The Enlightenment on Trial

The Enlightenment on Trial PDF Author: Bianca Premo
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0190638737
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 385

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Book Description
The principal protagonists of this history of the Enlightenment are non-literate, poor, and enslaved colonial litigants who began to sue their superiors in the royal courts of the Spanish empire. With comparative data on civil litigation and close readings of the lawsuits, The Enlightenment on Trial explores how ordinary Spanish Americans actively produced modern concepts of law.

The Enlightenment on Trial

The Enlightenment on Trial PDF Author: Bianca Premo
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0190638737
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 385

Get Book

Book Description
The principal protagonists of this history of the Enlightenment are non-literate, poor, and enslaved colonial litigants who began to sue their superiors in the royal courts of the Spanish empire. With comparative data on civil litigation and close readings of the lawsuits, The Enlightenment on Trial explores how ordinary Spanish Americans actively produced modern concepts of law.

Enlightenment at Court

Enlightenment at Court PDF Author: Thomas Biskup
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781800855076
Category :
Languages : en
Pages :

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Book Description
This is the first comprehensive analysis of the royal and princely courts of Europe as important places of Enlightenment. The households of European rulers remained central to politics and culture throughout the eighteenth century, and few writers, artists, musicians, or scholars could succeed without establishing connections to ruling houses, noble families, or powerful courtiers. Covering case studies from Spain and France to Russia, and from Scandinavia and Britain to the Holy Roman Empire, the contributions of this volume examine how Enlightenment figures were integrated into the princely courts of the Ancien Régime, and what kinds of relationships they had with courtiers. Dangers and opportunities presented by proximity to court are discussed as well as the question of what rulers and courtiers gained from their interactions with Enlightenment men and women of letters. The book focusses on four areas: firstly, the impact of courtly patronage on Enlightenment discourses and the work as well as careers of Enlightenment writers; secondly, the court as an audience to be catered for by Enlightenment writers; thirdly, the function of Enlightenment narratives and discourses for the image-making of rulers and courtiers; and fourthly, the role the interaction of courtiers and Enlightenment writers played for the formulation of reform policies.

The Enlightenment on Trial

The Enlightenment on Trial PDF Author: Bianca Premo
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0190638745
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 336

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Book Description
This is a history of the Enlightenment--the rights-oriented, formalist, secularizing, freedom-inspired eighteenth-century movement that defined modern Western law. But rather than members of a cosmopolitan Republic of Letters, its principal protagonists are non-literate, poor, and enslaved litigants who sued their superiors in the royal courts of Spain's American colonies. Despite growing evidence of the Hispanic world's contributions to Enlightenment science, the writing of history, and statecraft, the region is conventionally believed to have taken an alternate route to modernity. This book grapples with the contradiction between this legacy and eighteenth-century Spanish Americans' active production of concepts fundamental to modern law. The Enlightenment on Trial offers readers new insight into how Spanish imperial subjects created legal documents, fresh interpretations of the intellectual transformations and legal reform policies of the period, and comparative analysis of the volume of civil suits from six regions in Mexico, Peru and Spain. Ordinary litigants in the colonies--far more often than peninsular Spaniards--sued superiors at an accelerating pace in the second half of the eighteenth century. Three types of cases increased even faster than a stunning general rise of civil suits in the colonies: those that slaves, native peasants and women initiated against masters, native leaders and husbands. As they entered court, these litigants advanced a new law-centered culture distinct from the casuistic, justice-oriented legal culture of the early modern period. And they did so at precisely the same time that a few bright minds of Europe enshrined new ideas in print. The conclusion considers why, if this is so, the Spanish empire has remained marginal to the story of the advent of the modern West.

Four Fools in the Age of Reason

Four Fools in the Age of Reason PDF Author: Dorinda Outram
Publisher: University of Virginia Press
ISBN: 0813942020
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 184

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Book Description
Unveiling the nearly lost world of the court fools of eighteenth-century Germany, Dorinda Outram shows that laughter was an essential instrument of power. Whether jovial or cruel, mirth altered social and political relations. Outram takes us first to the court of Frederick William I of Prussia, who emerges not only as an administrative reformer and notorious militarist but also as a "master of fools," a ruler who used fools to prop up his uncertain power. The autobiography of the itinerant fool Peter Prosch affords a rare insider’s view of the small courts in Catholic south Germany, Austria, and Bavaria. Full of sharp observations of prelates and princes, the autobiography also records episodes of the extraordinary cruelty for which the German princely courts were notorious. Joseph Fröhlich, court fool in Dresden, presents more appealing facets of foolery. A sharp salesman and hero of the Meissen factories, he was deeply attached to the folk life of fooling. The book ends by tying the growth of Enlightenment skepticism to the demise of court foolery around 1800. Outram’s book is invaluable for giving us such a vivid depiction of the court fool and especially for revealing how this figure can shed new light on the wielding of power in Enlightenment Europe.

