Medicine as Enlightenment cure: Benedetto Frizzi, physician to eighteenth-century Italian Jewish society

This article examines modern Jewish doctors and the Enlightenment in action through its analysis of Dr. Benedetto Frizzi (1756–1844) as an Enlightenment Jewish physician and public intellectual in Habsburg northern Italy. Frizzi sought to spread the new Enlightenment gospel of polizia medica—public health policy or social medicine—that he learned from its pioneering exponent, Dr. Johann Peter Frank, his teacher at the University of Pavia. Frizzi dispensed Enlightenment medicine for the benefit of the state and society in general, as well as Jewish society and culture in particular, for he saw himself as both public health crusader and doctor-priest ministering to his own people. His commitments to Enlightenment science and rationalism led him to criticize Jewish social practices harshly even as he creatively reinterpreted classic Jewish texts; accordingly, Frizzi was regarded in some quarters as subversive, while in others as an apologetic defender of Jews and Judaism. Situating Frizzi within the traditions of Jewish as well as European Enlightenment physicians, this article raises broader questions about religion and secularism in the modern discourse of medicalized Judaism.     

We,Heirs of Enlightenment: Critical Theory,Democracy and Social Science

Abstract

My goal here is to come to terms with the Enlightenment as the horizon of critical social science. First, I consider in more detail the understanding of the Enlightenment in Critical Theory, particularly in its conception of the sociality of reason. Second, I develop an account of freedom in terms of human powers, along the lines of recent capability conceptions that link freedom to the development of human powers, including the power to interpret and create norms. Finally, I show the ways in which the social sciences can be moral sciences in the Enlightenment sense. This account provides us with a coherent Enlightenment standard by which to judge institutions as promoting development, understood in terms of the capabilities necessary for freedom. The relevant social science in this area might include the robust generalization that there has never been a famine in a democratic society.     

From the profane to the sacred: why we need to retrieve Christian bioethics.

Christianity has been crucial in the conceptualization and articulation of the moral framework of the Western tradition. The social sciences, including ethics, were modeled on physical science. However, the Enlightenment project inculcated a metaphysics and an epistemology that reduced the subject to an object and thus undermined the conditions of freedom, agency and an accessible cosmic order; all of which are essential to morality. Competing value claims were shunted into a political context for resolution, but the politicalized morality itself requires a framework for evaluating resolutions. While neither the Enlightenment nor post-modernism can provide such a framework, Christian tradition can, in fact, provide just such a framework and response.     

Cassirer’s enlightenment: on philosophy and the ‘Denkform’ of reason

ABSTRACT

This paper examines the way in which Cassirer implicitly commented on current issues in his historical studies, proposing a case study on his monograph The Philosophy of the Enlightenment, published in November 1932. It begins with a general overview of a few famous and a few neglected instances of Cassirer’s position-takings through historical studies, before discussing briefly the context in which this monograph was written and examining how the Enlightenment is presented in the monograph from 1932. The paper claims that at the centre of Cassirer’s engagement with the Enlightenment was his concern with the autonomy of reason. The way in which Cassirer elaborated on this further shows that his defense of the Enlightenment was not just directed against the threats of totalitarian politics, but also had the aim of clarifying the nature of philosophy and its place in culture. This, however, the paper concludes, does not refute the notion that Cassirer was concerned with current politics when writing The Philosophy of the Enlightenment. The point is rather that he comprehended philosophy as political just in virtue of its exercising the autonomy that characterizes reason.     

Slow magic: psychoanalysis and "the disenchantment of the world"

Freud's work can be situated in terms of the debate between Enlightenment and anti-Enlightenment thought. The attempts of both sides to claim Freud for their position have merit, but they miss the crucial point: namely, that the tension between its Enlightenment and anti-Enlightenment tendencies is what gives Freud's thinking much of its vitality and depth. The task that faces the interpreter is therefore to elucidate that tension and assess the alignment of forces between the two strands in his thought. An examination of the concept of magic in Freud's theory provides an opportunity to pursue this interpretive task. Although the Enlightenment position he often seems to embrace advocates the complete elimination of magic, many "magical" elements remain in his theory and clinical practice. Nor should this situation be deplored, for the ambition to completely exorcise "enchantment" from human experience is one of the misguided excesses of the Enlightenment. The question of an appropriate fate for magic in psychoanalysis is discussed in relation to the vicissitudes of the transference. Finally, the science versus hermenueutics debate is examined in the light of these considerations in an attempt to specify the unique nature of the psychoanalytic experience.     

