Intellectual History of Enlightenment

Political Ideology in the Context of the Grand Vision of Giovanni Paulo Marana's Letters Writ by a Turkish Spy: An Interpretive Essay

by Richard Greydanus

Final researcher paper, M.A. History, McMaster University, Hamilton ON

July 2006

This paper navigates between various interpretive inconsistencies attempts to deal with its political and religious... more This paper navigates between various interpretive inconsistencies attempts to deal with its political and religious context by setting Giovanni Paulo Marana`s Letters Writ by a Turkish Spy in its Enlightenment context. The development of themes of the construction of self, perspectives on religion, conceptions of government, and the meaning of historical narratives are traced through the eight volumes of the Letters. It is shown that underlying these themes is the general narrative thread of an ascent to Reason.

From substantival to functional vitalism and beyond, or from Stahlian animas to Canguilhemian attitudes

by Charles Wolfe

Eidos 14 (2011), pp. 212-235

I distinguish between what I call ‘substantival’ and ‘functional’ forms of vitalism in the eighteenth century.... more I distinguish between what I call ‘substantival’ and ‘functional’ forms of vitalism in the eighteenth century. Substantival vitalism presupposes the existence of something like a (substantive) vital force which either plays a causal role in the natural world as studied by scientific means, or remains a kind of hovering, extra-causal entity. Functional vitalism tends to operate ‘post facto’, from the existence of living bodies to the desire to find explanatory models that will do justice to their uniquely ‘vital’ properties in a way that fully mechanistic (Cartesian, Boerhaavian etc.) models cannot. I discuss some representative figures of the Montpellier school (Bordeu, Ménuret, Fouquet) as being functional rather than substantival vitalists. Time allowing, I will make an additional point regarding the reprisal of vitalism(s) in ‘late modernity’, as some call it; from Hans Driesch to Georges Canguilhem. I suggest that in addition to the substantival and functional varieties, we then encounter a third species of vitalism, which I term ‘attitudinal’, as it argues for vitalism as a kind of attitude.

Verschwörungstheorien, Macht und Gesellschaft

by Claus Oberhauser

Progress or stability? An historical approach to a central question for moral education

by Tal Gilead

Published in: Journal of Moral Education, 38/1, 2009, 93-107

This article aims to problematise and shed some new light on the idea that moral education should be oriented toward... more This article aims to problematise and shed some new light on the idea that moral education should be oriented toward constant progress. Looking to uncover the philosophical foundations of this idea, the article examines its first historical appearance and its initial historical development, which took place in eighteenth‐century British and French educational thought. The article reveals that this idea grew out of an attempt to base morality and moral education on reason and human nature. It explains how this attempt led to a preference for generating constant progress over maintaining social and moral order. The emergence of this idea had a deep impact on views regarding the nature of the interrelations between moral education, individuals and society. Discussing the tension between progress and stability, the article shows that the more progress was sought, the less moral education was seen as having to initiate individuals into existing society. The article concludes by briefly connecting the historical investigation conducted in it to subsequent and current debates about moral education.

The Role of Education Redefined: 18 th century British and French educational thought and the rise of the Baconian conception of the study of nature

by Tal Gilead

Published in: Educational Philosophy and Theory 43/10, 2011, 1020-1034

The idea that science teaching in schools should prepare the ground for society's future technical and scientific... more The idea that science teaching in schools should prepare the ground for society's future technical and scientific progress has played an important role in shaping modern education. This idea, however, was not always present. In this article, I examine how this idea first emerged in educational thought. Early in the 17th century, Francis Bacon asserted that the study of nature should serve to improve living conditions for all members of society. Although influential, Bacon's idea was not easily assimilated by educational thinkers who remained committed to the traditional aims of teaching about nature. Yet in the second half of the 18th century a change has occurred; educational thinkers started to embrace Baconian ideas and therefore argued that science teaching should be oriented towards generating future scientific progress. Analysing the work of 18th century French and British educational thinkers, this article links the emergence of this new view to developments in the understanding of natural philosophy and to a rising interest in it. It is argued, however, that in themselves, these developments could not adequately explain why Baconian ideas started to influence educational theory in the time in which they did. It is maintained that the incorporation of Baconian ideas into educational thought resulted from a fundamental theoretical shift in the understanding of the role of education itself.

