Producing Relevant Knowledge: The Enlightenment Paradigm

Transcription

1 Producing Relevant Knowledge: The Enlightenment Paradigm Instructor: László Kontler 4 credit MA course The famous question What Is Enlightenment has been answered in a variety of ways even before, and especially since, it was explicitly addressed to the leading lights of Germany by the Berlinische Monatsschrift in A smallest common denominator among the respondents could be the view that Enlightenment is a collaborative pursuit to accumulate and systematize knowledge about man s natural, social and moral environment, with the specific purpose of improving that environment. Taking this perspective on the study of the Enlightenment in longue durée, the course will explore a number of appropriate themes from the intellectual and socio-cultural history of Western, Central and Eastern Europe in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. As an approach to some of the foundations of modernity, it also seeks to be attractive for students of other periods. Having discussed the self-reflection of the Enlightenment as represented in the work of some eighteenth-century authors, we shall first look at the redefinition of the social functions of science and its still problematic but increasing distinction from the arts in the course of the movement generally known as the scientific revolution, and then proceed to assess the attempts to create a science of man and society and the outlines of the scientific study of the polity. The implications of these themes for secular vs. religious attitudes, and for dominant attitudes towards religion itself, will be inevitably considered, as well as the debates in recent scholarship on the radical vs. conservative potential inherent in the Enlightenment. Next, we shall examine the mechanisms whereby the relationship between the knowledge created and the object to which it related, society, became reciprocal through a process of diffusion in an increasingly variegated public sphere. Finally, these aspects will be revisited against the background of the study of the Enlightenment in versus above national context (continent-wide unity and regional diversity, with a special emphasis on Central and Eastern Europe). Requirements: at least one position paper (a prepared, formal comment on the readings for the week, in ca. 15 minutes, identifying central themes and attempting to set an agenda for discussion) one written essay (ca. 4,000 words, topic and material to be discussed with the instructor)

2 Besides these assignments, class performance will seriosly contribute to the final grade. PART I. General perspectives 1. Enlightenment: contemporary and modern reflections Jean Le Rond D Alembert, Preliminary Discourse to the Encyclopedia of Diderot (University of Chicago Press, 1986), Denis Diderot, Encyclopedia, article from the Encyclopédie, in Political Writings (Cambridge University Press, 1992), Moses Mendelssohn, On the Question: What Is Enlightenment?, in James Schmidt (ed.), What Is Enlightenment? (Berkeley etc.: University of California Press, 1996), Immanuel Kant, An Answer to the Question: What Is Enlightenment?, ibid John Robertson, The Case for the Enlightenment: Scotand and Naples (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), Thomas Munck, Enlightenment. A Comparative Social History (London: Arnold, 2001), Science, man, and society Francis Bacon, The Advancement of Learning, ed. Arthur Johnston (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1974), 5-16, John Glanvill and Thomas Sprat on the Royal Society; Robert Hooke and Robert Boyle on experimental phiosophy; Isaac Newton: Principia selections from Seventeenth Century England: A Changing Culture, ed. Ann Hughes (The Open University, 1980), , , , Stephen Gaukroger, Francis Bacon and the Transformation of Early- Modern Philosophy (Cambridge University Press, 2001), Steven Shapin, The Scientific Revolution (University of Chicago Press, 1996), 1-14, Margaret C. Jacob, The Radical Enlightenment. Pantheists, Freemasons and Republicans (London: Allen & Unwin, 1981), 29-64, Carl von Linné, Homo in The System of Nature; Georges-Louis LeClerc, Comte du Buffon, A Natural History, General and Particular, both in Emmanuel Chukwudi Eze (ed.), Race and the Enlightenment, A Reader (Oxford: Blackwell, 1997), Johann Reinhold Forster, Observations Made during a Voyage Round the World, ed. Nicholas Thomas, Harriet Guest, Michael Dettelbach (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1996), E. C. Spary, The Nature of Enlightenment ; Lorraine Daston, Afterword: The Ethos of Enlightenment, both in Clark, Golinski and Schaffer (eds.), The Sciences, , Martin Gierl, Compilation and the Production of Knowledge in the Early German Enlightenment, in Hans Erich Bödeker, Peter Hanns

3 Reill, Jürgen Schlumbohm (eds.), Wissenschaft als kulturelle Praxis (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1999), The science of man and society Samuel Pufendorf, On the Duty of Man and Citizen, ed. James Tully (Cambridge University Press, 1991), 17-38, Bernard Mandeville, The Fable of the Bees, ed. Edward J. Hundert (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1997), 1-9, 36-44, 65-87, Istvan Hont, The language of sociability and commerce: Samuel Pufendorf and the theoretical foundations of the Four-Stages Theory, in Anthony Pagden (ed.), The Languages of Political Theory in Early-Modern Europe (Cambridge University Press, 1987), David Carrithers, The Enlightenment Science of Society, in Christopher Fox, Roy Porter and Robert Wokler (eds.), Inventing Human Science. Eighteenth-Century Domains (University of California Press, 1995), Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Discourse on the Sciences and the Arts and Discourse on the Origin of Inequality, in The Basic Political Writings, ed. Peter Gay (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1987), 2-21, Adam Smith, The Theory of Moral Sentiments, ed. D.D. Raphael and A.L. Macfie (Indianapolis: Liberty Classics, 1982), , , Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, ed. R..H. Campbell and A.S. Skinner (Indianapolis: Liberty Classics, 1976), 13-30, The science of the polity Montesquieu, The Spirit of the Laws, ed. Anne M. Cohler, Basia Carolyn Miller and Harold Samuel Stone (Cambridge University Press, 1989), 3-30, , , David Hume, Of the First Principles of Government, Of the Origin of Government, Of the Original Contract, in Essays Moral, Political and Literary, ed. Erugene F. Miller (Indianapolis: Liberty Classics, 1985), 32-41, Robert Wokler, The Enlightenment Science of Politics, in Fox, Porter and Wokler (eds.), Inventing Human Science, Keith Tribe, Strategies of ecomnomic order. German economic discourse, (Cambridge University Press, 1995), The Enlightenment at work James van Horn Melton, The Rise of the Public in Enlightenment Europe (Cambridge University Press, 2001), Roger Emerson, "The Enlightenment and Social Structures," In: Paul Fritz and David Williams (ed.), City and Society in the 18 th Century (Toronto: Hakkert, 1973),

