Enlightenment In Ruins

Author : Michael Griffin
Publisher : Bucknell University Press
Page : 227 pages
File Size : 54,5 Mb
Release : 2013-08-15
Category : Literary Criticism
ISBN : 9781611485066

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Enlightenment in Ruins by Michael Griffin Pdf

Oliver Goldsmith (1728–1774) moved between the genres and geographies of enlightenment writing with considerable dexterity. As a consequence he has been characterized as a passive purveyor of enlightenment thought, a hack, a harried translator of the French enlightenment for an English audience, an ideological lackey, and a subtle ironist. In poetry, he is either a compliant pastoralist or an engaged social critic. Yet Goldsmith’s career is as complex and as contradictory as the enlightenment currents across which he wrote, and there is in Goldsmith’s oeuvre a set of themes—including his opposition to the new imperialism and to glibly declared principles of liberty—which this book addresses as a manifestation of his Irishness. Michael Griffin places Goldsmith in two contexts: one is the intellectual and political culture in which he worked as a professional author living in London; the other is that of his nationality and his as yet unstudied Jacobite politics. Enlightenment in Ruins thereby reveals a body of work that is compellingly marked by tensions and transits between Irishness and Englishness, between poetic and professional imperatives, and between cultural and scientific spheres.

Author : C.-F. Volney
Publisher : DigiCat
Page : 381 pages
File Size : 40,8 Mb
Release : 2022-05-28
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : EAN:8596547027782

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The Ruins; Or, Meditation on the Revolutions of Empires and the Law of Nature by C.-F. Volney Pdf

The Ruins of Empires (Les Ruines, 1791) is a classic work criticizing the political regimens of different countries pre and during the 18th century. The book was translated into English by the American president Thomas Jefferson, who thought it very important to build a strong political system in America. The author of the book criticizes Rousseau, demands the separation of church and state, and states that empires grow and stay stable only until the government allows the enlightened to grow and flourish.

Author : David O'Shaughnessy
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
Page : 283 pages
File Size : 51,7 Mb
Release : 2019-08
Category : Literary Criticism
ISBN : 9781108498142

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Ireland, Enlightenment and the English Stage, 1740-1820 by David O'Shaughnessy Pdf

Reveals the contribution of Irish writers to the Georgian English stage; argues that theatre is an important strand of the Irish Enlightenment.

Author : Constantin-François Volney
Publisher : BoD - Books on Demand
Page : 220 pages
File Size : 54,9 Mb
Release : 2024-02-01
Category : Travel
ISBN : 9791041984183

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The Ruins by Constantin-François Volney Pdf

"The Ruins" is a work by Constantin-François Volney, a French philosopher and historian. The full title of the book is "The Ruins, or, Meditation on the Revolutions of Empires and the Law of Nature." It was first published in 1791. In "The Ruins," Volney explores the historical and philosophical implications of the rise and fall of empires. The work delves into the causes of societal decay and the cyclical nature of civilizations. Volney draws on his observations during travels in the Middle East, including visits to ancient ruins, to support his reflections on the fate of empires. The book is considered a significant work of Enlightenment thinking and has influenced discussions on history, politics, and philosophy. Volney's reflections on the patterns of human societies have contributed to the understanding of the rise and decline of civilizations. For readers interested in Enlightenment philosophy, the history of ideas, and reflections on the fate of empires, "The Ruins" by C. F. Volney provides a thought-provoking exploration of these themes.

Author : Ian R. Boyd
Publisher : Peter Lang
Page : 356 pages
File Size : 53,6 Mb
Release : 2004
Category : Art
ISBN : 3039101471

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Dogmatics Among the Ruins by Ian R. Boyd Pdf

In the second decade of the twentieth century the cultural life of Germany was transformed by the emergence of Expressionism, a series of vigorous, youthful artistic movements which were to exert a lasting influence on modern culture. In the same decade a young Swiss pastor called Karl Barth began a theological revolution, laying the foundations for probably the most influential body of Christian theology in the modern age. Some relationship between these two revolutions has long been assumed by scholars; yet it has never been examined in detail. The first part of this study addresses this omission, offering the most detailed analysis to date of the important relationship between Barth and Expressionism. The second part of the book takes a broader look at both Barth's theology and Expressionist culture, considering the relevance of the Enlightenment as a context for both. The key to this is a detailed discussion of Barth's own analysis of the Enlightenment in his neglected book Protestant Theology in the Nineteenth Century. Barth's view is also compared with Alasdair MacIntyre's treatment of the Enlightenment in After Virtue. The examination of these two contexts, German Expressionism and the Enlightenment, yields valuable insights into Barth's entire theological project.

