Synopses & Reviews
Germany’s political and cultural past from ancient times through World War II has dimmed the legacy of its Enlightenment, which these days is far outshone by those of France and Scotland. In this book, T. J. Reed clears the dust away from eighteenth-century Germany, bringing the likes of Kant, Goethe, Friedrich Schiller, and Gotthold Lessing into a coherent and focused beam that shines within European intellectual history and reasserts the important role of Germany’s Enlightenment.
Reed looks closely at the arguments, achievements, conflicts, and controversies of these major thinkers and how their development of a lucid and active liberal thinking matured in the late eighteenth century into an imaginative branching that ran through philosophy, theology, literature, historiography, science, and politics. He traces the various pathways of their thought and how one engendered another, from the principle of thinking for oneself to the development of a critical epistemology; from literature’s assessment of the past to the formulation of a poetic ideal of human development. Ultimately, Reed shows how the ideas of the German Enlightenment have proven their value in modern secular democracies and are still of great relevance—despite their frequent dismissal—to us in the twenty-first century.
Review
“In this concise, bold, and innovative book, Dan Edelstein offers us an original account of the Enlightenment. It convincingly argues that the Enlightenment is above all a narrative about social and cultural changes and that its origins can be found in the Quarrel of the Ancients and the Moderns. Therefore, by reconsidering the importance of the French
esprit philosophique in the European Enlightenment, this book will be of considerable importance for every scholar and student interested in this period.”—Antoine Lilti, Ecole Normale Supérieure
--David A. Bell
Review
“This study articulates a resolutely innovative argument for a narrative as opposed to a epistemological understanding of the Enlightenment. Edelstein’s careful attention to how the Enlightenment itself imagined its origins and objectives clears away layers of obfuscating accretions. User-friendly and eminently well informed, this critical synthesis becomes a manifesto reorienting Enlightenment studies in new and provocative directions. Those who would understand what the Enlightenment was and is could not find a better guide.”—Thomas M. Kavanagh, Yale University
--Antoine Lilti
Review
“Dan Edelstein’s incisive book argues that before we define the Enlightenment as an historical period or debate it as a philosophical project we need to appreciate it as a story told by a set of self-conscious French moderns about the emergence of new social forms shaped by the methods and mentality of scientific reason. Reconstructing the chapters of this story in his own vivid style, Edelstein sets students on a sure path through the thicket of scholarly commentary while challenging specialists to re-examine their own understanding of this key episode in intellectual history.”—Patrick Coleman, University of California, Los Angeles
--Thomas M. Kavanagh
Review
“Dan Edelstein, one of the very best contemporary scholars of eighteenth-century French culture, has produced another tour-de-force of a book with this brilliant, provocative study of how, when, and where the Enlightenment was first defined.”—David A. Bell, Princeton University
--Patrick Coleman
Review
“This book is a pleasure to read. Reed, a most distinguished scholar of German literature, brings to his subject a lifetime of learning as well as strong convictions and a refined literary sensibility. Reading like a prolonged conversation, it ably demonstrates the many sources of light in eighteenth century Germany and how they can still illuminate our present.”
Review
“With this book, one of the most respected scholars in the field has written a passionate vindication of a passionate age, arguing in engaging, vigorous prose for its relevance to modern concerns. The German Enlightenment comes alive in all its aspects, questioning social, political, religious, and scientific norms and pushing the limits of reason itself; Reed also gives its contradictions a full account. Light in Germany is not only a sophisticated introduction for students and general readers but also an array of insightful interpretations, born of a lifetime of reading and thinking that will delight seasoned scholars.”
Review
“Reed has done it again. With Light in Germany he has rendered invaluable service to all of those who cannot stop pondering the enigma of modern Germany. His wonderfully concrete and informed ‘scenes from an unknown Enlightenment’ compel us to reconsider the widespread disparagement of its philosophical, literary, and practical achievements by so many skeptics in the Anglophone world and in Germany itself. No small accomplishment!”
