Civilization and Enlightenment

Civilization and Enlightenment PDF Author: Albert M. Craig
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 9780674031081
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 220

Get Book Here

Book Description
The Scottish enlightenment and the stages of civilization -- American geography textbooks -- John Hill Burton's Political economy -- Invention, the engine of progress -- An outline of theories of civilization -- Reflections.

Civilization and Enlightenment

Civilization and Enlightenment PDF Author: Albert M. Craig
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 9780674031081
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 220

Get Book Here

Book Description
The Scottish enlightenment and the stages of civilization -- American geography textbooks -- John Hill Burton's Political economy -- Invention, the engine of progress -- An outline of theories of civilization -- Reflections.

An Outline of a Theory of Civilization

An Outline of a Theory of Civilization PDF Author: Yukichi Fukuzawa
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 0231150733
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 312

Get Book Here

Book Description
Yukichi Fukuzawa rose from low samurai origins to become one of the finest intellectuals and social thinkers of modern Japan. Through his best-selling works, he helped transform an isolated feudal nation into a full-fledged international force. In Outline of a Theory of Civilization, the author's most sustained philosophical text, Fukuzawa translates and adapts a range of Western works for a Japanese audience, establishing the social, cultural, and political avenues through which Japan could connect with other countries. Echoing the ideas of Western contemporaries such as Ralph Waldo Emerson and Walt Whitman, Fukuzawa encouraged a grassroots elevation of the individual and national spirit, as well as free initiative in the private domain. Fukuzawa's bold project articulated thoughts that, for him, bolstered the material evidence of Western civilization. He argued that the essential difference separating Western countries from Japan and Asia was the extent to which citizens acted like free and responsible individuals. This careful new translation, accompanied by a comprehensive critical introduction, highlights the truly transnational aspects of Outline of a Theory of Civilization and its status as a foundational text of modern Japanese civilization. Approaching Fukuzawa's progressive thought with a fresh eye, these scholars elucidate the monumental and peerless quality of his work.

The Science of Culture in Enlightenment Germany

The Science of Culture in Enlightenment Germany PDF Author: Michael C. Carhart
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 9780674026179
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 388

Get Book Here

Book Description
In the late 1770s, as a wave of revolution and republican unrest swept across Europe, scholars looked with urgency on the progress of European civilization. Carhart examines their approaches to understanding human development by investigating the invention of a new analytic category, "culture."

Inventing Eastern Europe

Inventing Eastern Europe PDF Author: Larry Wolff
Publisher: Stanford University Press
ISBN: 9780804727020
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 444

Get Book Here

Book Description
Wolff explores how Western thinkers contributed to defining and characterizing Eastern Europe as half-civilized and barbaric.

Chinese Visions of Progress, 1895 to 1949

Chinese Visions of Progress, 1895 to 1949 PDF Author: Thomas Fröhlich
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004426523
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 333

Get Book Here

Book Description
Chinese Visions of Progress, 1895 to 1949 offers a panoramic study of Chinese reflections on “progress,” its multifaceted expressions, contesting interpretations, highly optimistic implications, but also the criticism it encountered.

Lost Enlightenment

Lost Enlightenment PDF Author: S. Frederick Starr
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691165858
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 694