On pliability and progress: challenging current conceptions of eighteenth-century French educational thought

by Tal Gilead

Published in: London Review of Education, 7/2, 2009, 101-112

Examining the educational writings of three of the eighteenth‐century’s most innovative thinkers, the Abbé de... more Examining the educational writings of three of the eighteenth‐century’s most innovative thinkers, the Abbé de Saint‐Pierre, Morelly and Helvétius, this article challenges the currently accepted view that it was a belief in human pliability which gave rise to the contemporary groundbreaking faith in the power of education to improve society. The article delineates an intellectual process that culminated in the stance that man’s innate behavioural tendencies are unalterable. It argues that, at least prior to Rousseau, the eighteenth‐century faith in the power of education to improve society rested on a conviction that it is possible to beneficially direct man’s fixed behavioural tendencies.

Reconsidering the roots of current perceptions: Saint Pierre, Helvetius and Rousseau on education and the individual

by Tal Gilead

Published in 'History of Education' 34/4 (2005); 427-439

Historians and philosophers of education tend to emphasise the contribution of Rousseau to the development of... more Historians and philosophers of education tend to emphasise the contribution of Rousseau to the development of individualistic trends in modern education. However, other eighteenth‐century thinkers also took part in the quest to bring the individual and his happiness to the centre of contemporary educational discourse. The work of some of these thinkers, although highly influential in the time of its publication, has been neglected and consequently forgotten. This article examines the place attributed to the individual in the educational works of two of the most prominent of these thinkers, Castel de Saint Pierre (1658–1743) and Claude Adrian Helvetius (1715–1771). In this article, it is argued that Saint Pierre and Helvetius’ perception of the individual’s place in education is closer to contemporary views than the one found in Rousseau.

"La Iglesia y los orígenes de la Ilustración novohispana"

by Ivan Escamilla

publicado en / published in María del Pilar Martínez López Cano (coord.), La Iglesia en Nueva España. Problemas y perspectivas de investigación, México, UNAM-Instituto de Investigaciones Históricas, 2010, p. 105-127.

Revisión de la historiografía acerca de los orígenes de la Ilustración en Nueva España y propuesta para una... more Revisión de la historiografía acerca de los orígenes de la Ilustración en Nueva España y propuesta para una reinterpretación del problema desde la perspectiva de la historia cultural e intelectual, y para una nueva periodización del pensamiento ilustrado novohispano arrancando desde la primera mitad del siglo XVIII.

A review of existing literature around the roots of Enlightenment in New Spain (Mexico) and a proposal for a new interpretation from the perspective of cultural and intellectual history, as well for a new chronology for enlightened thinking in Mexico, starting in the first half of the 18th century.

Review of Jonathan Israel's Revolution of the Mind

by Ericka Tucker

Materialism and morality: Diderot and Sade in light of the luxury debate

by Felicia Gottmann

SVEC 2006:08, 217-26

Du Châtelet, Voltaire, and the Transformation of Mandeville's Fable

by Felicia Gottmann

Major Paper - Christianity After Nietzsche

by Dean Marco Funk

Chivalry and romance in the eighteenth century: Richard Hurd and the disenchantment of the Faerie Queene

