When Enlightenment science was first introduced in earnest into Russia as part of Peter I's programme of westernisation, the Orthodox Church's view of scientific truth remained the received wisdom and enlightenment science was looked upon as heretical, alien and un-Russian. After Peter's death the Church and other conservative forces in Russia attempted to reassert the traditional system of scientific belief, but Peter's vision had an energetic and enthusiastic supporter in the scientist and polymath MV Lomonosov, whose defence of Enlightenment science against such opposition is illustrated by particular reference to the Copernican Revolution. However, unlike scientists such as Benjamin Franklin in America, Lomonosov did not pursue Enlightenment values into the realm of social and political enquiry, but saw instead Enlightenment science as an instrument for the furtherance of Peter's model of the Russian autocratic state. The political and sociological writers discussed in connection with the Darwinian Revolution, Chemyshevsky, Pisarev, Mikhailovsky, Lavrov and Kropotkin, were all committed to scientific method, but their various responses to Darwinism were significantly coloured by the fact that the struggle for existence in nature described by Darwin seemed more of a piece with the conclusions of western Social Darwinists in favour of a competitive capitalist society, than with the sort of communal society that these Russian writers sought to justify in rational scientific terms. The specific Russian historical moment is of central importance: the Origin of Species appeared in Russia just at the time of the Emancipation, when a major concern of Russian radical thought was that Russian society should bypass capitalism and proceed directly to a socialist form of society. Both the scientific revolutions are examined in this study with reference to specifically Russian political and sociological issues arising from the particular Russian cultural and historical context into which they were received.

In the long nineteenth century all the English Protestant missionary societies in India used education as a missionary tool. This study examines their reasons for doing so and their attempts to implement various educational strategies. It also examines the theological and educational ideas that they brought with them from England, and the continuing pressures exerted on them by their English supporters. The way in which the missionaries adjusted to their new context and their relationship with the government and with the local culture are also studied. The thesis argues that missionary education had considerable impact on the culture in which it took place, but that it was not always the impact that the missionaries had intended. Similarly the culture affected the choices which the missionaries made. Missionary strategies changed as they experienced failure and success in achieving their aims. Attention is paid to the political, as well as the cultural, context of the missionaries. While the missionaries' educational aims were to some extent formulated in dialogue with government, the study suggests that the missionaries and the government had significantly different educational strategies. A clear cut distinction is drawn between the education aimed at the nation's elite through English medium higher education and the attempt to educate at a village level in the vernacular languages. The thesis argues that the latter was more successful in terms of the missionaries' long term aims. Finally, the thesis also argues that 'raising up a native agency' was the missionaries' initial purpose in founding schools and colleges. For a number of reasons they were often diverted from this aim in the intervening years. It became their strategy again, however, at the end of the period.

This thesis argues that James Mill's History of British India is, on the one hand, intellectually linked to the Scottish Enlightenment, while, on the other hand, moves beyond that intellectual tradition in the post-French Revolution age. This thesis makes three central claims. First, it argues that in reacting to Montesqueiu's idea of oriental society, the contributors to the Scottish Enlightenment used ideas of moral philosophy, philosophical history and political economy in order to create an image of a wealthy Asia whose societies possessed barbarous social manners. Some new writings about Asian societies that were published in the 1790s adopted Montesquieu' s views of oriental societies, and started to consider the history of manners and of political institutions as the true criteria of the state of civilisation. These works criticised some Asian social manners, such as female slavery, and questioned previous assumptions about the high civilisation of Indian and Chinese societies. This thesis argues that Mill's History, following William Robertson's History of America, was based on a study of the historical mind to interpret the texts published in the 1790s and the early nineteenth century. Second, this thesis argues that Mill adopted Francis Jeffrey's idea of semi-barbarism in his study of India. In the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, William Alexander and Francis J effrey started to think of history in the context of a tri -stadia! theory, which was more idealist and less materialist than the earlier four-stages theory. Mill tried to develop a holistic view of Asian society. In so doing, he came to criticise the British government's mistaken mercantilist view of government, which he regarded as unsuitable for the conditions of Indian society. Following Adam Smith's moral philosophy, and inspired by the socio-economic progress of North America, Mill suggested that the primary goals for the British government in India should be to improve its agriculture and to secure social freedom. This thesis also concludes that the discussions about Chinese society played an important part in shaping Mill's view of the concept of semi-barbarism. The theory of semi-barbarism helped Mill to reject the cultural ideology of Hindu superiority over Muslim societies. Lastly, this thesis argues that Mill's History was influenced by and sought to accommodate Benthamite Utilitarianism. Mill believed the supposed semi-barbarous and problematic native of Indian society could be reformed without following the steps taken by European history or institutions. He prescribed a powerful state for India in order to remove the mercantilist view of government, and to execute administrative and judicial reforms. This thesis concludes that, while Scottish philosophical history helped Mill to create a critique of the British government's attempts to govern India as a commercial society, Benthamite Utilitarianism taught Mill to see history from a teleological viewpoint.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--UCLA, 2009. / Vita. Description based on print version record. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 682-715).

