Science and Humanism in the French Enlightenment

Science and Humanism in the French Enlightenment
Author: Aram Vartanian
Publisher: Rookwood Press
Total Pages: 204
Release: 1999
Genre: Enlightenment
ISBN: 9781886365117

Vartanian (1922-97) offered this set of three essays to the series editors just before he died and had no opportunity to write a general introduction explaining the direction they take. However, they were deemed to be a major contribution to the study of the French Enlightenment and are presented as

Enlightenment Now

Enlightenment Now
Author: Steven Pinker
Publisher: Penguin
Total Pages: 578
Release: 2018-02-13
Genre: Psychology
ISBN: 0525427570

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.

Human Nature and the French Revolution

Human Nature and the French Revolution
Author: Xavier Martin
Publisher: Berghahn Books
Total Pages: 312
Release: 2003-12
Genre: History
ISBN: 9781571814159

What view of man did the French Revolutionaries hold? Anyone who purports to be interested in the "Rights of Man" could be expected to see this question as crucial and yet, surprisingly, it is rarely raised. Through his work as a legal historian, Xavier Martin came to realize that there is no unified view of man and that, alongside the "official" revolutionary discourse, very divergent views can be traced in a variety of sources from the Enlightenment to the Napoleonic Code. Michelet's phrases, "Know men in order to act upon them" sums up the problem that Martin's study constantly seeks to elucidate and illustrate: it reveals the prevailing tendency to see men as passive, giving legislators and medical people alike free rein to manipulate them at will. His analysis impels the reader to revaluate the Enlightenment concept of humanism. By drawing on a variety of sources, the author shows how the anthropology of Enlightenment and revolutionary France often conflicts with concurrent discourses.

The Military Enlightenment

The Military Enlightenment
Author: Christy L. Pichichero
Publisher: Cornell University Press
Total Pages: 228
Release: 2017-11-15
Genre: History
ISBN: 1501712292

The Military Enlightenment brings to light a radically new narrative both on the Enlightenment and the French armed forces from Louis XIV to Napoleon. Christy Pichichero makes a striking discovery: the Geneva Conventions, post-traumatic stress disorder, the military "band of brothers," and soldierly heroism all found their antecedents in the eighteenth-century French armed forces. Readers of The Military Enlightenment will be startled to learn of the many ways in which French military officers, administrators, and medical personnel advanced ideas of human and political rights, military psychology, and social justice.

The Natural and the Human

The Natural and the Human
Author: Stephen Gaukroger
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 411
Release: 2016-01-21
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 0191074861

Stephen Gaukroger presents an original account of the development of empirical science and the understanding of human behaviour from the mid-eighteenth century. Since the seventeenth century, science in the west has undergone a unique form of cumulative development in which it has been consolidated through integration into and shaping of a culture. But in the eighteenth century, science was cut loose from the legitimating culture in which it had had a public rationale as a fruitful

Science and Enlightenment

Science and Enlightenment
Author: Nicholas Maxwell
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 108
Release: 2019-03-05
Genre: Education
ISBN: 9783030134198

This book argues that two great problems of learning confront humanity: learning about the nature of the universe and about ourselves and other living things as a part of it; and learning how to become civilized. The author proposes that with the creation of modern science in the 17th century, the first problem was essentially solved. But the second problem has still not been solved today, and that combination of solving the first problem, but failing to solve the second one, puts us in a situation of unprecedented danger. All our current global problems are the result. The 18th century Enlightenment tried to solve the second great problem of achieving world enlightenment by learning from the solution to the first problem, but in implementing this idea, they made three serious blunders. These ancient blunders are still built into academia today. Correct the three blunders we have inherited from the Enlightenment, and we would have what we so urgently need: institutions of learning, universities and schools, rationally designed and devoted to helping us resolve our conflicts and global problems, and thus make progress towards a good, genuinely civilized world. Science and Enlightenment: Two Great Problems of Learning will interest a broad audience, ranging from academics, university students and teachers; journalists, politicians and general readers concerned about global problems and the fate of the world.

Humanism

Humanism
Author: Tony Davies
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 161
Release: 2006-10-19
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1134836120

Humanism offers students a clear and lucid introductory guide to the complexities of Humanism, one of the most contentious and divisive of artistic or literary concepts. Showing how the concept has evolved since the Renaissance period, Davies discusses humanism in the context of the rise of Fascism, the onset of World War II, the Holocaust, and their aftermath. Humanism provides basic definitions and concepts, a critique of the religion of humanity, and necessary background on religious, sexual and political themes of modern life and thought, while enlightening the debate between humanism, modernism and antihumanism through the writings and works of such key figures as Pico Erasmus, Milton, Nietzsche, and Foucault.

The Oxford Handbook of Humanism

The Oxford Handbook of Humanism
Author: Anthony B. Pinn
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 825
Release: 2021-07-27
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0190921560

While humanist sensibilities have played a formative role in the advancement of our species, critical attention to humanism as a field of study is a more recent development. As a system of thought that values human needs and experiences over supernatural concerns, humanism has gained greater attention amid the rapidly shifting demographics of religious communities, especially in Europe and North America. This outlook on the world has taken on global dimensions as well, with activists, artists, and thinkers forming a humanistic response not only to traditional religion, but to the pressing social and political issues of the 21st century. With in-depth, scholarly chapters, The Oxford Handbook of Humanism aims to cover the subject by analyzing its history, its philosophical development, its influence on culture, and its engagement with social and political issues. In order to expand the field beyond more Western-focused works, the Handook discusses humanism as a worldwide phenomenon, with regional surveys that explore how the concept has developed in particular contexts. The Handbook also approaches humanism as both an opponent to traditional religion as well as a philosophy that some religions have explicitly adopted. By both synthesizing the field, and discussing how it continues to grow and develop, the Handbook promises to be a landmark volume, relevant to both humanism and the rapidly changing religious landscape.

Representing Humanity in the Age of Enlightenment

Representing Humanity in the Age of Enlightenment
Author: Alexander Cook
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 254
Release: 2015-10-06
Genre: History
ISBN: 1317320174

The Enlightenment era saw European thinkers increasingly concerned with what it meant to be human. This collection of essays traces the concept of ‘humanity’ through revolutionary politics, feminist biography, portraiture, explorer narratives, libertine and Orientalist fiction, the philosophy of conversation and musicology.