Author : Ritchie Robertson
Publisher : Penguin UK
Page : 1008 pages
File Size : 45,6 Mb
Release : 2020-11-05
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 9780241004838

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The Enlightenment by Ritchie Robertson Pdf

'The best single-volume study of the Enlightenment that we have' Literary Review The Enlightenment is one of the formative periods of Western history, yet more than 300 years after it began, it remains controversial. It is often seen as the fountainhead of modern values such as human rights, religious toleration, freedom of thought, scientific thought as an exemplary form of reasoning, and rationality and evidence-based argument. Others accuse the Enlightenment of putting forward a scientific rationality which ignores the complexity and variety of human beings, propagates shallow atheism, and aims to subjugate nature to so-called technical progress. Answering the question 'what is Enlightenment?' Kant famously urged men and women above all to 'have the courage to use your own understanding'. Robertson shows how the thinkers of the Enlightenment did just that, seeking a rounded understanding of humanity in which reason was balanced with emotion and sensibility. His book goes behind the controversies about the Enlightenment to return to its original texts and to show that above all it sought to increase human happiness in this world by promoting scientific inquiry and reasoned argument. His book overturns many received opinions - for example, that enlightenment necessarily implied hostility to religion (though it did challenge the authority traditionally assumed by the Churches). It is a master-class in 'big picture' history, about one of the foundational epochs of modern times.

Author : Sabrina Ferri
Publisher : Unknown
Page : 358 pages
File Size : 49,7 Mb
Release : 2007
Category : Electronic
ISBN : STANFORD:36105129644774

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Talking Ruins by Sabrina Ferri Pdf

Author : Daniel Leonhard Purdy
Publisher : Cornell University Press
Page : 328 pages
File Size : 55,8 Mb
Release : 2011-03-15
Category : History
ISBN : 9780801476969

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On the Ruins of Babel by Daniel Leonhard Purdy Pdf

The eighteenth century struggled to define architecture as either an art or a science—the image of the architect as a grand figure who synthesizes all other disciplines within a single master plan emerged from this discourse. Immanuel Kant and Johann Wolfgang Goethe described the architect as their equal, a genius with godlike creativity. For writers from Descartes to Freud, architectural reasoning provided a method for critically examining consciousness. The architect, as philosophers liked to think of him, was obligated by the design and construction process to mediate between the abstract and the actual. In On the Ruins of Babel, Daniel Purdy traces this notion back to its wellspring. He surveys the volatile state of architectural theory in the Enlightenment, brought on by the newly emerged scientific critiques of Renaissance cosmology, then shows how German writers redeployed Renaissance terminology so that "harmony," "unity," "synthesis," "foundation," and "orderliness" became states of consciousness, rather than terms used to describe the built world. Purdy's distinctly new interpretation of German theory reveals how metaphors constitute interior life as an architectural space to be designed, constructed, renovated, or demolished. He elucidates the close affinity between Hegel's Romantic aesthetic of space and Daniel Libeskind's deconstruction of monumental architecture in Berlin's Jewish Museum. Through a careful reading of Walter Benjamin's writing on architecture as myth, Purdy details how classical architecture shaped Benjamin's modernist interpretations of urban life, particularly his elaboration on Freud's archaeology of the unconscious. Benjamin's essays on dreams and architecture turn the individualist sensibility of the Enlightenment into a collective and mythic identification between humans and buildings.

