James Schmidt
This blog is about the Enlightenment, considered both as an historical period and as an ongoing project. It is concerned with eighteenth-century questions and their implications for the present.
I divide my time between the departments of History, Philosophy, and Political Science at Boston University and my research has focused on how the eighteenth century thought about the concept of “enlightenment” and what has happened to it since, particularly at the hands of Max Horkheimer, Theodor Adorno, Michel Foucault, Jürgen Habermas, and the Oxford English Dictionary.
Categories used most frequently by the blogger:
History of Concepts Begriffsgeschichte Kant Adorno Horkheimer Foucault nGrams Isaiah Berlin Habermas Dialectic of Enlightenment Counter-Enlightenment translation Exile Studies Culture Industry rants Cassirer religion the OED Popper German Museum
A Note on the Anniversary of my Favorite Dream
17 December 2020
Yes, I know, this site has (shall we say?) been rather quiet in recent years. The explanation, in part, is that I have been chasing down other rabbit holes and have been reluctant...
A Postscript to “What Was Theodor Adorno Doing in Thomas Mann’s Garden”
12 January 2019
Back in 2013, I posted a discussion of the peculiar story that Katia Mann told in her memoirs about Theodor Adorno’s alleged demand that Thomas Mann rectify his failure to mention...
The Source List for the 1790 Table of Usages of the Term “Aufklärung”
6 August 2017
What follows is the “List of Examples” that appears at the start of Part II of the “Kritischer Versuch über das Wort Aufklärung (Beschluss),” Deutsche...
The Word “Enlightenment”: A German Table of Usages from 179
6 August 2017
Discussion of German attempts to answer the question “what is enlightenment?” have tended to focus on the debate launched in the pages of the Berlinische Monatsschrift by...