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Learned Societies.”In Alan Charles Kors (ed.), Encyclopedia of the Enlightenment, Oxford University Press. pp. 371-77. 2003.
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11D'Holbach's Coterie: An Enlightenment in ParisPrinceton University Press. 2015.Students of the Enlightenment have long assumed that the major movement towards atheism in the Ancien Régime was centered in the circle of intellectuals who met at the home of Baron d'Holbach during the last half of the eighteenth century. This major critical study shows, contrary to the accepted views, that in fact, atheism was not the common bond of a majority of the members and that, far from being alienated figures, most of the members were privileged and publicly successful citizens devoted…Read more
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75The paradox of John Stuart millSocial Philosophy and Policy 28 (2): 1-18. 2011.John Stuart Mill is the critical transitional figure between the classical liberalism of the 19th century, with its emphasis upon the creative power of free individuals unfettered by government or social interventions, and the welfare-state liberalism of the 20th century, with its combination of individual choice in matters of belief and lifestyle and the political redistribution of wealth. In On Liberty and The Subjection of Women , Mill offered a defense of self-sovereignty and voluntary assoc…Read more
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1Voltaire and the Triumph of the EnlightenmentThe Teaching Co.. 2001.lecture 1. The patriarch, an overview -- lecture 2. The education of a philosophe -- lecture 3. Philosophical letters, part I -- lecture 4. Philosophical letters, part II -- lecture 5. The years at Cirey -- lecture 6. From optimism to humanism -- lecture 7. Voltaire and the "philosophical tale" -- lecture 8. Voltaire at Ferney -- lecture 9. Voltaire and God -- lecture 10. Voltaire and history -- lecture 11. Voltaire and toleration -- lecture 12. Apotheosis.
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1The Birth of the Modern MindTeaching Co.. 1998.lecture 1. Introduction : intellectual history and conceptual change -- lecture 2. The dawn of the 17th century : Aristotelian scholasticism -- lecture 3. The new vision of Francis Bacon -- lecture 4. The new astronomy and cosmology -- lecture 5. Descartes's dream of perfect knowledge -- lecture 6. The specter of Thomas Hobbes -- lecture 7. Skepticism and Jansenism : Blaise Pascal -- lecture 8. Newton's discovery -- lecture 9. The Newtonian revolution -- lecture 10. John Locke, the revolution in…Read more
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7Naturalism and Unbelief in France, 1650–1729Cambridge University Press. 2016.Atheism was the most fundamental challenge to early-modern French certainties. Leading educators, theologians and philosophers labelled such atheism as manifestly absurd, confident that neither the fact nor behaviour of nature was explicable without reference to God. The alternative was a categorical naturalism. This book demonstrates that the Christian learned world had always contained the naturalistic 'atheist' as an interlocutor and a polemical foil, and its early-modern engagement and use o…Read more
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9Part III. The members of the coterie holbachique and the French revolutionIn D'Holbach's Coterie: An Enlightenment in Paris, Princeton University Press. pp. 259-330. 2015.
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9IntroductionIn D'Holbach's Coterie: An Enlightenment in Paris, Princeton University Press. pp. 1-6. 2015.
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Skepticism and the problem of atheism in early-modern FranceIn Richard H. Popkin & Arie Johan Vanderjagt (eds.), Scepticism and Irreligion in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries, E.j. Brill. 1993.
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7Epicureans and Atheists in France, 1650–1729Cambridge University Press. 2016.Atheism was the most foundational challenge to early-modern French certainties. Theologians and philosophers labelled such atheism as absurd, confident that neither the fact nor behaviour of nature was explicable without reference to God. The alternative was a categorical naturalism, whose most extreme form was Epicureanism. The dynamics of the Christian learned world, however, which this book explains, allowed the wide dissemination of the Epicurean argument. By the end of the seventeenth centu…Read more
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17IndexIn D'Holbach's Coterie: An Enlightenment in Paris, Princeton University Press. pp. 347-360. 2015.
