Author: John Gray
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1134097050
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 369
Book Description
John Gray is the bestselling author of such books as Straw Dogs and Al Qaeda and What it Means to be Modern which brought a mainstream readership to a man who was already one of the UK's most well respected thinkers and political theorists. Gray wrote Enlightenment’s Wake in 1995 – six years after the fall of the Berlin Wall and six years before the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center. Turning his back on neoliberalism at exactly the moment that its advocates were in their pomp, trumpeting 'the end of history' and the supposedly unstoppable spread of liberal values across the globe, Gray’s was a lone voice of scepticism. The thinking he criticised here would lead ultimately to the invasion of Iraq. Today, its folly might seem obvious to all, but as this edition of Enlightenment’s Wake shows, John Gray has been trying to warn us for some fifteen years – the rest of us are only now catching up with him.
Enlightenment's Wake
Author: John Gray
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1134097050
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 369
Book Description
John Gray is the bestselling author of such books as Straw Dogs and Al Qaeda and What it Means to be Modern which brought a mainstream readership to a man who was already one of the UK's most well respected thinkers and political theorists. Gray wrote Enlightenment’s Wake in 1995 – six years after the fall of the Berlin Wall and six years before the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center. Turning his back on neoliberalism at exactly the moment that its advocates were in their pomp, trumpeting 'the end of history' and the supposedly unstoppable spread of liberal values across the globe, Gray’s was a lone voice of scepticism. The thinking he criticised here would lead ultimately to the invasion of Iraq. Today, its folly might seem obvious to all, but as this edition of Enlightenment’s Wake shows, John Gray has been trying to warn us for some fifteen years – the rest of us are only now catching up with him.
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1134097050
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 369
Book Description
John Gray is the bestselling author of such books as Straw Dogs and Al Qaeda and What it Means to be Modern which brought a mainstream readership to a man who was already one of the UK's most well respected thinkers and political theorists. Gray wrote Enlightenment’s Wake in 1995 – six years after the fall of the Berlin Wall and six years before the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center. Turning his back on neoliberalism at exactly the moment that its advocates were in their pomp, trumpeting 'the end of history' and the supposedly unstoppable spread of liberal values across the globe, Gray’s was a lone voice of scepticism. The thinking he criticised here would lead ultimately to the invasion of Iraq. Today, its folly might seem obvious to all, but as this edition of Enlightenment’s Wake shows, John Gray has been trying to warn us for some fifteen years – the rest of us are only now catching up with him.
Enlightenment's Wake
Author: John Gray
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1134097069
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 321
Book Description
John Gray argues that all the intellectual traditions of modernity are applications of the Enlightenment project, which has proved to be self-undermining. This effect was due to the project's extension of rational self-criticism and demystification to its own foundational commitments which ultimately dissolved them. From this position Gray argues that both the desire of fundamentalist liberalism to salvage the Enlightenment, and the traditionalist or reactionary desire to reverse it, are doomed to failure. The central problem of contemporary political thought and practice, the author contends, is that of securing peaceful co-existence for incommensurable world-views in an intellectual and cultural context that is at once post-rational and post-traditional. While it is crucial to resist the re-enchantment of the world by new forms of fundamentalism, neither the Left nor the Right in any of their traditional forms are able, according to Gray, to offer a viable alternative.
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1134097069
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 321
Book Description
John Gray argues that all the intellectual traditions of modernity are applications of the Enlightenment project, which has proved to be self-undermining. This effect was due to the project's extension of rational self-criticism and demystification to its own foundational commitments which ultimately dissolved them. From this position Gray argues that both the desire of fundamentalist liberalism to salvage the Enlightenment, and the traditionalist or reactionary desire to reverse it, are doomed to failure. The central problem of contemporary political thought and practice, the author contends, is that of securing peaceful co-existence for incommensurable world-views in an intellectual and cultural context that is at once post-rational and post-traditional. While it is crucial to resist the re-enchantment of the world by new forms of fundamentalism, neither the Left nor the Right in any of their traditional forms are able, according to Gray, to offer a viable alternative.
Counter-Enlightenments
Author: Graeme Garrard
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1134662246
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 209
Book Description
This book discusses the Counter-Enlightenment, from its origins in Rousseau's Discourse on the Arts and Sciences through to contemporary debates about postmodernism and the relationship between liberalism and Enlightenment.
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1134662246
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 209
Book Description
This book discusses the Counter-Enlightenment, from its origins in Rousseau's Discourse on the Arts and Sciences through to contemporary debates about postmodernism and the relationship between liberalism and Enlightenment.