“Enlightenment,” declared Kant, “is man’s emergence from his self-incurred immaturity,” an immaturity maintained by all those “dogmas and formulas, those mechanical instruments for rational use (or rather misuse) of his natural endowments.” As a result, more and more self styled philosophic critics of the Enlightenment have accused Kant and his less impressive ilk of perpetuating a grand, even unconscious, farce: their naïve vision of liberation was but a magnificent ruse for compelling obedience to a new host of dogmas and gods. The power and influence of this sort of critique has provoked a wide ranging and lively reappraisal of the degree to which the philosophers of the Enlightenment were founders of a regime rooted ultimately in deception or emancipation. In order to enter and evaluate that debate, I take up the views of Spinoza, a founder of the Enlightenment, and one of its greatest critics, Rousseau. According to both Spinoza and Rousseau, all societies, no matter how Enlightened, have to perpetuate deceptions in order to make political rule both legitimate and acceptable to the ruled: humans are not naturally meant for political rule or political life. They both agree that the liberation of talents is at the core of the Enlightenment’s approach to achieving this kind of legitimacy. But while the liberation of talents is considered an unequivocal good by Spinoza even if that liberation must have as its basis several fundamental deceptions, I argue on behalf of Rousseau that the Enlightenment perpetuates a deep moral corruption of man by stimulating within him the desire for an impossible celebrity that could never truly or authentically satisfy his deepest needs. / text

This thesis examines the relationship between Scottish Enlightenment philosophy and Abolitionist activism. This work asserts that Scottish philosophers opposed legislative Abolition, and that Henry Dundas’s ‘gradual’ amendment to Wilberforce’s 1792 Slave Trade bill was partly motivated by fear of radical change. This amendment has been acknowledged by many as the reason the Slave Trade was allowed to continue, despite public disapprobation, until 1807. First, by examining the writings of those Scottish Enlightenment thinkers critical of slavery, this work demonstrates that their ideas were largely theoretical and lacked engagement with the problem of slavery in British society. Second, in examining why, when their writings against slavery have been so lauded, they made so little a direct contribution to the Abolitionist movement, this thesis explores the Scottish Enlightenment theory of spontaneous order in the generation of social institutions. Drawing upon the warnings of some of these Scottish literati, this thesis will argue that their belief in spontaneous order encouraged them to view any attempt at altering social structures (such as the Slave Trade) through legislation as dangerous innovations that should be opposed by enlightened thinkers and politicians. This thesis next examines the parliamentary debates surrounding the 1792 Abolition bill, highlighting the similarities between the Scottish Enlightenment polemic against radical change and the arguments of those opposing Wilberforce’s Slave Trade bill. MPs embraced Dundas’ gradual Abolition idea despite petitions in support of the original bill signed by their constituents, the views of whom were considered secondary to their own judgement on such matters. That the 1792 failure of Abolition was not due to a denial of the principle of ending slavery but a rejection of abrupt change demonstrates that the Scottish Enlightenment, through the agency of Dundas, encouraged delaying the abolition of the Slave Trade for fifteen years.

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This paper examines the tensions resulting from multiculturalism's quest to achieve equality through the recognition of cultural difference. The author argues that multiculturalism is inherently limited in its potential to recognize deep difference because it operates through the framework of the conceptual heritage of the Enlightenment's political project. Multiculturalism's dependence on Enlightenment evaluative norms means that difference and diversity can be recognized to the extent that they further the objective of achieving liberty and equality for all. The author examines the theoretical legacy of the Enlightenment as it informs the multicultural project and also analyses the impact of poststructuralist theory on multiculturalist conceptions of identity.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--State University of New York at Binghamton, English Department, 2006. / Includes bibliographical references.

Issued also as thesis, Marburg. / On spine: Lustspiel der Aufklärung. Bibliography: p. [137]-142.