4 Paul Langford, A Polite and Commercial People. England (Oxford University Press, 1992), Roger Chartier, The Cultural Origins of the French Revolution (Durham-London: Duke University Press, 1991), Daniel Gordon, Citizens Without Sovereignty. Equality and Sociability in French Thought (Princeton University Press, 1994), Robert Darnton, The Forbidden Best-Sellers of Pre-Revolutionary France (Fontana, 1996), Hans Erich Bödeker, Journals and the Public Opinion: The Politicization of the German Enlightenment in the Second Half of the Eighteenth Century, in Eckhart Hellmuth (ed.), The Transformation of Political Culture. England and Germany in the Late Eighteenth Century (Oxford University Press, 1990), PART II. Central and East European perspectives 9. Enlightened absolutism A. Lentin (ed.), Enlightened Absolutism ( ). A Documentary Sourcebook (Old Woking: Gresham Press, 1985), ca. 40 pp. of selections H. M. Scott, Reform in the Habsburg Monarchy, , in H. M. Scott (ed.), Enlightened Absolutism. Reform and Reformers in Later Eighteenth-Century Europe (London: Macmillan, 1990), Éva H. Balázs, Hungary and the Habsburgs An Experiment in Enlighterned Absolutism (Budapest: CEU Press, 1997), Isabel de Madariaga, Russia in the Age of Catherine the Great (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1981), 38-60, , The Society of the Enlightened (1) Education for Citizenship and Patriotism: Discourses of Virtue and Duty Nikolai Ivanovich Novikov, "[On Man's High Estate] and On the Upbringing and Instruction of Children," in: Marc Raeff (ed.), Russian Intellectual History: An Anthology (New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, Inc.,1966), pp Marc Raeff, Origins of the Russian Intelligentsia. The Eighteeth Century Nobility, ch. 4 5, , (notes). J. Laurence Black, "Citizenship Training and Moral Regeneration as the Mainstay of Russian Schools," in: James A. Leith (ed.), Facets of Education in the Eighteenth Century (=SVEC; 167) (Oxford: Voltaire Foundation, 1977), pp Kamilla Mrozowska, "Educational Reform in Poland during the Enlightenment," in: Samuel Fiszman (ed.), Constitution and Reform in Eighteenth-Century Poland. The Constitution of 3 May 1791

5 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1997), pp B. Becker-Cantarino, "Joseph von Sonnenfels and the Development of Secular Education in Eighteenth-Century Austria", in: James A. Leith (ed.), Facets of Education in the Eighteenth Century (=SVEC; 167) (Oxford: Voltaire Foundation, 1977), pp Ernst Wangermann, "'By and By We Shall Have an Enlightened Populace': Moral Optimism and the Fine Arts in Late-Eighteenth Century Austria," Austrian History Yearbook, 30, (1999): László Deme, "Maria Theresa s Noble Lifeguards and the Rise of the Hungarian Enlightenment and Nationalism," in: K. Király and Walter Scott Dillard, (ed.), The East Central European Officer Corps, s: Social Origins, Selection, Education, and Training, pp The Society of the Enlightened (2) Enlightened Sociability and the Ethics of Improvement Henry E. Lowood, "Ch. 3, Science for the Fatherland", in: idem, Patriotism, Profit, and the Promotion of Science in the German Enlightenment (New York: Garland Publishing, 1991), pp , (notes). Mikuláš Teich, "The Royal Bohemian Society of Sciences and the First Phase of Organized Scientific Advance in Bohemia, Historica. Historical Sciences in Czechoslovakia, 2 (1960): William Coxe, "Extracts from: Travels in Poland, Russia, Sweden, and Denmark," in: Peter Putnam (ed.), Seven Britons in Imperial Russia, (Princeton: PUP, 1952), pp Reinhart Koselleck, Critique and Crisis. Enlightenment and the Pathogenesis of Modern Society (Cambridge, Mass., 1988), ch. 5-7, pp Jiří Kroupa, "The Alchemy of Happiness: The Enlightenment in the Moravian Context," in: Mikuláš Teich (ed.), Bohemia in History (Cambridge: CUP, 1998), pp Douglas Smith, Freemasonry and the Public in Eighteenth-Century Russia, Eighteenth-Century Studies 29 (1995), Éva H. Balázs, Hungary and the Habsburgs An Experiment in Enlighterned Absolutism (Budapest: CEU Press, 1997), The late Enlightenment and national awakening Peter Hanns Reill, The German Enlightenment and the Rise of Historicism (Berkeley etc.: University of California Press, 1973), 9-30, Paschalis M. Kitromilides, Enlightenment, Nationalism, Orthodoxy. Studies in the culture and political thought of south-eastern Europe (Variorum 1994), 51-70, Hugh LeCaine Agnew, Origins of the Czech National Renascence (University of Pittsburgh press, 1993),