by Kristine Haugen

Prose Studies 23,2 (2000): 45-60

Richard Hurd’s ‘Letters on Chivalry and Romance’ (1762) are generally treated as a key installment in the rise of... more Richard Hurd’s ‘Letters on Chivalry and Romance’ (1762) are generally treated as a key installment in the rise of gothic aesthetics, but more empirically considered, they are an idiosyncratic discussion of Spenser’s ‘Faerie Queene’ and its putative sources. It’s argued here that Hurd applies a specifically 18th-century mode of historically contextualizing reading to Spenser’s unsuspecting poem: as a consequence, we can learn from this eccentric work about the difficulties that beset both historical thought and the reading of literature in particular during the Enlightenment. To begin with, Hurd rejected the classic method of seeking out textual parallels to a poem’s words, whether drawn from classical, Biblical, or earlier English literature. His ambitions were greater, specifically, to identify the source of the ‘Faerie Queene’ with medieval life taken as a concrete whole and unmediated by texts. (Hurd’s own confessed distaste for reading medieval primary sources must have shaped this model: he preferred to lift his information from the 18th-century medievalist J.-B. de la Curne de Ste.-Palaye.) Considering the poetic material at hand, the result was more than perverse: the ‘Faerie Queene’ was no fantasy at all, but real and historical, and the elements in it that even Hurd was forced to take as allegorical were not medieval in their flavor but unfortunate concessions to the degenerate taste of Spenser’s Elizabethan contemporaries. Hurd’s jarring deflation or debunking of Spenser’s allegorical epic recalls similar intellectual maneuvers emanating from English churchmen in the earlier Enlightenment -- for example, William Warburton’s argument that the Egyptian hieroglyphs had no mystical origin but had been invented for practical and commercial purposes, or Richard Bentley’s exposure of the forgery of the letters of Phalaris. By implication, this study contributes to the growing consensus that members of the institutional church deeply shaped England’s literary and intellectual culture during the 18th century.

Vita quotidiana in un monastero buddhista Soto Zen. La via di un giorno solo

by Pietro Piro

Testo originale: Quaderni dell’Istituto Italiano Zen Soto, Fidenza 2005, p. 35. Leggermente modificato nel Febbraio 2012.

Report of daily life in a Soto Zen Buddhist monastery. Wording of rites, prayers, work, meditation.

La vita... more Report of daily life in a Soto Zen Buddhist monastery. Wording of rites, prayers, work, meditation.

La vita in un monastero Zen, vista da fuori, può apparire ripetitiva, priva di svago e insensata. Dentro il monastero, non si pensa che a cogliere la bellezza della vita in ogni minimo dettaglio. Per un attimo, durante la ripetizione di un rituale, l’ho visto ripetersi per migliaia di anni prima e dopo di noi da uomini che non sono più, e da uomini che ancora non sono. Ho provato un brivido di leggerezza. Mi sono sentito un puro attimo. È stato come respirare il profumo della libertà.

"La dottrina del Buddha non ha alcuna utilità. Non è nient’altro che le faccende di tutti i giorni: vestirsi e mangiare, fare i propri bisogni e, sé si è stanchi, coricarsi e dormire".

Rinzai Gigen

Blindness and Enlightenment: An Essay: With a New Translation of Diderot's' Letter on the Blind'and La Mothe Le Vayer's' Of a Man Born Blind'

by Kate Tunstall

Academic Charisma and the Old Regime

by Kristine Haugen

History of Universities 22,1 (2007): 199-228

How did scholarship and the early modern university interact so as to lay the foundations for the rise of the research... more How did scholarship and the early modern university interact so as to lay the foundations for the rise of the research university around 1800? In effect, how new was the research university at all? This is an article-length review of William Clark, 'Academic Charisma and the Origins of the Research University' (2006). Through a survey of Germany, England, and the Netherlands, it's pointed out that an intense focus on writing production in the university, the institution of the superstar professor, and the teaching of a select few to become new professors were all firmly established elements of the 16th- and 17th-century university just as well as at Enlightenment Halle (for example). Lastly, was it a move for the better when learning retreated inside the walls of the university and out of the early modern republic of letters?

Les motifs de la décapitation dans l'art et la littérature d'Occident

by antonio dominguez leiva

La vie comme songe?: une tentation de l'Occident

by antonio dominguez leiva

Les motifs de la décapitation dans l'art et la littérature d'Occident: du legs médiéval à la post-modernité:(une archéologie du supplice et du macabre), 1450 …

by antonio dominguez leiva

Las expediciones científicas del Setecientos y la nueva relación del científico con el estado

by Antonio Lafuente