Download or read book Historical Pessimism in the French Enlightenment written by Henry Vyverberg and published by . This book was released on 1958 with total page 278 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Pessimism written by Joshua Foa Dienstag and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2009-02-17 with total page 313 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Pessimism claims an impressive following--from Rousseau, Schopenhauer, and Nietzsche, to Freud, Camus, and Foucault. Yet "pessimist" remains a term of abuse--an accusation of a bad attitude--or the diagnosis of an unhappy psychological state. Pessimism is thought of as an exclusively negative stance that inevitably leads to resignation or despair. Even when pessimism looks like utter truth, we are told that it makes the worst of a bad situation. Bad for the individual, worse for the species--who would actually counsel pessimism? Joshua Foa Dienstag does. In Pessimism, he challenges the received wisdom about pessimism, arguing that there is an unrecognized yet coherent and vibrant pessimistic philosophical tradition. More than that, he argues that pessimistic thought may provide a critically needed alternative to the increasingly untenable progressivist ideas that have dominated thinking about politics throughout the modern period. Laying out powerful grounds for pessimism's claim that progress is not an enduring feature of human history, Dienstag argues that political theory must begin from this predicament. He persuasively shows that pessimism has been--and can again be--an energizing and even liberating philosophy, an ethic of radical possibility and not just a criticism of faith. The goal--of both the pessimistic spirit and of this fascinating account of pessimism--is not to depress us, but to edify us about our condition and to fortify us for life in a disordered and disenchanted universe.
Download or read book The Enlightenment in France written by Frederick Binkerd Artz and published by Kent State University Press. This book was released on 1968 with total page 180 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The founders of the Enlightenment in France are presented in this volume. The author emphasizes the practice as well as practical humanism and examines their fascination with science.
Download or read book Historical Dictionary of the Enlightenment written by Harvey Chisick and published by Scarecrow Press. This book was released on 2005-02-10 with total page 550 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Enlightenment Movement changed society forever, driving it forward through new and fresh ways of thinking about science, religion, history, politics, and culture. This dictionary offers a balanced overview and helps us to understand and appreciate the Enlightenment through its coverage of the basic assumptions and values that structured the movement; explanation of how these ideas were articulated; the paths of communication they followed; how its key ideas grew, developed and were refracted; and how new problems grew out of what were advanced as solutions to older problems. An engaging introductory essay along with hundreds of cross-referenced dictionary entries defines the significant persons, places, events, institutions, and literary works of the movement. A chronological table charts the progression of the movement by indicating the date, the main figures involved, the political or society events, and the science, arts, or letters that resulted. The comprehensive bibliography, with an introductory essay to the literature, categorized by subject complements this reference that will be valued by all seeking basic details about this important period.
Download or read book Human Nature Cultural Diversity and the French Enlightenment written by Henry Vyverberg and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 1989 with total page 236 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this work, Henry Vyverberg traces the evolution and consequences of a crucial idea in French Enlightenment thought--the idea of human nature. Human nature was commonly seen as a broadly universal, unchanging entity, though perhaps modifiable by geographical, social, and historical factors. Enlightenment empiricism suggested a degree of cultural diversity that has often been underestimated in studies of the age. Evidence here is drawn from Diderot's celebrated Encyclopedia and from a vast range of writing by such Enlightenment notables as Voltaire, Rousseau, and d'Holbach. Vyverberg explains not only the age's undoubted fascination with uniformity in human nature, but also its acknowledgment of significant limitations on that uniformity. He shows that although the Enlightenment's historical sense was often blinkered by its notions of a uniform human nature, there were also cracks in this concept that developed during the Enlightenment itself.
