Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Wisconsin--Madison, 1989. / Typescript. Vita. eContent provider-neutral record in process. Description based on print version record. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 374-396).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Sydney, 2008. / Title from title screen (viewed June 16, 2009) Submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy to the Department of Studies in Religion, Faculty of Arts. Includes bibliographical references. Also available in print form.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Chicago, Department of Romance Languages and Literatures, December 1999. / Includes bibliographical references. Also available on the Internet.

Thesis (Lic. Theol.)--Universität Giessen, 1913. / Published in full in: Jahrbuch für brandenburgische Kirchengeschichte 1913, 1914. Vita. Bibliography of the author's works: p. [63]-64.

The Enlightenment was funded by a utopian hope that increased knowledge of nature as a mechanism could create the conditions for lasting peace and widespread happiness. The twentieth century, however, has been marked by catastrophes hitherto beyond imagination. This thesis examines two critiques of enlightenment that suggest this development is not accidental either to the concept of enlightenment or to the course it has taken in modern Western societies. The development in question follows from tendencies within enlightenment itself. I provide an exegetical account of Horkheimer and Adorno's analysis, in their collaborative work Dialectic of Enlightenment, of the regressive moment in enlightenment, which, for them, is owed to the entanglement of rationality and domination. Next, I examine Peter Sloterdijk's analysis, in Critique of Cynical Reason, of the ambivalent social reception of enlightenment that results in the phenomenon of modern cynicism, which must be contrasted with its ancient namesake that I render, following the translation of Sloterdijk, as "kynicism". In each of these works the way forward for enlightenment hinges upon cultivating a relationship between nature and the subject that is not based on dominating opposition: nature as a mechanism for human purposes or as the suppressed inner nature of the subject. Horkheimer and Adorno's solution is the recovery of reflection on nature within the subject. I show that this is insufficient to meet the challenges posed by modern cynicism that Sloterdijk reveals to be a late development of enlightenment. It is for this reason that Sloterdijk asks us to recall the legacy of Diogenes of Sinope. Sloterdijk finds in Diogenes a critical consciousness that resists the "melancholic stagnation" of cynical society and retains the utopian spirit of enlightenment.

European Enlightenment culture was a fundamental locus for the emergence and conceptualization of what has come to be called the "modern public sphere." In this study I analyse the figure of "the public" during roughly the third quarter of the eighteenth-century, primarily as refracted in the writings of three prominent German Aufklarer, Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, Thomas Abbt, and Johann Gottfried Herder. Scholarly discussion about the emergence of a German public sphere and "public opinion" has tended to focus on the latter decades of the eighteenth- century, with little awareness of the fact that earlier on, the notion of a "public" itself was being constituted and contested by "public writers" like Lessing, Abbt and Herder. This occurred within the context of what I am calling "the problem of Publikum," the particular German problem of social and political fragmentation. The writings of Lessing, Abbt arid Herder can be profitably understood as mediating between the wider European Republic of Letters and a more circumscribed, problematical German Publikum. By reading their works in light of Enlightenment discourses of science, sociability, aesthetics and politics-discourses that in one way or another touched upon the issue of a modern "public"--as well as in view of the "problem of Publikum" and the German social and intellectual scene generally, I am able to connect their intellectual content both with wider European currents and local German socio-political concerns. I argue that Lessing's dramatic and literary-critical work sought to constitute a German public that was both sympathetically responsive yet critically distanced from itself. Abbt, painfully aware of the "problem of Publikum," strove to inscribe a public sphere in the idiom of patriotism and morals. And Herder's intervention in an emerging German public sphere can be understood as building on the work of Abbt and Lessing to theorize the relationship between language, literature and the Publikum in a complex vision of "organic enlightenment." The dissertation employs a variety of primary and secondary sources, including works by an array of European thinkers who played a role in Lessing, Abbt and Herder's intellectual development. And it theorizes the developments profiled in light of contemporary theories of the public sphere and the social-psychology of George H. Mead, engaging questions of personal and social identity, inclusion/exclusion, and gender. / Arts, Faculty of / History, Department of / Graduate

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Generally acclaimed as the greatest philosopher of the Enlightenment, David Hume has been, nevertheless, a problem for Enlightenment historians. In terms of the Enlightenment's own standards of empiricism and demonstrable philosophical tenets, Hume's is by far the most "legitimate" philosophy of the age, yet it is almost diametrically opposed to the traditional historical characterization of the Enlightenment. Consequently, historians must re-assess the empirical character of the Enlightenment, acknowledging it as yet another Age of Faith rather than science (as Becker contends), or acknowledge Hume's as the most valid Enlightenment philosophy. Such a re-assessment and study of Hume's conclusions would dramatically alter Enlightenment histories and provide meaningful insights into the actual Enlightenment legacy regarding modern man and his society.

