What Is Enlightenment?: Eighteenth-Century Answers and Twentieth-Century Questions

Published by University of California Press 1996

What Is Enlightenment?

Eighteenth-Century Answers and Twentieth-Century Questions

Edited by: James Schmidt

Volume 7 in the series Philosophical Traditions

https://doi.org/10.1525/9780520916890

Overview
Contents

About this book

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.

Author / Editor information

Schmidt James :

James Schmidt is Chair of the Department of Political Science at Boston University. He is author of Maurice Merleau-Ponty: Between Phenomenology and Structuralism (1985).

Topics

Frontmatter Publicly Available Download PDF	i
Contents Publicly Available Download PDF	v
Preface Publicly Available Download PDF	ix
Introduction: What Is Enlightenment? A Question, Its Context, and Some Consequences James Schmidt Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	1
Part One. The Eighteenth-Century Debate
1. The Question and Some Answers
What Is to Be Done Toward the Enlightenment of the Citizenry? Johann Karl Möhsen Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	49
On the Question: What Is Enlightenment? Moses Mendelssohn Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	53
An Answer to the Question: What Is Enlightenment? Immanuel Kant Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	58
Thoughts on Enlightenment Karl Leonhard Reinhold Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	65
A Couple of Gold Nuggets, from the ... Wastepaper, or Six Answers to Six Questions Christoph Martin Wieland Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	78
2. The Public Use of Reason
On Freedom of Thought and of the Press: For Princes, Ministers, and Writers Ernst Ferdinand Klein Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	87
On Freedom of the Press and Its Limits: For Consideration by Rulers, Censors, and Writers Carl Friedrich Bahrdt Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	97
Publicity Friedrich Karl von Moser Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	114
Reclamation of the Freedom of Thought from the Princes of Europe, Who Have Oppressed It Until Now Johann Gottlieb Fichte Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	119
3. Faith and Enlightenment
Letter to Christian Jacob Kraus Johann Georg Hamann Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	145
Metacritique on the Purism of Reason Johann Georg Hamann Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	154
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 Andreas Riem Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	168
4. The Politics of Enlightenment
Something Lessing Said: A Commentary on Journeys of the Popes Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	191
True and False Political Enlightenment Friedrich Karl von Moser Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	212
On the Influence of Enlightenment on Revolutions Johann Heinrich Tieftrunk Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	217
Does Enlightenment Cause Revolutions? Johann Adam Bergk Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	225
Part Two. Historical Reflections
The Berlin Wednesday Society Günter Birtsch Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	235
The Subversive Kant: The Vocabulary of "Public" and "Publicity" John Christian Laursen Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	253
On Enlightenment for the Common Man Jonathan B. Knudsen Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	270
Modern Culture Comes of Age: Hamann versus Kant on the Root Metaphor of Enlightenment Garrett Green Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	291
Jacobi's Critique of the Enlightenment Dale E. Snow Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	306
Early Romanticism and the Aufklärung Frederick C. Beiser Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	317
Progress: Ideas, Skepticism, and Critique – The Heritage of the Enlightenment Rudolph Vierhaus Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	330
Part Three. Twentieth-Century Questions
What Is Enlightenment? Rüdiger Bittner Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	345
Reason Against Itself: Some Remarks on Enlightenment Max Horkheimer Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	359
What Is Enlightened Thinking? Georg Picht Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	368
What Is Critique? Michel Foucault Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	382
The Unity of Reason in the Diversity of Its Voices Jürgen Habermas Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	399
The Battle of Reason with the Imagination Hartmut Böhme and Gernot Böhme Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	426
The Failure of Kant's Imagination Jane Kneller Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	453
The Gender of Enlightenment Robin May Schott Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	471
Autonomy, Individuality, and Self-Determination Lewis Hinchman Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	488
Enlightened Cosmopolitanism: The Political Perspective of the Kantian "Sublime" Kevin Paul Geiman Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	517
Contributors to Parts II and III Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	533
Select Bibliography Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	537
Index Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	555

Language: English
Publisher: University of California Press
Pages
- Main content: 500

eBook

Published: September 8, 1996
ISBN: 9780520916890