Download or read book Candide written by By Voltaire and published by BookRix. This book was released on 2019-06-10 with total page 169 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Candide is a French satire by Voltaire, a philosopher of the Age of Enlightenment. It begins with a young man, Candide, who is living a sheltered life in an Edenic paradise and being indoctrinated with Leibnizian optimism (or simply Optimism) by his mentor, Pangloss. The work describes the abrupt cessation of this lifestyle, followed by Candide's slow, painful disillusionment as he witnesses and experiences great hardships in the world. Voltaire concludes with Candide, if not rejecting optimism outright, advocating a deeply practical precept, "we must cultivate our garden", in lieu of the Leibnizian mantra of Pangloss, "all is for the best in the best of all possible worlds". Candide is characterized by its sarcastic tone, as well as by its erratic, fantastical and fast-moving plot. A picaresque novel it parodies many adventure and romance clichés, the struggles of which are caricatured in a tone that is mordantly matter-of-fact. Still, the events discussed are often based on historical happenings, such as the Seven Years' War and the 1755 Lisbon earthquake. As philosophers of Voltaire's day contended with the problem of evil, so too does Candide in this short novel, albeit more directly and humorously. Voltaire ridicules religion, theologians, governments, armies, philosophies, and philosophers through allegory; most conspicuously, he assaults Leibniz and his optimism. As expected by Voltaire, Candide has enjoyed both great success and great scandal. Immediately after its secretive publication, the book was widely banned because it contained religious blasphemy, political sedition and intellectual hostility hidden under a thin veil of naïveté. However, with its sharp wit and insightful portrayal of the human condition, the novel has since inspired many later authors and artists to mimic and adapt it. Today, Candide is recognized as Voltaire's magnum opus and is often listed as part of the Western canon; it is arguably taught more than any other work of French literature. It was listed as one of The 100 Most Influential Books Ever Written.
Download or read book History and Nature in the Enlightenment written by Nathaniel Wolloch and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-04-22 with total page 309 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The mastery of nature was viewed by eighteenth-century historians as an important measure of the progress of civilization. Modern scholarship has hitherto taken insufficient notice of this important idea. This book discusses the topic in connection with the mainstream religious, political, and philosophical elements of Enlightenment culture. It considers works by Edward Gibbon, Voltaire, Herder, Vico, Raynal, Hume, Adam Smith, William Robertson, and a wide range of lesser- and better-known figures. It also discusses many classical, medieval, and early modern sources which influenced Enlightenment historiography, as well as eighteenth-century attitudes toward nature in general.
Download or read book The Sense of Decadence in Nineteenth Century France written by Koenraad W. Swart and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2013-11-11 with total page 282 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "It was the best oftimes. It was the worst oftimes. " The famous open ing sentence ofCharles Dickens' Tale oJ Two Cities can serve as a motto to characterize the mixture of optimism and pessimism with which a large number of nineteenth-century intellectuals viewed the con dition of their age. It is nowadays hardly necessary to accentuate the optimistic elements in the nineteenth-century view of history; many recent historians have sharply contrasted the complacency and the great expectations of the past century with the fears and anxieties rampant in our own age. It is often too readily assumed that a hundred years ago all leading thinkers as weil as the educated public were addicted to the cult of progress and ignored or minimized those trends of their times that paved the way for the catastrophes of the twentieth century. In the nineteenth century the intoxicating triumphs of modern science undeniably induced the general public to believe that pro gress was not an accident but a necessity and that evil and immo rality would gradually disappear. Yet fears, misgivings, and anxieties were not as exceptional in the nineteenth century as is often imagined. Such feelings were not restricted to a few dissenting philosophers and poets like Schopenhauer, Kierkegaard, 'Dostoevsky, Baudelaire, and Nietzsche.
Download or read book A Critical Bibliography of French Literature V4 18th C Supplement written by Richard A. Brooks and published by Syracuse University Press. This book was released on with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book A Companion to Enlightenment Historiography written by and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2013-06-28 with total page 519 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A Companion to Enlightenment Historiography provides a survey of the most important historians and historiographical debates in the long eighteenth century, examining these debates’ stylistic, philosophical and political significance. The chapters, many of which were specially commissioned for this volume, offer a mixture of accessible introduction and original interpretive argument; they will thus appeal both to the scholar of the period and the more general reader. Part I considers Gibbon, Hume, Robertson, Montesquieu, Voltaire, Herder and Vico. Part II explores wider themes of national and thematic context: English, Scottish, French and German Enlightenment historians are discussed, as are the concepts of historical progress, secularism, the origins of historicism and the deployments of Greek and Roman antiquity within 18th century historiography. Contributors are Robert Mankin, Simon Kow, Jeffrey Smitten, Rebecca Kingston, Síofra Pierse, Bertrand Binoche, Donald Phillip Verene, Ulrich Muhlack, David Allan, Noelle Gallagher, François-Emmanuël Boucher, Sandra Rudnick Luft, Sophie Bourgault, C. Akça Ataç, and Robert Sparling.
