Kant and The Culture of Enlightenment

Philosophy and Literature, 2002

If the Enlightenment did not exist, postmodernism would have had to invent it. It performs the same function, Daniel Gordon argues in his introduction to Postmodernism and the Enlightenment (hereafter, P&E), that the Ancien Regime did for the French revolutionaries: as the "other of postmodernism," it represents "the modern that postmodernism revolts against" (P&E 1). Indeed, the image of the Enlightenment that emerges from the postmodern critique does seem, in large part, to be an invention. As Keith Michael Bake and Peter Hans Reill suggest in the introduction to their collection What's Left of Enlightenment? (hereafter WLE?) the various strands of thought commonly grouped under the label postmodernism "have at least one thing in common: "they all depend upon a stereotyped, even caricatural, account of the Enlightenment" which sees the Enlightenment as the point of origin for the "rationalism, instrumentalism, scientism, logocentrism, universalism, abstract rights, eurocentrism, individualism, humanism, masculinism, etc." that defines the modernity which postmodernity hopes to supersede (WLE? 1). One consequence of the inclination to trace the origin of the various failings of modernity to the Enlightenment is that arguments about the "legacy of the Enlightenment" tend to get out of hand. In a particularly sharp-sighted contribution to the Baker and Reill collection David Hollinger notes that it is all too easy for a critic of Enlightenment to argue that "I'm hot stuff because I'm not only refuting you, my puny opponent, but … every great thinker from Descartes to Popper" and, conversely, all too enticing for those

European Review of History: Revue europeenne d'histoire, 2006

The essays gathered in this issue explore possibilities for re-conceptualising the historical topography of the European Enlightenment through an examination of its communicative practices. By what means did the Enlightenment emerge, how did it take root in particular places, and how did it unfold in time and space-as local experience, as a Europe-wide movement and as a global phenomenon? It is an adventure in a new form of cultural geography; it rejects a simple mapping of cultural forms and movements on to purportedly deeper economic, social and political structures and instead proposes that culture be understood as a historical force in its own right, which, through the elaboration of a series of institutions, practices and systems of signification played a constitutive role in the reshaping of economic, social and political structures along new lines. Arguably, no cultural movement, at least since the advent of Christianity, presents a more compelling case for the constitutive claims of culture than the European Enlightenment of the eighteenth century. For much of the twentieth century the Enlightenment was studied almost exclusively as a chapter in the history of ideas, a story of great thinkers, of philosophical systems and debates that unfolded among a cosmopolitan elite of European men of letters. The historical question was posed (paraphrasing Kant) as follows: 'What was the Enlightenment?' 1 In this historiography the questions of where or how the Enlightenment made itself manifest mattered little or their answers seemed self-evident-it occurred in the minds of a few men who were well positioned to be in dialogue with one another. But a generation ago, a group of scholars of the European eighteenth century, notably Robert Darnton, Daniel Roche, Roger Chartier, Roy Porter and Jürgen Habermas, began posing a different series of questions: How did the

The Scriblerian and the Kit-Cats, 2024

Enlightenment Past and Present is an impressive collection of essays, most of them previously published during the author's prolific career as a (self-described) "contextual intellectual historian." Although its chapters range from academic essays to extensive book reviews to pieces blending confessional prose with bibliographical details, they come together as a surprisingly unified argument about the Enlightenment's extraordinary ideological force in its time and impact on our culture today. Its coherence is given by an eloquent introduction that delivers on the promise of the title: that is, to delve into how the Enlightenment thought shaped the very tenets of modernity while, at the same time, reflecting on the author's intellectual and professional choices, his disciplinary methods, and his formative influences as a historian of the Enlightenment. The Preface and Introduction to this volume are purposely reflective on the author's approaches to his field of study, which makes for delightfully engaging prose. As the author candidly states, "I wanted to come at eighteenth-century constructs not through the lenses of later political ideologies, but by recovering their positional meaning in relation to what preceded them." This candor is counterpoised by a remarkable erudition and an uncanny ability to bring various sources into conversation with each other and delve deeply into their arguments.

Argument : Biannual Philosophical Journal, 2013

We still ask the question 'What is Enlightenment?' Every generation seems to offer new and contradictory answers to the question. In the last thirty or so years, the most interesting characterisations of Enlightenment have been by historians. They have told us that there is one Enlightenment, that there are two Enlightenments, that there are many Enlightenments. This has thrown up a second question, 'How Many Enlightenments?' In the spirit of collaboration and criticism, I answer both questions by arguing in this article that there are in fact three Enlightenments: Radical, Sceptical and Liberal. These are abstracted from the rival theories of Enlightenment found in the writings of the historians Jonathan Israel, John Robertson and J.G.A. Pocock. Each form of Enlightenment is political; each involves an attitude to history; each takes a view of religion. They are arranged in a sequence of increasing sensitivity to history, as it is this which makes it possible to relate them to each other and indeed propose a composite definition of Enlightenment. The argument should be of 1 This article, originally written in 2018, is indebted to John Robertson-whom I met by chance at a conference about another subject-for a suggestion about the writings of J.G.A. Pocock which though slight (the suggestion, not the writings) was fundamental and led me to redraft the second half of the article in 2019 and thus to sharpen the eventual argument. interest to anyone concerned with 'the Enlightenment' as a historical phenomenon or with 'Enlightenment' as a philosophical abstraction.

Approaching Religion, 2011

In his famous comment on Kant’s Was ist Aufklärung?, Foucault considers that the debate ‘for’ or ‘against’ the Enlightenment has no meaning as such, and calls for a new space of inquiry that would take into account our own determination, as subjects, by the Enlightenment, making it the object ofa new history, still to be written. Although this short text has been quoted over and over, it is still a sort of empty programme that does not overcome the antinomies of modern rationality. I would like to draw on one of Foucault’s most suggestive remarks, albeit in some ways enigmatic: ‘[m]any things in our experience convince us that the historical event of the Enlightenment did not make us mature adults, and we have not reached that stage yet.’ Starting from this statement, I would like to delineate the possibilities of a New Enlightenment, that would not be the first one made better, or rendered adequate to its original project (as an extended rationality or as a reflexive normativity, f...

Among all the works of Alasdair MacIntyre, After Virtue is arguably the richest of interesting points. Too often it has been interpreted just as a plain defence of the Aristotelian- Thomistic tradition in the contemporary moral debate or, in other similar words, as a recommendation in favour of virtue ethics. It will be argued that this traditional outlook to After Virtue overshadowed some very prominent features of the work, e.g. its peculiar value from an historical and historiographical standpoint and its precious analysis of the philosophical culture of the Enlightenment. The main aim of the paper is indeed providing a clear account of MacIntyre's interpretation of the Enlightenment, its culture and its moral philosophy with a particular focus upon the notion of the ʻEnlightenment Projectʼ, the features he spotted in it, and eventually evaluating this historiographical interpretation with an eye on the most recent trends developed in the historiography of the Enlightenment from historians of philosophy and historians of ideas. The point defended will be that MacIntyre's account of the Enlightenment was very close to the approach shared by historians at present, even though After Virtue was published in 1981, perhaps pioneering a new trend of enquiry in history of philosophy.

Human Studies, 2002

Central European History, 1997

Eighteenth-Century Studies, 2011