Doctor of Philosophy / Department of History / Robert D. Linder / John Wesley (1703-1791) was an Anglican priest who became the leader of Wesleyan Methodism, a renewal movement within the Church of England that began in the late 1730s. Although Wesley was not isolated from his enlightened age, historians of the Enlightenment and theologians of John Wesley have only recently begun to consider Wesley in the historical context of the Enlightenment. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to provide a comprehensive understanding of the complex relationship between a man, John Wesley, and an intellectual movement, the Enlightenment. As a comparative history, this study will analyze the juxtaposition of two historiographies, Wesley studies and Enlightenment studies. Surprisingly, Wesley scholars did not study John Wesley as an important theologian until the mid-1960s. Moreover, because social historians in the 1970s began to explore the unique ways people experienced the Enlightenment in different local, regional and national contexts, the plausibility of an English Enlightenment emerged for the first time in the early 1980s. As a result, in the late 1980s, scholars began to integrate the study of John Wesley and the Enlightenment. In other words, historians and theologians began to consider Wesley as a serious thinker in the context of an English Enlightenment that was not hostile to Christianity. From a review of the historical literature, this dissertation details six links that scholars have introduced in their study of Wesley’s relation to the Enlightenment. However, the review also reveals two problems, one obstacle and one omission, that hinder new innovation and further study. Therefore, as a solution, this study introduces five lenses adapted from the recent scholarship of four historians and one historical theologian that provide new vantage points for considering the enlightenment of Wesley and Wesleyan Methodists, which together form the Wesleyan Enlightenment. Finally, based on the evidence gathered by using these new lenses, this study argues that because Wesley not only engaged the Enlightenment, but also addressed the spiritual needs and practical concerns of Wesleyan Methodists for more than fifty years in what he referred to as an enlightened age, John Wesley was a central figure in the eighteenth-century English Enlightenment.

This thesis is concerned with the science of geography in the German states during the ‘long’ eighteenth century, c.1690 – c.1815. It speaks to recent scholarly debates in historical geography, the history of science, book history, and Enlightenment studies. The thesis investigates the forms taken by eighteenth-century German geography, its meanings, and practices. This is of particular interest, since this topic is understudied. The thesis is based upon an analysis of geographical print (books and periodicals) and manuscript correspondence. The thesis proposes that geography’s definition was understood as ‘description of the earth’. The interpretative meaning of this definition, geography’s purpose in print, and its educational practice (content and methods) were, in contrast, debated. The thesis suggests that geographical print – in the form of books and periodicals – served two main purposes: progress in geography, guided by the aim of scientific ‘completeness,’ and progress of society, guided by the aim of human improvement. In chapter 1, I outline the main topics and the structure of the thesis. Chapter 2 reviews the background of the thesis, and offers a partial historiographic and conceptual overview of the relevant themes. In chapter 3, I show that the Holy Roman Empire was characterised by fragmented political, religious, urban, and scholarly landscapes. The German emphasis on ‘writing’ geography ‘completely’ was partly, I argue, a way to transcend this fragmentation in an imagined ‘geographical republic of letters’. The emphasis on writing geography systematically was a way to justify the German wish for greater scholarly recognition on part of their foreign ‘colleagues’ who more opportunities to participate in geographical expeditions overseas and in colonial politics. In chapter 4, I argue that the classification of geography and geography’s relation to other sciences were debated. In consequence, geographical practice and use – geography’s writing and teaching – affected its interpretative meaning. In chapter 5, I go on and suggest that geography was a sedentary science aimed at improvement in geography and of society. Geographical print production and its evolution reflect the iii urban and religious landscapes of the empire. Geographical print was produced across the German states and, particularly, in the Protestant – middle and central German – states. This leads in chapter 6 to an analysis of geographical education and the suggestion that wide-spread conservatism in geographical instruction reflects the education aim for social utility and personal ‘eudaimonia’, as well as and an adherence to given social and political structures. In conclusion (chapter 7), the main findings of this thesis shed light on the production and use of geography in the German states during the ‘long’ eighteenth century, and the history of geography more generally. In discussing the relationship between Enlightenment thought and geography, the thesis extends our knowledge on German intellectual history, and contributes to our understanding of the geographies of Enlightenment geographical knowledge and practice.