Reading the Silences,Questioning the Terms: A Response to the Focus on Eighteenth-Century Ethics

It is striking that most of the essays in this Focus do not explore the specifically religious aspects of Enlightenment ethical thought. A principled reason for this may be found in a conception of religion that makes it hard for Enlightenment thinkers to seem religious at all. Neither does this conception fit anything that is likely to be a live option for most people today, and the now prevalent unpopularity of eighteenth-century piety and religious thought may blind us to important religious possibilities.     

Rorty's Debt to Sellarsian Metaphysics

Rorty regards himself as furthering the project of the Enlightenment by separating Enlightenment liberalism from Enlightenment rationalism. To do so, he rejects the very need for explicit metaphysical theorizing. Yet his commitments to naturalism, nominalism, and the irreducibility of the normative come from the metaphysics of Wilfrid Sellars. Rorty's debt to Sellars is concealed by his use of Davidsonian arguments against the scheme/content distinction and the nonsemantic concept of truth. The Davidsonian arguments are used for Deweyan ends: to advance secularization and anti‐authoritarianism. However, Rorty's conflation of theology and metaphysics conceals the possibility of post‐theological metaphysics. The key distinction lies between “metaphysics” and “Metaphysics.” The former provisionally models the relations between different vocabularies; the latter continues theology by other means. Sellars shows how to do metaphysics without Metaphysics. This approach complements Rorty's prioritization of cultural politics over ontology and his vision of Enlightenment liberalism without Enlightenment rationalism.     

Leninism and the Enlightenment

Conclusion The outcome of this comparison of the impact of the Englishtenment on two rival philosophical traditions suggests that there are points of contact even on the issues that appear to push Leninism in an opposite direction from liberalism. The lack of communication between these two traditions results in a lack of vigor in developing their philosophies in a way that addresses the accomplishments of rival philosophies. For example, Leninism, which seeks to justify limits on the freedom of speech for those viewed as anti-socialist, would do well to reinforce its position by mastering the reasoning of the liberals who differentiate the rights of the Ku Klux Klan from those of the N.A.A.C.P. And liberalism, which has been concerned with overcoming formal equality to implement real, practical equality of opportunity, is in effect echoing one of Lenin's main concerns about democracy under capitalism.Insofar as Lenin put forward the idea of Marxism as the continuation and sublation of the best accomplishments of human culture, it appears to be a weakness of contemporary Leninism that it fails sufficiently to embrace or confront the body of philosophical thought characterizing the liberal democratic conceptions of the Enlightenment and of contemporary liberalism. Even though this body of thought was known to Lenin and partially appropriated as well as confronted by him, there is a lack of emphasis by Leninists upon the mastering of the arguments advanced by liberalism. The fact that rival, anti-Leninist thought also began from certain ideas of the Enlightenment underscores the importance for Leninism's own self-understanding of studying the evolution of Enlightenment philosophy, its links with twentieth-century liberalism, and the reasons for the rejection of liberal conceptions by Lenin.     

Rationality and autonomy from the Enlightenment and Islamic perspectives

Rationality and autonomy are foundational concepts in anglophone or ‘Western’ countries that originated primarily from the Enlightenment period. When compared with ‘Western’ ideologies, non-Western belief systems such as Islam may not appear, at first glance, to place as much emphasis on the value and attainment of rationality and autonomy. This may lead some people to conclude that Islam necessarily marginalises or even suppresses its believers’ development of rationality and autonomy. This article compares the concepts of rationality and autonomy from the Enlightenment and Islamic perspectives. It is argued that there exist Islamic traditions that promote the inculcation of ‘normal rationality’ and ‘normal autonomy’ within a convictional community from which beliefs develop. However, the extent to which Muslims are encouraged to cultivate and exercise their rationality and autonomy would depend, among other factors, on the specific interpretations of rationality and autonomy privileged by the Islamic tradition they belong to.     

