In this essay, I investigate Baumgarten’s doctrine of the six perfections of knowledge (wealth, magnitude, truth, clarity, certainty, and life), which is famously one of the most characteristic and enigmatic features of his philosophy. Recent scholarship has almost unanimously stressed the rhetorical background of the categories. Instead, I argue that Baumgarten elaborates his theory in close relationship with coeval philosophy. To support this claim, I examine the position of some Thomasian philosophers, such as Johann Liborius Zimmermann, who had indicated a (...) list of criteria similar to that of Baumgarten. Moreover, I analyse the distinction between formal and material perfections, tracing it back to the Wolffian milieu. On these bases, I propose a new reconstruction of Baumgarten’s doctrine, with particular attention to its aesthetic application. Finally, I outline the reception of the six categories in the late German Enlightenment until Kant. (shrink)

The Radical Enlightenment refers to a fascinating movement within the Enlightenment that challenged traditional forms of religious, philosophical, and political authority and promoted social reform, freedom, democratic values, social equality, and libertas philosophandi. The study of the Radical Enlightenment focuses on the thought of freethinkers, atheists, pantheists, Spinozists, political reformers, and other kindred spirits. Over the last thirty years scholarly writing on, and about the very notion of, a Radical Enlightenment has proliferated and research on the (...) matter has moved in different directions. This research companion provides a timely and comprehensive overview of current research on this matter, gathering together leading experts who cross the boundaries of geographical terrain, of discipline, of intellectual position and of methodology. In addition to dealing with canonical authors and celebrated texts, such as Spinoza and his Tractatus Theologico-Politicus, authors discuss many less well-known figures and debates from the period whose importance is only now being appreciated. (shrink)

The German Aufklärung was only one of at least three distinct Eighteenth Century Movements we now call ‘the Enlightenment’. But what is enlightenment? This question was posed in a Berlin journal in 1783 and answered in the same journal a year later by two of the movement’s leading representatives: Moses Mendelssohn and Immanuel Kant. Kant’s answer, which is expounded in this essay, changed the understanding of the movement. Kant sees enlightenment not as only a development of intellect (...) but a liberation of mind and character from the authority of others that keeps us all, at least to some extent, from thinking for ourselves. But Kant holds that thinking for oneself requires communication with others and searching for an intellectual standpoint that is valid for all. It is a process that is never completed. We are all to some degree in need of enlightenment. And Kant’s call for enlightenment is as urgent today as it was in his own age. (shrink)

This paper closely examines Strauss’ conception of “Medieval Enlightenment”. It focuses on the central role that Arab philosophy has played in the development of Strauss’s thought and discusses the validity of the uses he makes of it. It also emphasizes the interest of Strauss’s analyses as regards Arab philosophy while drawing attention to the tensions they create. It claims that Strauss’ involvement in the quarrel between Ancients and Moderns aims at showing that medieval philosophy cannot be reduced simply to (...) the effort to reconcile philosophy and religion. The ideas of some Arab philosophers cropped up throughout Strauss’s philosophical development and determined his interpretation of Maimonides and Plato as well as his stance in opposition to the moderns. However Strauss’s idea of the “medieval Enlightenment” remains fundamentally ambiguous. Is that Enlightenment supposed to be an argument for the preservation of faith alongside reason or does it rather express a kind of atheism or disguised materialism? (shrink)

ABSTRACT This paper is concerned with landmarks in the history of the idea of cancerous contagiousness from the Renaissance to the Enlightenment. The origins of the idea of cancerous contagiousness is considered on the basis of Galen’s distinction between scabiesleprosy, cancer and elephantiasis. Paul of Aegina (seventh century) established the association between these latter diseases. In the fourteenth century, a ‘new line of inquiry’ developed concerning the transmission of diseases like plague, and G. Fracastoro (1546) applied this approach by (...) stating that putrefaction and inflammation notably produce elephantiasis, which is obviously contagious, as inflammation and heat, without putrefaction, produce cancer. J. Fernel (1548) applied the process of syphilitic contamination to ulcerated cancer, whose vapour ‘is widely dispersed’ and which ‘quickly kills by its malignancy’. G. Cardano (1564) reacted against these views, and declared that cancer was could not be transmitted by contact. But A. Zacuth (1629–1634) and N. Tulp (1652) provided instances of such transmission. D. Sennert, who is often said to have accepted Zacuth’s testimony, was doubtful and suggested, rather than contagion, transmission by heredity. This type of explanation was privileged during Classical Age, until experiments on animals or human beings infected by cancerous liquid took place during the Enlightenment in France and England. Pichler (1786) finally recommended forbidding marriage between people suffering from cancer. (shrink)