Author : Dora Apel
Publisher : Rutgers University Press
Page : 229 pages
File Size : 40,9 Mb
Release : 2015-06-23
Category : Architecture
ISBN : 9780813574097

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Beautiful Terrible Ruins by Dora Apel Pdf

Once the manufacturing powerhouse of the nation, Detroit has become emblematic of failing cities everywhere—the paradigmatic city of ruins—and the epicenter of an explosive growth in images of urban decay. In Beautiful Terrible Ruins, art historian Dora Apel explores a wide array of these images, ranging from photography, advertising, and television, to documentaries, video games, and zombie and disaster films. Apel shows how Detroit has become pivotal to an expanding network of ruin imagery, imagery ultimately driven by a pervasive and growing cultural pessimism, a loss of faith in progress, and a deepening fear that worse times are coming. The images of Detroit’s decay speak to the overarching anxieties of our era: increasing poverty, declining wages and social services, inadequate health care, unemployment, homelessness, and ecological disaster—in short, the failure of capitalism. Apel reveals how, through the aesthetic distancing of representation, the haunted beauty and fascination of ruin imagery, embodied by Detroit’s abandoned downtown skyscrapers, empty urban spaces, decaying factories, and derelict neighborhoods help us to cope with our fears. But Apel warns that these images, while pleasurable, have little explanatory power, lulling us into seeing Detroit’s deterioration as either inevitable or the city’s own fault, and absolving the real agents of decline—corporate disinvestment and globalization. Beautiful Terrible Ruins helps us understand the ways that the pleasure and the horror of urban decay hold us in thrall.

Author : Yin Yuan
Publisher : Rutgers University Press
Page : 174 pages
File Size : 52,8 Mb
Release : 2023-06-16
Category : Literary Criticism
ISBN : 9781684484683

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Alimentary Orientalism by Yin Yuan Pdf

What, exactly, did tea, sugar, and opium mean in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Britain? Alimentary Orientalism reassesses the politics of Orientalist representation by examining the contentious debates surrounding these exotic, recently popularized, and literally consumable things. It suggests that the interwoven discourses sparked by these commodities transformed the period’s literary Orientalism and created surprisingly self-reflexive ways through which British writers encountered and imagined cultural otherness. Tracing exotic ingestion as a motif across a range of authors and genres, this book considers how, why, and whither writers used scenes of eating, drinking, and smoking to diagnose and interrogate their own solipsistic constructions of the Orient. As national and cultural boundaries became increasingly porous, such self-reflexive inquiries into the nature and role of otherness provided an unexpected avenue for British imperial subjectivity to emerge and coalesce.

Author : S. Frederick Starr
Publisher : Princeton University Press
Page : 694 pages
File Size : 46,8 Mb
Release : 2015-06-02
Category : History
ISBN : 9780691165851

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Lost Enlightenment by S. Frederick Starr Pdf

The forgotten story of Central Asia's enlightenment—its rise, fall, and enduring legacy In this sweeping and richly illustrated history, S. Frederick Starr tells the fascinating but largely unknown story of Central Asia's medieval enlightenment through the eventful lives and astonishing accomplishments of its greatest minds—remarkable figures who built a bridge to the modern world. Because nearly all of these figures wrote in Arabic, they were long assumed to have been Arabs. In fact, they were from Central Asia—drawn from the Persianate and Turkic peoples of a region that today extends from Kazakhstan southward through Afghanistan, and from the easternmost province of Iran through Xinjiang, China. Lost Enlightenment recounts how, between the years 800 and 1200, Central Asia led the world in trade and economic development, the size and sophistication of its cities, the refinement of its arts, and, above all, in the advancement of knowledge in many fields. Central Asians achieved signal breakthroughs in astronomy, mathematics, geology, medicine, chemistry, music, social science, philosophy, and theology, among other subjects. They gave algebra its name, calculated the earth's diameter with unprecedented precision, wrote the books that later defined European medicine, and penned some of the world's greatest poetry. One scholar, working in Afghanistan, even predicted the existence of North and South America—five centuries before Columbus. Rarely in history has a more impressive group of polymaths appeared at one place and time. No wonder that their writings influenced European culture from the time of St. Thomas Aquinas down to the scientific revolution, and had a similarly deep impact in India and much of Asia. Lost Enlightenment chronicles this forgotten age of achievement, seeks to explain its rise, and explores the competing theories about the cause of its eventual demise. Informed by the latest scholarship yet written in a lively and accessible style, this is a book that will surprise general readers and specialists alike.

