Ernst Gunnerus, can be regarded as one of the most significant proponents of continental European culture in eighteenth-century Norway. The eighteenth-century debate on the meaning and locus of the soul, considered the most central scholarly debate of the ‘Century of Enlightenment’, clearly exemplifies Gunnerus’ own entanglement in contemporaneous philosophical and theological debates. While delineating his position within it, the present article seeks to shed light on its crucial dimensions and arguments, while also illuminating its impact on the transmission of traditional Christian ideas. Theological-philosophical concepts underwent dramatic transformations – in particular, on the question of the immortality of the soul – that also extended to anthropology, eschatology and the divine doctrine. Positioning Gunnerus within this debate demonstrates the interdisciplinary nature of scholarly interactions on topics that today might be deemed purely theological. Their vigorous resistance to dogma and barriers to autonomous thinking form a salient feature of the Enlightenment era. In contextualizing Gunnerus’ doctrine on the soul, it becomes clear that classifying theologies and philosophies according to clear-cut categories like ‘Enlightenment’, ‘Pietism’, or ‘Esotericism’, prunes the complexity of the debates and implicates far-reaching perspectives of the Enlightenment discourse in notions generated in the centuries thereafter.

Enlightenment Values, Jewish Ethics: The Haskalah’s Transformation of the Traditional Musar Genre

2001 ◽  
pp. 48-63
Author(s):  
Harris Bor
Keyword(s):  
Comparative Study ◽  
Moral Education ◽  
Civic Education ◽  
Jewish Tradition ◽  
Educational Methods ◽  
Moral Improvement ◽  
The Enlightenment ◽  
Jewish Ethics ◽  
European Culture ◽  
Immortality Of The Soul

This chapter examines Haskalah ethical literature and Jewish ethical writing (musar), and highlights how the Haskalah movement was poised between Jewish tradition and European culture. It shows that moral improvement was a fundamental concern of the Haskalah. Since moral education was meant to serve as a link between the aims of the Enlightenment and Jewish tradition, ethical literature was an index to the balance between the modern and the traditional. The chapter then illustrates the importance of comparative study. By comparing the texts and motifs of the Enlightenment on issues such as the immortality of the soul and civic education with the ethical ideas of such maskilim as Isaac Satanow, Naphtali Herz Wessely, Menahem Mendel Lefin, and Judah Leib Ben Ze'ev, it reveals the extent to which the Haskalah drew upon the educational methods of German reformist educators like Johann Heinrich Campe and Johann Bernhard Basedow.

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.

Introduction

2013 ◽  
pp. 1-30
Author(s):  
Natalie Naimark-Goldberg
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Jewish Women ◽  
Left Behind ◽  
The Enlightenment ◽  
European Culture ◽  
Social Scene ◽  
Relationship Of ◽  
The Relationship

This introductory chapter provides an overview of the Jewish women who lived in Berlin at the end of the eighteenth century and the beginning of the nineteenth. They were among the first in Ashkenazi society to undergo an accelerated process of modernization, take an active part in European culture, and adopt early feminist positions on the role of women in society and culture. Based on the numerous sources they left behind — mainly personal letters, but also publications and other writings — this book describes various aspects of their involvement in the intellectual, cultural, and social scene of the time and discusses their thought, which was nurtured in a crucial way by the Enlightenment. However, relatively little has been written about the relationship between Jewish women and the Enlightenment. This omission may be largely explained by the fact that for many years Jewish engagement with the Enlightenment was identified with the Haskalah, which was mainly a male movement, especially in its eighteenth-century central European version. The chapter then suggests a reconsideration of the relationship of these Jewish women to Romanticism, and proposes to uncouple their names from another context with which they have been traditionally tied: the salons.

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.

‘The Days of Thy Youth’

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elizabeth Bouldin
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Women Educators ◽  
Critical Period ◽  
Future Generations ◽  
Leading Role ◽  
Printed Word ◽  
Shed Light ◽  
Quaker Women

This chapter explores the range of ideas and activities that engaged Quaker women educators during the eighteenth century, a critical period in the development of Friends’ educational efforts. It analyses key writings of Deborah Bell, Rebecca Jones, and Priscilla Wakefield. These women adopted a variety of approaches to instructing youth, ranging from informal mentorship to formal teaching that stressed a ‘guarded’ (Quaker-only) environment. Bell, Jones, and Wakefield shed light on the leading role that Quaker women played in the education and socialization of young Friends. Their writings highlight the importance of the meetinghouse, the schoolhouse, and the printed word as public venues for women who sought to instil Quaker values in future generations.

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.

Early Debates

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Samuel Llano
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Public Space ◽  
Domestic Space ◽  
Limited Resources ◽  
Public And Private ◽  
Conduct Manuals ◽  
The Public ◽  
Clear Cut ◽  
The Social ◽  
Undeserving Poor

This chapter provides an account of how organilleros elicited public anger because their activity did not fit into any of the social aid categories that had been in place since the late eighteenth century. Social aid in Spain relied on a clear-cut distinction between deserving and undeserving poor in order to rationalize the distribution of limited resources and reduce mendicancy on the streets. Organilleros could not, strictly speaking, be considered idle, since they played music, but their activity required no specific skills and was regarded with suspicion as a surrogate form of begging. The in-betweenness of the organillero caused further anger as it challenged attempts to establish a neat distinction between public and private spaces. On one hand, organillo music penetrated the domestic space, which conduct manuals of the nineteenth century configured as female; on the other, it brought women into the public space, which those manuals configured as male.

‹ 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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