The Enlightenment

The Enlightenment
Author: Paul Hyland
Publisher: Psychology Press
Total Pages: 496
Release: 2003
Genre: Enlightenment
ISBN: 9780415204484

This oustanding sourcebook brings together the work of major Enlightenment thinkers to illustrate the full importance and achievements of this great period of change.

Enlightened Absolutism

Enlightened Absolutism
Author: H.M. Scott
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Total Pages: 384
Release: 1990-03-05
Genre: Science
ISBN: 1349205923

Each book in this series is designed to make available to students important new work on key historical problems and periods that they encounter. Each volume, devoted to a central topic or theme, contains specially comisssioned essays from scholars in the relevant field. These provide an assessment of a particular aspect, pointing out areas of development and controversy and indicating where conclusions can be drawn or where further work is necessary, while an editorial introduction reviews the problem or period as a whole. In this text the contributors assess reform and reformers in late 18th century Europe, covering such topics as Catherine the Great, the Danish reformers, the Habsburg Monarchy and events in Spain and Italy.

Kaunitz and Enlightened Absolutism 1753-1780

Kaunitz and Enlightened Absolutism 1753-1780
Author: Franz A. J. Szabo
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 404
Release: 1994-03-31
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 9780521466905

Author of the diplomatic revolution of 1756 and brilliant foreign minister of the Austrian Empire, Wenzel Anton Kaunitz, State Chancellor of the Habsburg Monarchy (1753-1792), emerges from this study as the key figure in the development of enlightened absolutism and the guiding spirit behind the modernization of the state.

Historical Dictionary of the Enlightenment

Historical Dictionary of the Enlightenment
Author: Harvey Chisick
Publisher: Scarecrow Press
Total Pages: 550
Release: 2005-02-10
Genre: History
ISBN: 0810865483

The Enlightenment Movement changed society forever, driving it forward through new and fresh ways of thinking about science, religion, history, politics, and culture. This dictionary offers a balanced overview and helps us to understand and appreciate the Enlightenment through its coverage of the basic assumptions and values that structured the movement; explanation of how these ideas were articulated; the paths of communication they followed; how its key ideas grew, developed and were refracted; and how new problems grew out of what were advanced as solutions to older problems. An engaging introductory essay along with hundreds of cross-referenced dictionary entries defines the significant persons, places, events, institutions, and literary works of the movement. A chronological table charts the progression of the movement by indicating the date, the main figures involved, the political or society events, and the science, arts, or letters that resulted. The comprehensive bibliography, with an introductory essay to the literature, categorized by subject complements this reference that will be valued by all seeking basic details about this important period.

Johann Georg Hamann and the Enlightenment Project

Johann Georg Hamann and the Enlightenment Project
Author: Robert Alan Sparling
Publisher: University of Toronto Press
Total Pages: 369
Release: 2011-01-01
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 1442642157

Johann Georg Hamann (1730-1788) was a German philosopher who offered in his writings a radical critique of the Enlightenment's reverence for reason. A pivotal figure in the Sturm und Drang movement, his thought influenced such writers as Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and Johann Gottfried Herder. As a friend of Immanuel Kant, Hamann was the first writer to comment on the Critique of Pure Reason, and his work foreshadows the linguistic turn in philosophy as well as numerous elements of twentieth century hermeneutics and existentialism. Johann Georg Hamann and the Enlightenment Project addresses Hamann's oeuvre from the perspective of political philosophy, focusing on his views concerning the public use of reason, social contract theory, autonomy, aesthetic morality and the politics of 'taste,' and the technocratic ideal of enlightened despotism. Robert Alan Sparling situates Hamann's work historically, elucidates his somewhat difficult writing, and argues for his relevance in the ongoing culture wars over the merits of the Enlightenment project.

The Myth of Absolutism

The Myth of Absolutism
Author: Nicholas Henshall
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 256
Release: 2014-06-06
Genre: History
ISBN: 1317899547

Conventionally, ``absolutism'' in early-modern Europe has suggested unfettered autocracy and despotism -- the erosion of rights, the centralisation of decision-making, the loss of liberty. Everything, in a word, that was un-British but characteristic of ancien-regime France. Recently historians have questioned such comfortably simplistic views. This lively investigation of ``absolutism'' in action -- continent-wide but centred on a detailed comparison of France and England -- dissolves the traditional picture to reveal a much more complex reality; and in so doing illuminates the varied ways in which early-modern Europe was governed.

Ideas of poverty in the Age of Enlightenment

Ideas of poverty in the Age of Enlightenment
Author: Niall O’Flaherty
Publisher: Manchester University Press
Total Pages: 240
Release: 2024-04-16
Genre: History
ISBN: 1526166763

This collection of essays examines the ways in which poverty was conceptualised in the social, political, and religious discourses of eighteenth-century Europe. It brings together experts with a wide range of expertise to offer pathbreaking discussions of how eighteenth-century thinkers thought about the poor. Because the theme of poverty played important roles in many critical issues in European history, it was central to some of the key debates in Enlightenment political thought throughout the period, including the controversies about sovereignty and representation, public and private charity, as well as questions relating to crime and punishment. The book examines some of the most important contributions to these debates, while also ranging beyond the canonical Enlightenment thinkers, to investigate how poverty was conceptualised in the wider intellectual culture, as politicians, administrators and pamphlet writers grappled with the issue.

From Enlightenment to Romanticism

From Enlightenment to Romanticism
Author: Ian L. Donnachie
Publisher: Manchester University Press
Total Pages: 324
Release: 2003
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 9780719066719

This is the first of two anthologies designed to explore the changes and transitions in European culture between 1780 and 1830. The collection of extracts in this anthology provide primary and secondary sources on the death of the Old Regime, the Napoleonic pheonomenon, slavery, religion and reform. Each selection is accompanied by a detailed introduction explaining the context and significance of the sources. Extracts in the anthology stimulate questions rather than provide reassuring answers, and offer vital insights to the major events, movements, and personalities of the time.