Spiritual Enlightenment:: The Damnedest Thing
Author: Jed McKenna
Publisher: Wisefool Press
ISBN: 0980184827
Category : Body, Mind & Spirit
Languages : en
Pages : 333
Book Description
A MASTERPIECE of illuminative writing, Spiritual Enlightenment: The Damnedest Thing is mandatory reading for anyone following a spiritual path. Part exposé and part how-to manual, this is the first book to explain why failure seems to be the rule in the search for enlightenment, and how the rule can be broken. :: Book One of Jed McKenna's Enlightenment Trilogy. Contains Bonus Material.
Publisher: Wisefool Press
ISBN: 0980184827
Category : Body, Mind & Spirit
Languages : en
Pages : 333
Book Description
A MASTERPIECE of illuminative writing, Spiritual Enlightenment: The Damnedest Thing is mandatory reading for anyone following a spiritual path. Part exposé and part how-to manual, this is the first book to explain why failure seems to be the rule in the search for enlightenment, and how the rule can be broken. :: Book One of Jed McKenna's Enlightenment Trilogy. Contains Bonus Material.
Tolerance
Author: Caroline Warman
Publisher: Open Book Publishers
ISBN: 1783742038
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 146
Book Description
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: Open Book Publishers
ISBN: 1783742038
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 146
Book Description
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.
Desolation and Enlightenment
Author: Ira Katznelson
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 0231552394
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 332
Book Description
During and especially after World War II, a group of leading scholars who had been perilously close to the war’s devastation joined others fortunate enough to have been protected by distance in an effort to redefine and reinvigorate liberal ideals for a radically new age. Treating evil as an analytical category, they sought to discover the sources of twentieth-century horror and the potentialities of the modern state in the wake of desolation. In the process, they devised strikingly new ways to understand politics, sociology, and history that reverberate still. In this major intellectual history, Ira Katznelson examines the works of Hannah Arendt, Robert Dahl, Richard Hofstadter, Harold Lasswell, Charles Lindblom, Karl Polanyi, and David Truman, detailing their engagement with the larger project of reclaiming the West’s moral bearing. In light of their epoch’s calamities, these intellectuals insisted that the tradition of Enlightenment thought required a new realism, a good deal of renovation, and much recommitment. This array of historians, political philosophers, and social scientists understood that a simple reassertion of liberal modernism had been made radically insufficient by the enormities and moral catastrophes of war, totalitarianism, and the Holocaust. Confronting dashed hopes for reason and knowledge, they asked not just whether the Enlightenment should define modernity but also which Enlightenment we should wish to have.
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 0231552394
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 332
Book Description
During and especially after World War II, a group of leading scholars who had been perilously close to the war’s devastation joined others fortunate enough to have been protected by distance in an effort to redefine and reinvigorate liberal ideals for a radically new age. Treating evil as an analytical category, they sought to discover the sources of twentieth-century horror and the potentialities of the modern state in the wake of desolation. In the process, they devised strikingly new ways to understand politics, sociology, and history that reverberate still. In this major intellectual history, Ira Katznelson examines the works of Hannah Arendt, Robert Dahl, Richard Hofstadter, Harold Lasswell, Charles Lindblom, Karl Polanyi, and David Truman, detailing their engagement with the larger project of reclaiming the West’s moral bearing. In light of their epoch’s calamities, these intellectuals insisted that the tradition of Enlightenment thought required a new realism, a good deal of renovation, and much recommitment. This array of historians, political philosophers, and social scientists understood that a simple reassertion of liberal modernism had been made radically insufficient by the enormities and moral catastrophes of war, totalitarianism, and the Holocaust. Confronting dashed hopes for reason and knowledge, they asked not just whether the Enlightenment should define modernity but also which Enlightenment we should wish to have.
Reclaiming the Enlightenment
Author: Stephen Eric Bronner
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 0231126085
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 201
Book Description
In 1947 Horkheimer and Adorno connected the Enlightenment with totalitarianism. Since when the Left has drifted into the language and imagery of the European Counter-Enlightenment, the movement against 1776 and 1789. Bronner sets out to reclaim the heritage of progressive politics.
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 0231126085
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 201
Book Description
In 1947 Horkheimer and Adorno connected the Enlightenment with totalitarianism. Since when the Left has drifted into the language and imagery of the European Counter-Enlightenment, the movement against 1776 and 1789. Bronner sets out to reclaim the heritage of progressive politics.