Download or read book The Science of Culture in Enlightenment Germany written by Michael C. Carhart and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2007 with total page 388 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the late 1770s, as a wave of revolution and republican unrest swept across Europe, scholars looked with urgency on the progress of European civilization. Carhart examines their approaches to understanding human development by investigating the invention of a new analytic category, "culture."
Download or read book Haskalah and History written by Shmuel Feiner and published by Liverpool University Press. This book was released on 2001-11-01 with total page 417 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: ‘This impressive study will doubtless come to be considered one of the definitive works in the intellectual history of the Jewish Enlightenment . . . The outstanding nature of this work, its conceptual clarity, and its penetrating analysis make it an exceptional piece of historical research.’ From the Arnold Wiznitzer Prize citation
Download or read book Passion Politics and Philosophie written by Leonore Loft and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2001-10-30 with total page 305 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Jacques-Pierre Brissot was among the major architects of the French Revolution, yet history has vilified and then dismissed him. His early intellectual development was strongly influenced by Enlightenment ideas and aspirations. However, his own remarkable construct of a just, democratic society, universal suffrage, and a renewed humanity living in moral and political freedom foreshadowed many present-day ideologies. The prevailing view of Brissot has pigeonholed him as Brissot, the police spy, a label difficult to remove. Although this contention has been disputed at some length, Loft presents an alternative view of the forces that shaped Brissot's social and political activism. Tracing the gradual evolution of his ideology from its earliest stages reveals that he did not suddenly become a radical in the mid-1780s. An open, objective, and thorough evaluation of Brissot's work uncovers the roots of his lifelong commitment to reformist, egalitarian, and democratic ideals. To understand Brissot, the man and his work, one must assess the cultural, intellectual, and political influences that surrounded him. Loft offers the necessary fusion of text and context, providing a serious reconsideration of Brissot and his contributions to the history of human rights. Scholars and other researchers of the French Revolution and European political thought will find this study of particular value.
Download or read book Storia della storiografia written by and published by Editoriale Jaca Book. This book was released on 1996 with total page 172 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Inventing Human Science written by Christopher Fox and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2023-11-10 with total page 376 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The human sciences—including psychology, anthropology, and social theory—are widely held to have been born during the eighteenth century. This first full-length, English-language study of the Enlightenment sciences of humans explores the sources, context, and effects of this major intellectual development. The book argues that the most fundamental inspiration for the Enlightenment was the scientific revolution of the seventeenth century. Natural philosophers from Copernicus to Newton had created a magisterial science of nature based on the realization that the physical world operated according to orderly, discoverable laws. Eighteenth-century thinkers sought to cap this achievement with a science of human nature. Belief in the existence of laws governing human will and emotion; social change; and politics, economics, and medicine suffused the writings of such disparate figures as Hume, Kant, and Adam Smith and formed the basis of the new sciences. A work of remarkable cross-disciplinary scholarship, this volume illuminates the origins of the human sciences and offers a new view of the Enlightenment that highlights the period's subtle social theory, awareness of ambiguity, and sympathy for historical and cultural difference.
Download or read book Philosophy History Sophistry written by Dennis Rohatyn and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2022-04-25 with total page 242 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Post-modernism believes in nothing, not even unbelief. Hence it is a genial version of nihilism, and the flip side of despair. Like skepticism (from which it descends), it is healthy insofar as it rejects all dogmas; but unhealthy insofar as it substitutes its own, while eating its own essence. This book diagnoses this disease, and offers irony as its cure. What failure of nerve did to Hellenism, strength of character must do for the decline of the best. Humor, laughter, and detachment are the gifts of historical art, and of Socratic science. As we take refuge in the myth of truth, we must realize that there is no truth in myth, and no comfort in illusion, except the lie of immortality.
Download or read book Narratives of Enlightenment written by Karen O'Brien and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 1997-06-05 with total page 268 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Narratives of Enlightenment is an interdisciplinary study of cosmopolitan approaches to the past. It reappraises the work of five of the most important narrative historians of the century - Voltaire, David Hume, William Robertson, Edward Gibbon and the historian of the American Revolution, David Ramsay - in the context of political and national debates in France, Scotland, England and America; and it investigates the nature and degree of their intellectual investment in the idea of a common European civilisation. Karen O'Brien combines the methodologies of literary criticism and intellectual history to explore debates about Enlightenments and the political uses of narrative. Where previous studies have emphasised the growth of nationalism in eighteenth-century literature, she reveals the development of cosmopolitan ways of thinking beyond national cultural issues.