Review
“Set out in vigorous prose which combine incisiveness with nuance. Light in Germany is written with all the combative trenchancy which distinguished the author’s twenty-year editorship of this magazine. It is based on deep familiarity with the literature of the period, and it is intellectually exhilarating to read.”
Synopsis
What was the Enlightenment? Though many scholars have attempted to solve this riddle, none has made as much use of contemporary answers as Dan Edelstein does here. In seeking to recover where, when, and how the concept of and#8220;the Enlightenmentand#8221; first emerged, Edelstein departs from genealogies that trace it back to political and philosophical developments in England and the Dutch Republic. According to Edelstein, by the 1720s scholars and authors in France were already employing a constellation of termsand#8212;such as land#8217;esprit philosophiqueand#8212;to describe what we would today call the Enlightenment. But Edelstein argues that it was within the French Academies, and in the context of the Quarrel of the Ancients and the Moderns, that the key definition, concepts, and historical narratives of the Enlightenment were crafted.
A necessary corrective to many of our contemporary ideas about the Enlightenment, Edelsteinand#8217;s book turns conventional thinking about the period on its head. Concise, clear, and contrarian, The Enlightenment will be welcomed by all teachers and students of the period.
Synopsis
The German Enlightenment is often held in disregard by those who see it as driven by an outdated theory of knowledge, an unrealistic idealist-utopian vision, and even an evil proto-totalitarian motivation. The present book by T. J. Jim Reed presents a very different picture by focusing on relatively disregarded or unknown” aspects of the German Enlightenment. The text is mindful throughout of the twenty-first century relevance, not to say twenty-first century moral” of the specific themes and works it addresses. The book is significant far beyond the important concerns of other monographs on the Enlightenment for it takes into account the writers (such as Kant, Schiller, Goethe, and Lessing), and on occasion the rulers (such as Frederick the Great), who realized its ideas and values in philosophy, art, and politics. Light, for Reed, only dawns fully in their writing. This book is not a description of the Enlightenment narrowly defined as a movement in abstract thought, much less a catalogue of every last minor participant, but an account of the spread of light that is, of lucid and active liberal thinking wherever it can be found in German eighteenth-century culture. The emphasis is indeed on the last third of the century, what is commonly called the late Enlightenment,” not as a separate phase, but as a maturing of the branches of a single tree with its imaginative harvest. In short, this book brings to life the most significant episodes and arguments of the German Enlightenment, and shows them as scenes in a larger drama at any moment, there is related action going on in another part of the field.
About the Author
Dan Edelstein isand#160;associate professor of French at Stanford University and author of The Terror of the Natural Right: Republicanism, the Cult of Nature, and the French Revolution.
Table of Contents
Acknowledgmentsand#160;Introduction
1and#160;Interpreting the Enlightenment: On Methods
2and#160;A Map of the Enlightenment: Whither France?
3and#160;The Spirit of the Moderns: From the New Science to the Enlightenment
4and#160;Society, the Subject of the Modern Story
5and#160;Quarrel in the Academy: The Ancients Strike Back
6and#160;Humanism and Enlightenment: The Classical Style of the Philosophes
7and#160;The Philosophical Spirit of the Laws: Politics and Antiquity
8and#160;An Ancient God: Pagans and Philosophers
9and#160;Post Tenebras Lux: Begriffsgeschichte or Rand#233;gime dand#8217;Historicitand#233;?
10and#160;Ancients and the Orient: Translatio Imperii
11and#160;Enlightened Institutions (I): The Royal Academies versus the Republic of Letters
12and#160;Enlightened Institutions (II): Universities, Censorship, and Public Instruction
13and#160;Worldliness, Politeness, and the Importance of Not Being Too Radical
14and#160;From Enlightenment to Revolution: A Shared History?
15and#160;France and the European Enlightenment
16and#160;Conclusion: Modern Myths
Abbreviations
Notes
Selected Bibliography for the Enlightenment
Index