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92The Age of EnlightenmentIn Stephen Bullivant & Michael Ruse (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Atheism, Oxford University Press. 2013.This article discusses the meanings, origin, context, scope, and central intellectual claims of atheism in the Age of the European Enlightenment. It emphasizes debates about proofs of the existence of God and about the problem of categorical naturalism, that is, of whether or not the world we observe and its seeming design could be the product of unintelligent causes. It explores the philosophical origins of Enlightenment atheism both in prior heterodox and Epicurean thought, and, of even greate…Read more
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8PART I. The Coterie Holbachique and the EnlightenmentIn D'Holbach's Coterie: An Enlightenment in Paris, Princeton University Press. pp. 7-146. 2015.
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15Encyclopedia of the Enlightenment (edited book)Oxford University Press. 2003.Defining the Enlightenment as the "long eighteenth century," the Encyclopedia focuses on the entire range of philosophic and social changes engendered by the Enlightenment. It extends the conventional geographical boundaries of the Enlightenment, covering not only France, England, Scotland, the Low Countries, Italy, English-speaking North America, the German states, and Hapsburg Austria but also Iberian, Ibero-American, Jewish, Russian, and Eastern European cultures. Nor does the Encyclopedia of…Read more
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Pt. 3. the enlightenment and its criticsIn Darren Staloff, Louis Markos, Jeremy duQuesnay Adams, Phillip Cary, Dennis Dalton, Alan Charles Kors, Jeremy Shearmur, Robert C. Solomon, Robert Kane, Kathleen Marie Higgins, Mark W. Risjord & Douglas Kellner (eds.), Great Minds of the Western Intellectual Tradition, Teaching Co.. 2000.Lecture 1. Locke's theory of knowledge, guest lecture / by Alan Kors ; lecture 2. Locke's political theory, guest lecture / by Dennis Dalton ; lecture 3. montesquiey and the beginnings of political science ; lecture 4. Berkeley's idealism and the critique of materialism ; lecture 5. Hume's epistemiology ; lecture 6. Hume's theory of morality ; lecture 7. Smith's wealth of nations ; lecture 8. Rousseau's dissent, the challenge to the idea of progress, guest lecture / by Alan Kors ; lecture 9. Kan…Read more
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2Mind, body, and soul: Ideas in context: Alan Charles KorsModern Intellectual History 7 (3): 643-652. 2010.Ann Thomson's Bodies of Thought is simultaneously an outgrowth of her prior work and a new direction in her scholarship. She has done rigorous and original study of the mid-eighteenth-century French materialist Julien Offray de La Mettrie, offering important critical editions and major articles. She also has done fruitful studies of broader issues of eighteenth-century medicine, vitalism, Epicureanism, and clandestine literature. These endeavors immersed her in precisely the consequences—both in…Read more
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10PART II. The Members of the Coterie Holbachique and the Society of the Ancien RégimeIn D'Holbach's Coterie: An Enlightenment in Paris, Princeton University Press. pp. 147-258. 2015.
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11Encyclopedia of the Enlightenment: 4 Volumes: Print and E-Reference Editions Available (edited book)Oup Usa. 2002.Covering the "long" Enlightenment, from the rise of Descartes' disciples in 1670 to the restoration of the Bourbon monarchy in 1815, the Encyclopedia of the Enlightenment contains articles ranging from discussions of mercantilism and democracy to the dissemination of ideas in salons and coffeehouses. It is also an e-reference text from Oxford's Digital Reference Shelf.
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106Can there be an “after socialism”?Social Philosophy and Policy 20 (1): 1-17. 2003.There is no “after socialism.” There will not be in our or in our children's lifetimes an “after socialism.” In the wake of the Holocaust and the ruins of Nazism, anti-Semitism lay low a bit, embarrassed by its worst manifestation, its actual exercise of state dominion. In the wake of the collapse of Communism, socialism's only real and full experience of power, socialism too lays low for just a moment. Socialism's causes in the West, however, remain ever with us, the product of the convergence …Read more
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14BibliographyIn D'Holbach's Coterie: An Enlightenment in Paris, Princeton University Press. pp. 331-346. 2015.
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17th/18th Century Philosophy |
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17th/18th Century Philosophy |
Philosophical Traditions |
European Philosophy |