Light in Germany - Scenes from an Unknown Enlightenment

Reed, T. J

ISBN 10: 022620510X / ISBN 13: 9780226205106

Published by University of Chicago Press, 2015

About this Item

First edition. First impression. Posted within 1 working day. Royal Mail Tracked 24 to UK. Tracked Airmail worldwide. Robust recyclable packaging. Picture is the actual item.

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Bibliographic Details

• Title: Light in Germany - Scenes from an Unknown Enlightenment
• Publisher: University of Chicago Press
• Publication Date: 2015
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 022620510X
• ISBN 13: 9780226205106
• Binding: hardcover
• Edition: First Edition.
• Condition: Very Good
• Dust Jacket Condition: Very Good Jacket
• Weight: 20 ounces
• Seller catalogs:
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About this title

Synopsis

Germany’s political and cultural past from ancient times through World War II has dimmed the legacy of its Enlightenment, which these days is far outshone by those of France and Scotland. In this book, T. J. Reed clears the dust away from eighteenth-century Germany, bringing the likes of Kant, Goethe, Friedrich Schiller, and Gotthold Lessing into a coherent and focused beam that shines within European intellectual history and reasserts the important role of Germany’s Enlightenment.
           
Reed looks closely at the arguments, achievements, conflicts, and controversies of these major thinkers and how their development of a lucid and active liberal thinking matured in the late eighteenth century into an imaginative branching that ran through philosophy, theology, literature, historiography, science, and politics. He traces the various pathways of their thought and how one engendered another, from the principle of thinking for oneself to the development of a critical epistemology; from literature’s assessment of the past to the formulation of a poetic ideal of human development. Ultimately, Reed shows how the ideas of the German Enlightenment have proven their value in modern secular democracies and are still of great relevance—despite their frequent dismissal—to us in the twenty-first century. 

About the Author

T. J. Reed is an emeritus fellow at Queen’s College, Oxford, a fellow of the British Academy, and president of the English Goethe Society. He is the author of many books.