The birth of enlightenment secularism from the spirit of Confucianism

The aim of the essay is to demonstrate that the contact of European philosophy with Chinese thought in the second half of the 17th and 18th century influenced the rise and development of secularism, which became a distinctive feature of the Western Enlightenment. The first part examines how knowing the history of China and Confucian ethics has questioned biblical chronology and undermined faith as a necessary condition of morality. These allegations were afterwards countered by reinterpreting Confucianism as crypto-monotheism. I will argue this debate has contributed to the birth of secular philosophy of history, which put an end to the Enlightenment Sinophilism. Throughout those changes in the image of China, nothing but an image was discussed: as it would be presented on a basis of the thought of Wang Fuzhi and other representatives of Chinese kaozheng考證 movement, the encounter with the contemporaries of the Westerners would have opened a real dialogue.     

Armstrong on classes as states of affairs

Book Information Culture and Enlightenment: Essays for Gyorgy Markus. Culture and Enlightenment: Essays for Gyorgy Markus John Grumley, Paul Crittenden, and Pauline Johnson, eds., Aldershot: Ashgate Publishing, 2002, pp. vii + 339, £47.50 (cloth). Aldershot: Ashgate Publishing. Pp. vii + 339. £47.50 (cloth:),     

Normative pluralism: Islam, religion and law in the twenty-first century

Four new books on Islam and law provide the occasion for reflection on legal and religious pluralism. Bringing together a more nuanced and complex understanding of religion — one not determined by Enlightenment ideologies of separation — and of law — one also freed of Enlightenment notions of positivism and secularism — provide opportunities for ways to re-think the cultures of normative pluralism.     

Psyche And Soma: Physicians and Metaphysicians on the Mind-Body Problem from Antiquity to Enlightenment

Book Information Psyche And Soma: Physicians and Metaphysicians on the Mind-Body Problem from Antiquity to Enlightenment. Psyche And Soma: Physicians and Metaphysicians on the Mind-Body Problem from Antiquity to Enlightenment John P. Wright Paul Potter Oxford Clarendon Press 2000 xii + 298, Hardback £45.00 Edited by John P. Wright; Paul Potter. Clarendon Press. Oxford. Pp. xii + 298,. Hardback:£45.00,     

DECONSTRUCTING THE SECULAR MAGISTERIUM: VOICES PAST AND PRESENT FOR CONVERSATIONS OF THE FUTURE

In this paper I offer a possible approach to accomplishing Benedict's goal proposed in his Regensburg address. 1 I take his goal to be twofold. First, we must expand our concept of reason beyond the privileged position of scientific empiricism and philosophical reasoning, both of which form what I have called the Secular Magisterium, put in place as the dominant intellectual force by the Enlightenment. Second, the motivation for expanding our concept of reason is for the purpose of greater dialogue across cultures, across religions and across academic disciplines. Since I take Benedict's goal to be twofold, my paper will address these issues in two parts, the second building from the first. In the first section, I will revisit the counter‐Enlightenment thinking of some well known, yet significantly marginalized voices, with the goal of hearing them again and reviving their critique to inform our own. By the end of this section, I will offer what I take to be a counter‐Enlightenment approach to knowing our world by means of an expanded concept of reason. In the second section, I will address what I take to be some of the more intellectual challenges to the possibilities for conversation across cultures, religions, and disciplines. It is my goal to show how an embodied version of the counter‐Enlightenment approach I offer in the first section can allow for genuine conversation that not only provides opportunities to better know our conversation partners, but also offers the possibility of honest persuasion in which the other sees reality differently and considers this way better.     