Get Book Here

Book Description
The forgotten story of Central Asia's enlightenment—its rise, fall, and enduring legacy In this sweeping and richly illustrated history, S. Frederick Starr tells the fascinating but largely unknown story of Central Asia's medieval enlightenment through the eventful lives and astonishing accomplishments of its greatest minds—remarkable figures who built a bridge to the modern world. Because nearly all of these figures wrote in Arabic, they were long assumed to have been Arabs. In fact, they were from Central Asia—drawn from the Persianate and Turkic peoples of a region that today extends from Kazakhstan southward through Afghanistan, and from the easternmost province of Iran through Xinjiang, China. Lost Enlightenment recounts how, between the years 800 and 1200, Central Asia led the world in trade and economic development, the size and sophistication of its cities, the refinement of its arts, and, above all, in the advancement of knowledge in many fields. Central Asians achieved signal breakthroughs in astronomy, mathematics, geology, medicine, chemistry, music, social science, philosophy, and theology, among other subjects. They gave algebra its name, calculated the earth's diameter with unprecedented precision, wrote the books that later defined European medicine, and penned some of the world's greatest poetry. One scholar, working in Afghanistan, even predicted the existence of North and South America—five centuries before Columbus. Rarely in history has a more impressive group of polymaths appeared at one place and time. No wonder that their writings influenced European culture from the time of St. Thomas Aquinas down to the scientific revolution, and had a similarly deep impact in India and much of Asia. Lost Enlightenment chronicles this forgotten age of achievement, seeks to explain its rise, and explores the competing theories about the cause of its eventual demise. Informed by the latest scholarship yet written in a lively and accessible style, this is a book that will surprise general readers and specialists alike.

Enlightenment Now

Enlightenment Now PDF Author: Steven Pinker
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 0698177886
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 578

Get Book Here

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.

Enlightened Colonialism

Enlightened Colonialism PDF Author: Damien Tricoire
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 331954280X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 319

Get Book Here

Book Description
This book further qualifies the postcolonial thesis and shows its limits. To reach these goals, it links text analysis and political history on a global comparative scale. Focusing on imperial agents, their narratives of progress, and their political aims and strategies, it asks whether Enlightenment gave birth to a new colonialism between 1760 and 1820. Has Enlightenment provided the cultural and intellectual origins of modern colonialism? For decades, historians of political thought, philosophy, and literature have debated this question. On one side, many postcolonial authors believe that enlightened rationalism helped delegitimize non-European cultures. On the other side, some historians of ideas and literature are willing to defend at least some eighteenth-century philosophers whom they consider to have been “anti-colonialists”. Surprisingly enough, both sides have focused on literary and philosophical texts, but have rarely taken political and social practice into account.

The Enlightenment and Its Effects on Modern Society

The Enlightenment and Its Effects on Modern Society PDF Author: Milan Zafirovski
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 1441973877
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 374

Get Book Here

Book Description
The Enlightenment of the late 17th and 18th century is characterized by an emphasis on reason and empiricism . As a major shaping philosophy of Western culture, it had a historical impact on the religious, cultural, academic, and social institutions of 18th century Europe. In this compelling volume, the author explores the lasting impact of Enlightenment thinking on modern Western societies and other democracies. With an interdisciplinary, comparative-historical approach this volume explores the impact of Enlightenment ideals such as liberty, equality, and social justice on current social institutions. Combining sociological theory with concrete examples, the author provides a unique framework for understanding modern cultural development, including a picture of how it would look without this Enlightenment basis. This work provides a multi-faceted approach, including: an historical overview, analysis of the Enlightenment’s influence on modern democratic societies, modern culture, political science, civil society and the economy, as well as exploring the counter-Enlightenment, Post-Enlightenment, and Neo-Enlightenment philosophies.

British Weather and the Climate of Enlightenment

British Weather and the Climate of Enlightenment PDF Author: Jan Golinski
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 0226302067
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 301

Get Book Here

Book Description
Enlightenment inquiries into the weather sought to impose order on a force that had the power to alter human life and social conditions. British Weather and the Climate of Enlightenment reveals how a new sense of the national climate emerged in the eighteenth century from the systematic recording of the weather, and how it was deployed in discussions of the health and welfare of the population. Enlightened intellectuals hailed climate’s role in the development of civilization but acknowledged that human existence depended on natural forces that would never submit to rational control. Reading the Enlightenment through the ideas, beliefs, and practices concerning the weather, Jan Golinski aims to reshape our understanding of the movement and its legacy for modern environmental thinking. With its combination of cultural history and the history of science, British Weather and the Climate of Enlightenment counters the claim that Enlightenment progress set humans against nature, instead revealing that intellectuals of the age drew characteristically modern conclusions about the inextricability of nature and culture.