The Enlightenment in Practice
The Enlightenment in Practice

Author: Jeremy L. Caradonna

Publisher: Cornell University Press

Published: 2012-03-15

Total Pages: 531

ISBN-13: 0801464374

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Public academic prize contests—the concours académique—played a significant role in the intellectual life of Enlightenment France, with aspirants formulating positions on such matters as slavery, poverty, the education of women, tax reform, and urban renewal and submitting the resulting essays for scrutiny by panels of judges. In The Enlightenment in Practice, Jeremy L. Caradonna draws on archives both in Paris and the provinces to show that thousands of individuals—ranging from elite men and women of letters artisans, and peasants—participated in these intellectual competitions, a far broader range of people than has been previously assumed. Caradonna contends that the Enlightenment in France can no longer be seen as a cultural movement restricted to a small coterie of philosophers or a limited number of printed texts. Moreover, Caradonna demonstrates that the French monarchy took academic competitions quite seriously, sponsoring numerous contests on such practical matters as deforestation, the quality of drinking water, and the nighttime illumination of cities. In some cases, the contests served as an early mechanism for technology transfer: the state used submissions to identify technical experts to whom it could turn for advice. Finally, the author shows how this unique intellectual exercise declined during the upheavals of the French Revolution, when voicing moderate public criticism became a rather dangerous act.

Voltaire's Philosophical Dictionary
Voltaire's Philosophical Dictionary

Author: Voltaire Voltaire

Publisher: BoD – Books on Demand

Published: 2024-01-01

Total Pages: 252

ISBN-13: 9360466042

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Voltaire's "Philosophical Dictionary" stands as a huge work that encapsulates the Enlightenment thinker's wit, skepticism, and intellectual prowess. Composed within the 18th century, Voltaire, a key figure of the Enlightenment, provides a complete collection of essays, reflections, and critiques that discover a myriad of subjects ranging from faith and morality to technological know-how and governance. In this magnum opus, Voltaire employs his function satirical style to dissect the prevailing institutions and ideologies of his time. With eager insights and a razor-sharp pen, he demanding situations dogma, promotes purpose, and advocates for freedom of thought. The "Philosophical Dictionary" is a testomony to Voltaire's dedication to purpose, secularism, and a relentless pursuit of understanding. Structured as an alphabetical encyclopedia, the paintings covers an extensive array of topics, providing readers with a panoramic view of the Enlightenment's highbrow panorama. Voltaire's erudition and irreverence make this collection not simplest a vital examination of his modern-day society however also a undying exploration of human nature and the pursuit of enlightenment. "Philosophical Dictionary" stays a cornerstone of Enlightenment literature, showcasing Voltaire's enduring influence as a logician, satirist, and recommend for intellectual freedom. Through its pages, readers come upon a profound and often humorous engagement with the thoughts that formed the Enlightenment and continue to resonate within the nation-states of philosophy and essential thinking.

Enemies of the Enlightenment
Enemies of the Enlightenment

Author: Darrin M. McMahon

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2002-07-18

Total Pages: 277

ISBN-13: 0195347935

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Critics have long treated the most important intellectual movement of modern history--the Enlightenment--as if it took shape in the absence of opposition. In this groundbreaking new study, Darrin McMahon demonstrates that, on the contrary, contemporary resistance to the Enlightenment was a major cultural force, shaping and defining the Enlightenment itself from the moment of inception, while giving rise to an entirely new ideological phenomenon-what we have come to think of as the "Right." McMahon skillfully examines the Counter-Enlightenment, showing that it was an extensive, international, and thoroughly modern affair.

Prophet of Reason
Prophet of Reason

Author: Peter Hill

Publisher: Simon and Schuster

Published: 2024-05-02

Total Pages: 490

ISBN-13: 0861547373

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'An outstanding intellectual biography.' Eugene Rogan In 1813, high in the Lebanese mountains, a thirteen-year-old boy watches a solar eclipse. Will it foretell a war, a plague, the death of a prince? Mikha’il Mishaqa’s lifelong search for truth starts here. Soon he’s reading Newtonian science and the radical ideas of Voltaire and Volney: he loses his religion, turning away from the Catholic Church. Thirty years later, as civil war rages in Syria, he finds a new faith – Evangelical Protestantism. His obstinate polemics scandalise his community. Then, in 1860, Mishaqa barely escapes death in the most notorious event in Damascus: a massacre of several thousand Christians. We are presented with a paradox: rational secularism and violent religious sectarianism grew up together. By tracing Mishaqa’s life through this tumultuous era, when empires jostled for control, Peter Hill answers the question: What did people in the Middle East actually believe? It’s a world where one man could be a Jew, an Orthodox Christian and a Sunni Muslim in turn, and a German missionary might walk naked in the streets of Valletta.

The Enlightenment
The Enlightenment

Author: J. C. D. Clark

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2024-07-25

Total Pages: 582

ISBN-13: 0198916302

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Enlightenment studies are currently in a state of flux, with unresolved arguments among its adherents about its dates, its locations, and the contents of the 'movement'. This book cuts the Gordian knot. There are many books claiming to explain the Enlightenment, but most assume that it was a thing. J. C. D. Clark shows what it actually was, namely a historiographical concept. Currently 'the Enlightenment' is a term widely accepted across popular culture and in a variety of academic disciplines, notably history, philosophy, political theory, political science, literary studies, and theology; Clark calls for a fundamental reconsideration in each. The Enlightenment: An Idea and Its History provides a critical historical analysis of the Enlightenment in England, Scotland, France, Germany, and the United States from c. 1650 to the present. It argues that the degree of commonality between social and intellectual movements in each--and, more broadly, between the five societies--has been overstated for polemical purposes. Clark shows that the concept of 'the Enlightenment' was not widely adopted in those societies until the mid-twentieth century; indeed, that it was unknown in the eighteenth. Without the concept, people at the time were unable to act in ways that would have created the Enlightenment as a coherent movement. Since the conventional account has held that the Enlightenment was a phenomenon, the idea could be used as a component of what has been called a 'civil religion': a summing up of the myths of origin, aims, and essential values of a society from which dissent is not permitted. An appreciation that it was instead a historiographical concept undermines, in turn, the idea that there was any great transition to what came to be called 'modernity'.

Pushkin's Lyric Intelligence
Pushkin's Lyric Intelligence

Author: Andrew Kahn

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2012-05-31

Total Pages: 411

ISBN-13: 0199654336

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Pushkin's lyric intelligence is his capacity to transform philosophical and aesthetic ideas into poetry that questions the creative process. This first major study of his lyrics reveals the links between Pushkin's conceptual vocabulary and his intellectual life, and between his writing and the influences of French and English authors and movements.