What is enlightenment? : eighteenth-century answers and twentieth-century questions / edited by James Schmidt.

Format:

Book

Contributor:

Schmidt, James, Editor.

Series:

Philosophical Traditions

Philosophical Traditions ; 7

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Enlightenment.

Intellectual life--History--18th century.

Intellectual life.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (441 pages)

Place of Publication:

Berkeley, California : University of California Press, [1996].

Language Note:

English

Summary:

This collection contains the first English translations of a group of important eighteenth-century German essays that address the question, "What is Enlightenment?" The book also includes newly translated and newly written interpretive essays by leading historians and philosophers, which examine the origins of eighteenth-century debate on Enlightenment and explore its significance for the present.In recent years, critics from across the political and philosophical spectrum have condemned the Enlightenment for its complicity with any number of present-day social and cultural maladies. It has rarely been noticed, however, that at the end of the Enlightenment, German thinkers had already begun a scrutiny of their age so wide-ranging that there are few subsequent criticisms that had not been considered by the close of the eighteenth century. Among the concerns these essays address are the importance of freedom of expression, the relationship between faith and reason, and the responsibility of the Enlightenment for revolutions.Included are translations of works by such well-known figures as Immanuel Kant, Moses Mendelssohn, Johann Gottlieb Fichte, and Johann Georg Hamann, as well as essays by thinkers whose work is virtually unknown to American readers. These eighteenth-century texts are set against interpretive essays by such major twentieth-century figures as Max Horkheimer, Jürgen Habermas, and Michel Foucault.

Contents:

Frontmatter

Contents

Preface

Introduction: What Is Enlightenment? A Question, Its Context, and Some Consequences

What Is to Be Done Toward the Enlightenment of the Citizenry?

On the Question: What Is Enlightenment?

An Answer to the Question: What Is Enlightenment?

Thoughts on Enlightenment

A Couple of Gold Nuggets, from the ... Wastepaper, or Six Answers to Six Questions

On Freedom of Thought and of the Press: For Princes, Ministers, and Writers

On Freedom of the Press and Its Limits: For Consideration by Rulers, Censors, and Writers

Publicity

Reclamation of the Freedom of Thought from the Princes of Europe, Who Have Oppressed It Until Now

Letter to Christian Jacob Kraus

Metacritique on the Purism of Reason

On Enlightenment: Is It and Could It Be Dangerous to the State, to Religion, or Dangerous in General? A Word to Be Heeded by Princes, Statesmen, and Clergy

Something Lessing Said: A Commentary on Journeys of the Popes

True and False Political Enlightenment

On the Influence of Enlightenment on Revolutions

Does Enlightenment Cause Revolutions?

The Berlin Wednesday Society

The Subversive Kant: The Vocabulary of "Public" and "Publicity"

On Enlightenment for the Common Man

Modern Culture Comes of Age: Hamann versus Kant on the Root Metaphor of Enlightenment

Jacobi's Critique of the Enlightenment

Early Romanticism and the Aufklärung

Progress: Ideas, Skepticism, and Critique - The Heritage of the Enlightenment

What Is Enlightenment?

Reason Against Itself: Some Remarks on Enlightenment

What Is Enlightened Thinking?

What Is Critique?

The Unity of Reason in the Diversity of Its Voices

The Battle of Reason with the Imagination

The Failure of Kant's Imagination

The Gender of Enlightenment

Autonomy, Individuality, and Self-Determination

Enlightened Cosmopolitanism: The Political Perspective of the Kantian "Sublime"

Contributors to Parts II and III

Select Bibliography

Index

Notes:

Description based upon print version of record.

Includes bibliographical references (pages 537-553) and index.

Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 24. Apr 2020)

ISBN:

9780520916890

0520916891

9780585034003

0585034001

OCLC:

42854530