Enlightenment as a Psychological Construct and as a Buddhist Religious Pursuit: A Cross-cultural Understanding

Enlightenment has been explored in a variety of ways, for example, in Buddhist cultural traditions and in psychological science. In this essay, we categorise enlightenment as both a religious pursuit and psychological construct in order to reach a deep understanding. We summarise the key elements of enlightenment in Chinese Chan history and the development of an Enlightenment Scale in a Western context then discuss the weaknesses of Chan teaching methods with respect to the assessment of levels of Chan practitioners’ enlightenment. Instrument development methods in Western psychological science provide a useful way to capture the concept of enlightenment, and we argue that the Enlightenment Scale can be used to assess Chan practitioners’ enlightenment. The Enlightenment Scale may not assess all features of enlightenment from a Chan Buddhist perspective, so it is proposed that the scale is examined and if necessary adapted accordingly, a research area in Chinese Buddhist study that to date has been neglected.     

Self-Formation and the speculative: Gadamer and Lacan

Abstract

Gadamer’s project in Truth and Method is as much about truth in the human sciences as it is about human subjectivity, for, following Heidegger, he claims that truth is reducible to method (technical rationality) only if one is misled by old Enlightenment subject/object dualisms. Posing the question of the possibility and nature of truth in scientific thinking, where a strict division between subjective and objective has fallen away, Gadamer belongs, as one of its inaugural figures, to an alternative tradition of philosophical complexity, which implicates environmental systems (culture, ideology, institutions), embedded in language, in the constitution of human subjectivity.

With these theoretical shifts in mind, what caught my attention in a press report concerning the trial of (subsequently convicted) serial killer, Stewart Wilken (“Boetie Boer”), was the strangely anachronistic question that dominated the front page of a Port Elizabeth newspaper: “Boetie: Is he Sick or Evil?” This question, in my view, harks back to a questionable framework of Enlightenment autonomy, which depends upon the easy technical rationality of clear-cut dichotomies. In what follows I hope to show that in acknowledging the role of complex interrelations between cultural and other systems, a tradition of philosophical complexity justifiably claims a more adequate framework for understanding self-formation than that underpinning the discourses at work in Wilken’s trial. I shall draw on Gadamer’s hermeneutic model of an “embedded” subject, which is based on his speculative model of “play” outlined in Truth and Method, and supplement this with Lacan’s psychoanalytic account of subject formation.     

Vital anti-mathematicism and the ontology of the emerging life sciences: from Mandeville to Diderot

Synthese - Intellectual history still quite commonly distinguishes between the episode we know as the Scientific Revolution, and its successor era, the Enlightenment, in terms of the calculatory...     

The Ghostly Other: Understanding Racism from Confucian and Enlightenment Models of Subjectivity

The overwhelming motif of nineteenth century anti-Semitic discourse is the metaphor of the Jew as a ghost. In all cultures, the ghost represents the antithesis of what is categorically human: it represents the other par excellence. By using the heuristic of the ghost to interpret how Enlightenment discourse has dealt with the other, this article will argue that the Enlightenment model of the self and its relation to others was a contributing factor to Modern Racism. Enlightenment discourse on subjectivity finds its counterpart in Confucian notions of subjectivity. By looking at how ghosts are understood within Confucian discourse and how they are evoked in popular literature, I argue that Confucian philosophy’s model of subjectivity contributed to the success of the Chinese empire’s assimilation project.     

Why do we want to be healthy? Medicine, autonomous individualism, and the community of faith

Understanding health as empowerment to meet particular goals, we can distinguish a goal of Enlightenment individualism from a goal of creaturely dependent, as affirmed by the Christian community of faith. So argues Dennis Sansom, who traces many of the ethical problems in medical treatment to Enlightenment assumptions about health, and who therefore calls us back to distinctively Christian principles as the foundations for our conception of health and for ethical medical practice.     

Muscular Imaginings—A Phenomenological and Enactive Model for Imagination*

A phenomenological model (labeled ‘EC’) is developed as an alternative to current analyses of the imagination in sport philosophy, heirs to an Enlightenment notion that conceptualizes imaginings as abstract, eidetic, and representational. EC describes how Eidetic and Corporeal Imaginings (EIs & CIs) phenomenologically structure our imaginative undertakings. EIs keep the ‘ideal’ aspect, but CIs—enacted, corporeal, non-representational—are more fundamental and foundational. Sports are particularly suited to express CIs’ muscular imaginings, which result in novel performances. An enactive framework theorizes CIs as non-representational interactions.