The Enlightenment and the intellectual foundations of modern culture [[electronic resource] /] / Louis Dupri

• Record Nr.: UNINA9910452214603321
• Autore: Dupré Louis K. <1925->
• Pubbl/distr/stampa: New Haven, : Yale University Press, c2004
• ISBN: 1-281-72287-1; 9786611722876; 0-300-13368-5
• Descrizione fisica: 1 online resource (415 p.)
• Disciplina: 190/.9/033
• Soggetti: Enlightenment; Civilization, Modern; Philosophy and civilization; Electronic books.
• Lingua di pubblicazione: Inglese
• Formato: Materiale a stampa
• Livello bibliografico: Monografia
• Note generali: Description based upon print version of record.
• Nota di bibliografia: Includes bibliographical references and index.
• Nota di contenuto: A definition and a provisional justification -- A different cosmos -- A new sense of selfhood -- Toward a new conception of art -- The moral crisis -- The origin of modern social theories -- The new science of history -- The religious crisis -- The faith of the philosophers -- Spiritual continuity and renewal.
• Sommario/riassunto: The prestige of the Enlightenment has declined in recent years. Many consider its thinking abstract, its art and poetry uninspiring, and the assertion that it introduced a new age of freedom and progress after centuries of darkness and superstition presumptuous. In this book, an eminent scholar of modern culture shows that the Enlightenment was a more complex phenomenon than most of its detractors and advocates assume. It includes rationalist as well as antirationalist tendencies, a critique of traditional morality and religion as well as an attempt to establish them on new foundations, even the beginning of a moral renewal and a spiritual revival.The Enlightenment's critique of tradition was a necessary consequence of the fundamental modern principle that we humans are solely responsible for the course of history. Hence we can accept no belief, no authority, no institutions that are not in some ; way justified. This foundation, for better or for worse, determined the course of the following centuries. Despite contemporary reactions against it, the Enlightenment continues to shape our own time and still distinguishes Western culture from any other.

Imagining the nation in nature [[electronic resource] ] : landscape preservation and German identity, 1885-1945 / / Thomas M. Lekan

• Record Nr.: UNINA9910455159603321
• Autore: Lekan Thomas M
• Pubbl/distr/stampa: Cambridge, MA, : Harvard University Press, c2004
• ISBN: 0-674-04007-4
• Descrizione fisica: 1 online resource (343 p.)
• Classificazione: AR 13120
• Disciplina: 333.72/0943/0904
• Soggetti: Landscape protection - Social aspects - Germany - History - 20th century; Landscapes - Psychological aspects - Germany - History - 20th century; National socialism and science; Electronic books.
• Lingua di pubblicazione: Inglese
• Formato: Materiale a stampa
• Livello bibliografico: Monografia
• Note generali: Bibliographic Level Mode of Issuance: Monograph
• Nota di bibliografia: Includes bibliographical references (p. [267]-323) and index.
• Nota di contenuto: Frontmatter -- Contents -- Map of the Rhine Province -- Introduction -- 1 Nature’s Homelands: The Origins of Landscape Preservation, 1885–1914 -- 2 The Militarization of Nature and Heimat, 1914–1923 -- 3 The Landscape of Modernity in the Weimar Era -- 4 From Landscape to Lebensraum: Race and Environment under Nazism -- 5 Constructing Nature in the Third Reich -- Conclusion -- Abbreviations -- Notes -- Sources -- Acknowledgments -- Index
• Sommario/riassunto: One of the most powerful nationalist ideas in modern Europe is the assertion that there is a link between people and their landscape. Focusing on the heart of German romanticism, the Rhineland, Thomas Lekan examines nature protection activities from Wilhelmine Germany through the end of the Nazi era to illuminate the relationship between environmental reform and the cultural construction of national identity. In the late nineteenth century, anxieties about national character ; infused ecological concerns about industrialization, spurring landscape preservationists to protect the natural environment. In the Rhineland's scenic rivers, forests, and natural landmarks, they saw Germany as a timeless and organic nation rather than a recently patchworked political construct. Landscape preservation also served conservative social ends during a period of rapid modernization, as outdoor pursuits were promoted to redirect class-conscious factory workers and unruly youth from "crass materialism" to the German homeland. Lekan's examination of Nazi environmental policy challenges recent work on the "green" Nazis by showing that the Third Reich systematically subordinated environmental concerns to war mobilization and racial hygiene. This book is an original contribution not only to studies of national identity in modern Germany but also to the growing field of European environmental history. Table of Contents: Introduction 1. Nature's Homelands: The Origins of Landscape Preservation, 1885-1914 2. The Militarization of Nature and Heimat, 1914-1923 3. The Landscape of Modernity in theWeimar Era 4. From Landscape to Lebensraum: Race and Environment under Nazism 5. Constructing Nature in the Third Reich Conclusion Abbreviations Notes Sources Acknowledgments Index Writing squarely within the idiom of the 'invented tradition' and the 'imagined nation,' Thomas Lekan argues that in the wake of belated unification and at a time of rapid industrialization, the German landscape came to be seen as a touchstone of national identity. He questions the idea that those engaged in landscape preservation were simply 'antimodern,' and he challenges both scholars who have seen a straightforward continuity from pre-1933 preservationist sentiment to Nazism and those who have made exaggerated claims for the Third Reich as the progenitor of modern green politics. This is a welcome contribution to the literature on local and national identity, joining works by Celia Applegate and Alon Confino, and on the environmental history of modern Germany. Both scholarly and original, Imagining the Nation in Nature is an impressive achievement.--David Blackbourn, Harvard UniversityThis important and timely book contributes to our understanding of German identity as well as to modern concepts of environmentalism and nature. Lekan's valuable contribution elucidates the modern, technocratic, and therapeutic vision of preservation that linked Weimar and the Third Reich. His analysis of Nazi bio-nature is significant and thought-provoking.--Alon Confino, University of Virginia