Author : Richard Kramer
Publisher : University of Chicago Press
Page : 266 pages
File Size : 53,6 Mb
Release : 2022-10-20
Category : Music
ISBN : 9780226821634

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From the Ruins of Enlightenment by Richard Kramer Pdf

"This is a book about Vienna in 1815, at the close of the Napoleonic era and the Napoleonic wars, and on the verge of the Congress of Vienna, which would redraw national boundaries and reconfigure the European community for a full century. Beethoven and Schubert were both citizens of Vienna at this time, Beethoven half-way through his composing career and socially withdrawn because of his almost total deafness; Schubert not yet twenty years-old and in the middle of one of his most prolific periods, with 140 songs and a symphony composed over the course of 1815 alone. Seemingly oblivious to the momentous events and deeply immersed in their own world, they each seemed to be composing 'against' something, in Richard Kramer's compelling reading: 'against the Enlightenment' in Beethoven's case, for whom only a sense of stripped-down nostalgia remained of the optimistic spirit of the 1790s; 'against Beethoven' in Schubert's case, who felt the looming presence of the older composer even as his own musical imagination bloomed. In taking his readers through a carefully chosen selection of works dating from 1815-songs, string quartets, piano sonatas, and more-Kramer insightfully unearths previously undetected resonances and associations and illuminates the two composers' 'lonely and singular journeys' through the 'rich solitude of their music'"--

Author : Gary Rolfe
Publisher : Routledge
Page : 170 pages
File Size : 47,8 Mb
Release : 2013
Category : Education
ISBN : 9780415681155

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The University in Dissent by Gary Rolfe Pdf

This book examines the factors contributing to the transformation of the university from the site of culture and knowledge to what might be termed an 'information factory', and explores how members of the academic community might continue to 'dwell in the ruins of the university' in a productive and authentic way.

Author : Harry Jansen
Publisher : Routledge
Page : 246 pages
File Size : 41,8 Mb
Release : 2020-06-10
Category : History
ISBN : 9781000090796

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Hidden in Historicism by Harry Jansen Pdf

Hidden in Historicism considers how the nineteenth-century philosophy of historicism depicts three "forgotten time regimes": a time of rise and fall, an ambiguous time of synchronicity of the non-synchronous, and a time in which decisive moments dominate. Before the eighteenth century, time was past-oriented. This inversed in the Enlightenment, when the future became dominating. Today, this time of progress continues to be embraced as a "time of the modern". Yet, inequality, increasing violence and climate change lead to doubts over a bright future. In this book, Harry Jansen moves away from the heritage of Reinhart Koselleck and his single time of the modern towards a historicist, threefold temporal approach to history writing. In the time regime of the twenty-first century past, present and future coexist. It is a heterogeneous time that takes on the three forms of historicism. Jansen’s study shows how all three times exist together in current historiography and contribute to a better understanding of the world today. Based on the idea that an incarnated time rules everything that happens it reality, the book offers a fresh perspective on the ongoing discussion about time and time regimes in contemporary philosophy and theory of history for students and scholars, both time specialists and the non-specialist.

Author : Nathaniel Wolloch
Publisher : Routledge
Page : 309 pages
File Size : 50,8 Mb
Release : 2016-04-22
Category : History
ISBN : 9781317121725

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History and Nature in the Enlightenment by Nathaniel Wolloch Pdf

The mastery of nature was viewed by eighteenth-century historians as an important measure of the progress of civilization. Modern scholarship has hitherto taken insufficient notice of this important idea. This book discusses the topic in connection with the mainstream religious, political, and philosophical elements of Enlightenment culture. It considers works by Edward Gibbon, Voltaire, Herder, Vico, Raynal, Hume, Adam Smith, William Robertson, and a wide range of lesser- and better-known figures. It also discusses many classical, medieval, and early modern sources which influenced Enlightenment historiography, as well as eighteenth-century attitudes toward nature in general.