It is gratifying to learn that there are fellow humanist philosophers who pay homage to the Enlightenment and its legacy. Such a humanist philosopher is Michael Mitias. He has taken precious time and the labor of his active and synoptic thought to both read the trilogy I have had the privilege of guest editing and what is more, to write about it. Hence, I feel that he deserves a response. I shall address some of the key points that he (...) has raised in the interest of dialogue, an activity which he has praised and which rightly forms the heart of our journal. I intend to respond to the following points: (i) that we do not need a new enlightenment, but a reinterpretation of the old; (ii) that the editorials are not consistent with the articles of the contributors; (iii) that the method I have utilized, to endeavor to invoke a new Enlightenment through self-conscious intention, via rallying philosophers together is at odds with the origin of the classical Enlightenment; (iv) that the viewpoint I have expressed suffers from its Eurocentrism. (shrink)

In recent decades in Korea, many significant changes in political, social and cultural dimensions have been held by the citizen’s initiative, where the revitalization of citizenship and strong civic unity have played a role. Yet, in regard to the characteristic of Korean citizenship, it seems that the aspect of individual subject has not been fully matured or issued; that is, there is a dissymmetry between the strong civic unity and a weak individual subject. This paper attempts to explore a possible (...) historical account of why this has been the case by examining the historical development of the concept of enlightenment in modern Korea and Japan. ‘Enlightenment’, as a modern concept in Korea, was imported via Japan in the period from the late nineteenth century to the early twentieth century as in many other new concepts such as ‘democracy’ or ‘nation’. However, by comparison to the Western idea of the Enlightenment, its modern concept, Korean or Japanese, developed a different meaning in each own context, while lacking its original meaning essential to the creation of the ‘modern individual subject’ as a ‘citizen’. Hence, in modern Korea and Japan, the word ‘enlightenment’ is regarded as a historical concept with no contemporary relevance. (shrink)

ABSTRACTTaking its cue from Hannah Arendt’s comment that ‘truth gets lost in the Enlightenment’ and Lessing’s parable of God’s ‘left hand’, this paper traces a historical shift in moral and religious thought: roughly from truth to sincerity. From traditional conceptions of conscience as conditional on the objective truth of its content, the paper moves on, via the Reformation and seventeenth-century Augustinian turn, to early modern debates on toleration and the ‘erring conscience’. It is argued that Pierre Bayle’s Commentaire Philosophique (...) of 1686 can be read as a crucial catalogue for understanding the substitution of truth with sincerity : so that not truth but truthfulness is considered to be essential for moral and religious justification. Moving from Bayle to Immanuel Kant, the paper then shows how many of the same questions rise in Kant’s late essay on theodicy, which is also an essay on sincerity or integrity, via the Book of Job. Through these two thinkers, various themes are connected: from conscience and sincerity to the problem of the conscientious persecutor. Finally, these themes of truth, error and integrity are linked to the modern debate on authenticity, and a framework is proposed for conceptualising these various shifts. (shrink)

This book challenges common historical misperceptions of both the history of the sciences in early modern France and the history of the French Enlightenment. Tracing the complex historical relationship between them, this reinterpretation critiques the view that the sciences were always politically neutral and that the philosophes were proto-republican. By reexamining the moral, political, and social ideas of those who defended the ascendency of the sciences, this book demonstrates the evolution of political views, in particular with the marquis de (...) Condorcet, from a commitment to absolute monarchy to revolutionary republicanism. (shrink)

Gestural and pantomimic accounts of language origins propose that language did not develop directly from ape vocalisations, but rather that its emergence was preceded by an intervening stage of bodily-visual communication, during which our ancestors communicated with their hands, arms, and the entire body. Gestural and pantomimic scenarios are again becoming popular in language evolution research, but this line of thought has a long and interesting history that gained special prominence in the Enlightenment, often considered the golden age of (...) glottogony. We highlight several themes key to this line of reflection, such as the idea of innate communication that consists of visual bodily signs and non-linguistic vocalisations; the division of labour between these two semiotic resources ; or the developmental trajectory of this bi-modal system of communication determined by its transmission through generations of users and the intervention of social factors. We confront these ideas with problems discussed in current language evolution research, focusing on polysemioticity, sign function, conventionality and modality transition. (shrink)

An English translation of key works, many never before translated, by Moses Mendelssohn, the founder of modern Jewish philosophy.