The Dream of Enlightenment: The Rise of Modern Philosophy
Author: Anthony Gottlieb
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 163149208X
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 271
Book Description
One of Slate’s 10 Best Books of the Year Anthony Gottlieb’s landmark The Dream of Reason and its sequel challenge Bertrand Russell’s classic as the definitive history of Western philosophy. Western philosophy is now two and a half millennia old, but much of it came in just two staccato bursts, each lasting only about 150 years. In his landmark survey of Western philosophy from the Greeks to the Renaissance, The Dream of Reason, Anthony Gottlieb documented the first burst, which came in the Athens of Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle. Now, in his sequel, The Dream of Enlightenment, Gottlieb expertly navigates a second great explosion of thought, taking us to northern Europe in the wake of its wars of religion and the rise of Galilean science. In a relatively short period—from the early 1640s to the eve of the French Revolution—Descartes, Hobbes, Spinoza, Locke, Leibniz, and Hume all made their mark. The Dream of Enlightenment tells their story and that of the birth of modern philosophy. As Gottlieb explains, all these men were amateurs: none had much to do with any university. They tried to fathom the implications of the new science and of religious upheaval, which led them to question traditional teachings and attitudes. What does the advance of science entail for our understanding of ourselves and for our ideas of God? How should a government deal with religious diversity—and what, actually, is government for? Such questions remain our questions, which is why Descartes, Hobbes, and the others are still pondered today. Yet it is because we still want to hear them that we can easily get these philosophers wrong. It is tempting to think they speak our language and live in our world; but to understand them properly, we must step back into their shoes. Gottlieb puts readers in the minds of these frequently misinterpreted figures, elucidating the history of their times and the development of scientific ideas while engagingly explaining their arguments and assessing their legacy in lively prose. With chapters focusing on Descartes, Hobbes, Spinoza, Locke, Pierre Bayle, Leibniz, Hume, Rousseau, and Voltaire—and many walk-on parts—The Dream of Enlightenment creates a sweeping account of what the Enlightenment amounted to, and why we are still in its debt.
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 163149208X
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 271
Book Description
One of Slate’s 10 Best Books of the Year Anthony Gottlieb’s landmark The Dream of Reason and its sequel challenge Bertrand Russell’s classic as the definitive history of Western philosophy. Western philosophy is now two and a half millennia old, but much of it came in just two staccato bursts, each lasting only about 150 years. In his landmark survey of Western philosophy from the Greeks to the Renaissance, The Dream of Reason, Anthony Gottlieb documented the first burst, which came in the Athens of Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle. Now, in his sequel, The Dream of Enlightenment, Gottlieb expertly navigates a second great explosion of thought, taking us to northern Europe in the wake of its wars of religion and the rise of Galilean science. In a relatively short period—from the early 1640s to the eve of the French Revolution—Descartes, Hobbes, Spinoza, Locke, Leibniz, and Hume all made their mark. The Dream of Enlightenment tells their story and that of the birth of modern philosophy. As Gottlieb explains, all these men were amateurs: none had much to do with any university. They tried to fathom the implications of the new science and of religious upheaval, which led them to question traditional teachings and attitudes. What does the advance of science entail for our understanding of ourselves and for our ideas of God? How should a government deal with religious diversity—and what, actually, is government for? Such questions remain our questions, which is why Descartes, Hobbes, and the others are still pondered today. Yet it is because we still want to hear them that we can easily get these philosophers wrong. It is tempting to think they speak our language and live in our world; but to understand them properly, we must step back into their shoes. Gottlieb puts readers in the minds of these frequently misinterpreted figures, elucidating the history of their times and the development of scientific ideas while engagingly explaining their arguments and assessing their legacy in lively prose. With chapters focusing on Descartes, Hobbes, Spinoza, Locke, Pierre Bayle, Leibniz, Hume, Rousseau, and Voltaire—and many walk-on parts—The Dream of Enlightenment creates a sweeping account of what the Enlightenment amounted to, and why we are still in its debt.
