The Meaning of Enlightenment

Pictures

• Immanuel Kant (1724-1804)

• Michel Foucault (1926-1984)

• Foucault and his books.

• Students at Berkeley present Foucault with "un chapeau de cowboy."

Outline of Today's Lecture

• Historiography of the Enlightenment
  • Peter Gay and the "Party of Humanity"

  • Robert Darnton's "Enlightenment from Below"

  • The "summit view of Enlightenment" vs. "grubbing in the archives"

• Kant's assessment of Enlightenment
  • Sapere aude!

  • Power and authority: the limits of Enlightenment

• A few words about the postmodern attitude
  • Jean-François Lyotard: "an incredulity towards metanarratives"

  • Jacques Derrida: deconstructing "the logos"

  • Michel Foucault: an archeology of the modern self

• The Meaning of Enlightenment: Some Concluding Remarks
  • Enlightenment in the Academy

  • Enlightenment in our Political Culture

  • Enlightenment in our Lives

Names, Terms and Concepts

• Grub Street vs. "le monde"

• Public and Private Reason

• Genealogy

• The "multiple/decentered" postmodern subject

Additional resources available on the Internet

• Sketch of Kant's Life and Ideas.

• Foucault Trading Card. What more can I say?

• Postmodern Culture is an on-line journal which explores issues of (you guessed it!) postmodernism.