This contribution aims to be a concrete proof of how fertile, rich and innovative dialogue and confrontation between transcendental phenomenology and naturalising sciences can be. Through the phenomenological-transcendental analysis of the neurodegenerative pathology of dementia, an attempt will be made to propose, within the debate on the possible naturalisation of phenomenology, the perspective of an actual mutual enlightenment, as proposed by Gallagher. Not a naturalisation of consciousness in the sense of a reduction to neural process, but a pluralisation of (...) the valid and rigorous perspectives through which it can be investigated. The phenomenological-transcendental eidetic study of dementia thus becomes complementary to the neurobiological one, revealing what the subject feels ‘from within’, his losses, but also what persists in the patient until the most advanced stages. Such a study, in synergy with the biological one, would greatly help in the holistic understanding of dementia in this particular case and, in general, of consciousness phenomena. (shrink)

Inspired by Voltaire's advice that a text needs to be concise to have real influence, this anthology contains fiery extracts by forty eighteenth-century authors, from the most famous philosophers of the age to those whose brilliant writings are less well-known. These passages are immensely diverse in style and topic, but all have in common a passionate commitment to equality, freedom, and tolerance. Each text resonates powerfully with the issues our world faces today. Tolerance was first published by the Société française (...) d'étude du dix-huitième siècle (the French Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies) in the wake of the Charlie Hebdo assassinations in January 2015 as an act of solidarity and as a response to the surge of interest in Enlightenment values. With the support of the British Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies, it has now been translated by over 100 students and tutors of French at Oxford University."--Publisher's website. (shrink)

하버마스는 계몽과 세속화된 종교를 역사적으로 대립적이거나 배제적인 것으로 파악한다. 동시에 하버마스는 계몽과 종교, 지식과 믿음이 사실상 공통적인 윤리적인 내용을 가진다고 주장한다. 그렇다면 이 둘이 공통적인 내용을 가지는데, 어떻게 둘 간의 갈등이 생긴 것일까? 또한 역사적으로 상호 배제적인 것으로 파악되던 믿음과 지식이 현대 사회에서 “반성적 도약”을 통해 화해에 이를 수 있을까? 헤겔에 따르면 믿음과 지식은 “현실 세계로부터의 도피”라는 점에서 동일한 생성론적 원천을 가지며, 의식의 순수 사유를 현실의 반대로서 현실의 진리라고 파악한다는 점에서 내용적 동일성도 가진다. 하지만 이 진리를 믿음은 표상의 형식 속에, (...) 지식은 개념의 형식 속에 표현한다는 점에서 둘은 다르다. 이 형식적 차이는 둘 간의 상호 비판을 가능케 하여, 계몽의 변증법과 종교의 세속화를 촉발한다. 지식과 믿음, 계몽과 종교는 하나이자 동일한 정신의 자기 이해라는 과정이라는 동전의 양면을 불과하다. 우리는 계몽과 세속화의 관계에 대한 헤겔의 이론으로부터 하버마스가 주장하는 “반성적 도약”의 가능 토대를 얻을 수 있다. (shrink)

This paper analyses Gadamer's hermeneutics and the critical theory of Horkheimer and Marcuse. It tries to show that, if modern society is conceived as political, then it is possible to elaborate a theory of modernity where hermeneutics and critical theory, instead of opposing, complement each other.O presente artigo, analisando a hermenêutica de Gadamer e a teoria crítica de Horkheimer e Marcuse, procura mostrar que, se se concebe a sociedade moderna do ponto de vista do político, é possível elaborar uma teoria (...) da modernidade em que ambas, em vez de se oporem, sejam complementares. (shrink)

This year is the Eightieth anniversary of the May Fourth movement, as well as the last decennial of the May Fourth movement in the twentieth century.

The Companion d focusses on the international intellectual movement of the Enlightenment, and the individuals who shaped it. A number of substantial essays survey the main topics of dictionaries, encyclopedias, art, music and theatre, while central philosophical concepts such as human nature are also examined. Specialized topics receive short definitions and there are several hundred biographies. Chronology. 100 halftones. Bibliographies. Index.

In recent publications on the Enlightenment, Baruch Spinoza is often associated with the radical “fringe,” advocating against Christianity and giving rise to the incipient process of secularization. In this paper, it is argued that we should look for Spinoza’s influence on the Enlightenment in his ideas inspiring heterodox theologians: radical reformers aiming to “rationalize” revelation but not to dismiss it altogether. Several cases of such thinkers are adduced and shortly discussed: Jarig Jelles, Johan Christian Edelmann, Carl Friedrich Bahrdt (...) and Immanuel Kant. Finally, three ways of conceptualizing the relation between Enlightenment and religion are sketched to address the question whether the sources of secularization can indeed be traced back to the Enlightenment. (shrink)