Enlightenment Now
Author: Steven Pinker
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 0698177886
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 578
Book Description
INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK OF 2018 ONE OF THE ECONOMIST'S BOOKS OF THE YEAR "My new favorite book of all time." --Bill Gates If you think the world is coming to an end, think again: people are living longer, healthier, freer, and happier lives, and while our problems are formidable, the solutions lie in the Enlightenment ideal of using reason and science. By the author of the new book, Rationality. Is the world really falling apart? Is the ideal of progress obsolete? In this elegant assessment of the human condition in the third millennium, cognitive scientist and public intellectual Steven Pinker urges us to step back from the gory headlines and prophecies of doom, which play to our psychological biases. Instead, follow the data: In seventy-five jaw-dropping graphs, Pinker shows that life, health, prosperity, safety, peace, knowledge, and happiness are on the rise, not just in the West, but worldwide. This progress is not the result of some cosmic force. It is a gift of the Enlightenment: the conviction that reason and science can enhance human flourishing. Far from being a naïve hope, the Enlightenment, we now know, has worked. But more than ever, it needs a vigorous defense. The Enlightenment project swims against currents of human nature--tribalism, authoritarianism, demonization, magical thinking--which demagogues are all too willing to exploit. Many commentators, committed to political, religious, or romantic ideologies, fight a rearguard action against it. The result is a corrosive fatalism and a willingness to wreck the precious institutions of liberal democracy and global cooperation. With intellectual depth and literary flair, Enlightenment Now makes the case for reason, science, and humanism: the ideals we need to confront our problems and continue our progress.
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 0698177886
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 578
Book Description
INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK OF 2018 ONE OF THE ECONOMIST'S BOOKS OF THE YEAR "My new favorite book of all time." --Bill Gates If you think the world is coming to an end, think again: people are living longer, healthier, freer, and happier lives, and while our problems are formidable, the solutions lie in the Enlightenment ideal of using reason and science. By the author of the new book, Rationality. Is the world really falling apart? Is the ideal of progress obsolete? In this elegant assessment of the human condition in the third millennium, cognitive scientist and public intellectual Steven Pinker urges us to step back from the gory headlines and prophecies of doom, which play to our psychological biases. Instead, follow the data: In seventy-five jaw-dropping graphs, Pinker shows that life, health, prosperity, safety, peace, knowledge, and happiness are on the rise, not just in the West, but worldwide. This progress is not the result of some cosmic force. It is a gift of the Enlightenment: the conviction that reason and science can enhance human flourishing. Far from being a naïve hope, the Enlightenment, we now know, has worked. But more than ever, it needs a vigorous defense. The Enlightenment project swims against currents of human nature--tribalism, authoritarianism, demonization, magical thinking--which demagogues are all too willing to exploit. Many commentators, committed to political, religious, or romantic ideologies, fight a rearguard action against it. The result is a corrosive fatalism and a willingness to wreck the precious institutions of liberal democracy and global cooperation. With intellectual depth and literary flair, Enlightenment Now makes the case for reason, science, and humanism: the ideals we need to confront our problems and continue our progress.
Rethinking the Enlightenment
Author: Geoff Boucher
Publisher: Lexington Books
ISBN: 1498558135
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 281
Book Description
One of the most persistent, troubling, and divisive of the ideological divisions within modernity is the struggle over the Enlightenment and its legacy. Much of the difficulty is owed to a general failure among scholars to consider how history, philosophy, and politics work together. Rethinking the Enlightenment bridges these disciplinary divides. Recent work by historians has now called into question many of the clichés that still dominate scholarly understandings of the Enlightenment’s literary, philosophical, and political culture. Yet this work has so far had little impact on the reception of the Enlightenment, its key players, debates, and ideas in the disciplines that most rely on its legacy, namely, philosophy and political science. Edited by Geoff Boucher and Henry Martyn Lloyd, Rethinking the Enlightenment makes the case for connecting new work in intellectual history with fresh understandings of ‘Continental’ philosophy and political theory. In doing so, in this collection moves towards a critical self-understanding of the present.
Publisher: Lexington Books
ISBN: 1498558135
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 281
Book Description
One of the most persistent, troubling, and divisive of the ideological divisions within modernity is the struggle over the Enlightenment and its legacy. Much of the difficulty is owed to a general failure among scholars to consider how history, philosophy, and politics work together. Rethinking the Enlightenment bridges these disciplinary divides. Recent work by historians has now called into question many of the clichés that still dominate scholarly understandings of the Enlightenment’s literary, philosophical, and political culture. Yet this work has so far had little impact on the reception of the Enlightenment, its key players, debates, and ideas in the disciplines that most rely on its legacy, namely, philosophy and political science. Edited by Geoff Boucher and Henry Martyn Lloyd, Rethinking the Enlightenment makes the case for connecting new work in intellectual history with fresh understandings of ‘Continental’ philosophy and political theory. In doing so, in this collection moves towards a critical self-understanding of the present.