The Enlightenment

The Enlightenment PDF Author: Ritchie Robertson
Publisher: HarperCollins
ISBN: 0062410679
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 1008

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Book Description
A magisterial history that recasts the Enlightenment as a period not solely consumed with rationale and reason, but rather as a pursuit of practical means to achieve greater human happiness. One of the formative periods of European and world history, the Enlightenment is the fountainhead of modern secular Western values: religious tolerance, freedom of thought, speech and the press, of rationality and evidence-based argument. Yet why, over three hundred years after it began, is the Enlightenment so profoundly misunderstood as controversial, the expression of soulless calculation? The answer may be that, to an extraordinary extent, we have accepted the account of the Enlightenment given by its conservative enemies: that enlightenment necessarily implied hostility to religion or support for an unfettered free market, or that this was “the best of all possible worlds”. Ritchie Robertson goes back into the “long eighteenth century,” from approximately 1680 to 1790, to reveal what this much-debated period was really about. Robertson returns to the era’s original texts to show that above all, the Enlightenment was really about increasing human happiness – in this world rather than the next – by promoting scientific inquiry and reasoned argument. In so doing Robertson chronicles the campaigns mounted by some Enlightened figures against evils like capital punishment, judicial torture, serfdom and witchcraft trials, featuring the experiences of major figures like Voltaire and Diderot alongside ordinary people who lived through this extraordinary moment. In answering the question 'What is Enlightenment?' in 1784, Kant famously urged men and women above all to “have the courage to use your own intellect”. Robertson shows how the thinkers of the Enlightenment did just that, seeking a well-rounded understanding of humanity in which reason was balanced with emotion and sensibility. Drawing on philosophy, theology, historiography and literature across the major western European languages, The Enlightenment is a master-class in big picture history about the foundational epoch of modern times.

Interpretation of Law in the Age of Enlightenment

Interpretation of Law in the Age of Enlightenment PDF Author: Yasutomo Morigiwa
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 9400715064
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 193

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Book Description
A collaboration of leading historians of European law and philosophers of law and politics identifying and explaining the practice of interpretation of law in the 18th century. The goal: establishing the actual practice in the Age of Enlightenment, and explaining why this was the case. The ideology of the Age was that law, i.e., the will of the sovereign, can be explicitly and appropriately stated, thus making interpretation redundant. However, the reality was that in the 18th century, there was no one leading source of national law that would be the object of interpretation. Instead, there was a plurality of sources of law: the Roman Law, local customary law, and the royal ordinance. However, in deciding a case in a court of law, the law must speak with one voice. Hence, interpretation to unify the norms was inevitable. What was the process? What role did justification in terms of reason, the hallmark of the Enlightenment, play? These are some of the questions addressed.

Into Print

Into Print PDF Author: George Charles Walton
Publisher: Penn State Press
ISBN: 0271050128
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 264

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Book Description
"A collection of essays examining how print culture shaped the legacy of the Enlightenment. Explores the challenges, contradictions, and dilemmas modern European societies have encountered since the eighteenth century in trying to define, spread, and realize Enlightenment ideas and values"--Provided by publisher.

Painterly Enlightenment

Painterly Enlightenment PDF Author: Thomas DaCosta Kaufmann
Publisher: UNC Press Books
ISBN: 0807829560
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 207

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Book Description
"Kaufmann situates Maulbertsch as a fresco painter at a time of transition to easel painting, a colorist at a time when color was not fully appreciated by contemporary observers, and an interpreter of religious themes at a time when secular subjects were becoming more popular. Although he has been dismissed as an eccentric by previous scholars, Kaufmann's analysis shows Maulbertsch involved in the intellectual and aesthetic issues of his day."--BOOK JACKET.

A Cultural History of Law in the Age of Enlightenment

A Cultural History of Law in the Age of Enlightenment PDF Author: Rebecca Probert
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 135007926X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 216

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Book Description
The period of the Enlightenment was marked by innovation in political, cultural, religious, and educational ideas with the aim of improving the experience of human beings in society. Key to intellectual debates and day-to-day life were ideas about the law. Many looked to Britain, and to the British, as exemplars of a state governed by moderate laws under a moderate constitution. Britain's laws and constitution were portrayed and satirized in almost every artistic medium. A Cultural History of Law in the Age of Enlightenment presents essays spanning the “long 18th century” (1680 to 1820) which explore the place of law in a range of creative and artistic media, all of which flourished in a commercial society with law at its center and enlightenment as its aim. Drawing upon a wealth of visual and textual sources, A Cultural History of Law in the Age of Enlightenment presents essays that examine key cultural case studies of the period on the themes of justice, constitution, codes, agreements, arguments, property and possession, wrongs, and the legal profession.

Common Law and Enlightenment in England, 1689-1750

Common Law and Enlightenment in England, 1689-1750 PDF Author: Julia Rudolph
Publisher:
ISBN: 1843838044
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 340

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Book Description
The book demonstrates how the 'common law mind' was able to meet the various challenges posed by Enlightenment rationalism and civic and commercial discourse, revealing that the common law played a much wider role beyond the legal world in shaping Enlightenment concepts.