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SVEC The Super-Enlightenment daring to know too much Volume: SVEC 2010:01 Series editor: Jonathan Mallinson Volume editor(s): Dan Edelstein |
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Description: Historians of eighteenth-century thought have implied a clear distinction between mystical or occult writing, often termed ‘illuminist’, and better-known forms of Enlightenment thinking and culture. But where are the boundaries of ‘enlightened’ human understanding? This is the question posed by contributors to this volume, who put forward a completely new way of configuring these seemingly antithetical currents of thought, and identify a grey area that binds the two, a ‘Super-Enlightenment’. Through articles exploring the social, religious, artistic, political and scientific dimensions of the Super-Enlightenment, contributors demonstrate the co-existence of apparent opposites: the enlightened and the esoteric, empiricism and imagination, history and myth, the secretive and the public, mysticism and science. The Enlightenment can no longer be seen as a sturdy, homogeneous movement defined by certain core beliefs, but one which oscillates between opposing poles in its social practices, historiography and even its epistemology: between daring to know, and daring to know too much. Dan Edelstein, Introduction to the Super-Enlightenment I. What limits of understanding? Peter Reill, The hermetic imagination in the high and late Enlightenment David Bates, Super-epistemology Jessica Riskin, Mr Machine and the imperial me II. The arts of knowing Liana Vardi, Physiocratic visions Anthony Vidler, For the love of architecture: Claude-Nicolas Ledoux and the Hypnerotomachia Fabienne Moore, The poetry of the Super-Enlightenment: the theories and practices of Cazotte, Chassaignon, Mercier, Saint-Martin and Bonneville III. Sacred societies Natalie Bayer, What do you seek from us? Wisdom? Virtue? Enlightenment? Inventing a Masonic science of man in Russia Kris Pangburn, Bonnet’s theory of palingenesis: an ‘Enlightened’ account of personal resurrection? Dan Edelstein, The Egyptian French Revolution: antiquarianism, Freemasonry and the mythology of nature Tili Boon Cuillé, From myth to religion in Ossian’s France Summaries Bibliography Index Collaborator list: David Bates, University of California, Natalie Bayer, UCLA, Tili Boon Cuillé, Washington University in St. Louis, Dan Edelstein, Stanford University, Fabienne Moore, University of Oregon, Kris Pangburn, Colarado College, Peter Reill, UCLA, Jessica Riskin, Stanford University, Liani Vardi, University at Buffalo, Anthony Vidler, The Irwin S. Chanin School of Architecture Collaborator biographies: Dan Edelstein is Assistant Professor of French at Stanford University. He has recently authored The Terror of natural right: republicanism, the cult of nature, and the French Revolution (University of Chicago Press, 2009), is the founding editor of the online journal Republics of Letters, and a principal investigator of the international GIS project, Mapping the Republic of Letters. |
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