For many readers in the English-speaking world, Goethe is somehow separate from the European intellectual and literary tradition. In this unique and wide-ranging study, Matthew Bell aims to correct this view by showing how Goethe portrayed human beings as part of a natural continuum, very much in the spirit of the Enlightenment. Dr Bell's fresh readings of Goethe's major and lesser-known texts are set against the background of the science and philosophy of the age, and the writer's debts to other thinkers are analysed. The development of Goethe as a writer and thinker is traced from his sentimental epistolary novel Werther - read in the context of the rise of psychological theory in the Enlightenment - to the emergence of his own theory of 'empirical psychology' in the great roman a clef of 1809, Die Wahlverwandtschaften. In a major new interpretation of Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre, Matthew Bell follows the ideal of organic growth from the novel's origins in Enlightenment optimism to its revision in an atmosphere of post-revolutionary scepticism. Placing Goethe in an anthropological context, Goethe's Naturalistic Anthropology demonstrates that eighteenth-century anthropological thought provides an essential, hitherto overlooked context for the understanding of Goethe's literary enterprise from Werther to Die Wahlverwandtschaften.

This is the first comprehensive analysis of late eighteenth-century Irish patriot thought and its development into 1790s radical republicanism. It is a history of the rich political ideas and languages that emerged from the tumultuous events and colourful individuals of this pivotal period in Irish history. Stephen Small's exploration of the ideology of the movements for legislative independence, parliamentary reform, Catholic relief and separation from Britain sheds new light on the Rebellion of 1798 and the origins of Irish republican nationalism.

This book describes how and why the early modern period witnessed the marginalisation of astrology in Western natural philosophy, and the re-adoption of the cosmological view of the existence of a plurality of worlds in the universe, allowing the possibility of extraterrestrial life. Founded in the mid-1990s, the discipline of astrobiology combines the search for extraterrestrial life with the study of terrestrial biology - especially its origins, its evolution and its presence in extreme environments. This book offers a history of astrobiology's attempts to understand the nature of life in a larger cosmological context. Specifically, it describes the shift of early modern cosmology from a paradigm of celestial influence to one of celestial inhabitation. Although these trends are regarded as consequences of Copernican cosmology, and hallmarks of a modern world view, they are usually addressed separately in the historical literature. Unlike others, this book takes a broad approach that examines the relationship of the two. From Influence to Inhabitation will benefit both historians of astrology and historians of the extraterrestrial life debate, an audience which includes researchers and advanced students studying the history and philosophy of astrobiology. It will also appeal to historians of natural philosophy, science, astronomy and theology in the early modern period.

The Oxford English Dictionary occupies a special place in the history of English, cultural as well as linguistic. Lexicography and the OED sets out to explore the pioneering endeavours in both lexicography and lexicology which led to the making of its first edition. Making use of much unpublished archive material, this collection of twelve essays brings a wide variety of perspectives to bear upon the OED, and the particular problems posed by the attempt to break new ground in its formation.

This book offers a history of the interdisciplinary development of Victorian psychology alongside detailed studies of three leading writers: Alexander Bain, Herbert Spencer, and G. H. Lewes. Examining work in several different fields, including evolutionary theory, philosophy, literature, and the bio-medical sciences, it sets the development of psychology in the context of the social and intellectual pressures of the time. The book includes detailed analyses of the work of George Eliot, whose writing is saturated with ideas developed alongside those of the great psychologists who formed her circle.

This book is an introduction to the philosophical ideas of Plato, Rene Descartes, Baruch Spinoza, and Immanuel Kant on the role of reason which have contributed to the evolution of sociological thought. Reason, according to Rickman, has a relevance to sociology that has not been explored. Because he is interested in the philosophical reflections which proved influential for understanding the social world, he deals systematically with the four philosophers' central arguments and one or more of their most important and easily available texts. The book's bibliography lists books quoted and referred to in the text and offers suggestions for further reading in the philosophy of the social sciences.

This text relates Hegel to preceding and succeeding political philosophers. The Hegelian notion of the interdependence of political philosophy and its history is demonstrated by the links established between Hegel and his predecessors and successors. Hegel's political theory is illuminated by essays showing its critical assimilation of Plato and Hobbes, and by studies reviewing subsequent critiques of its standpoint by Stirner, Marx and Collingwood. The relevance of Hegel to contemporary political philosophy is highlighted in essays which compare Hegel to Lyotard and Rawls.

The role of natural magic in the rise of seventeenth-century experimental science has been the subject of lively controversy for several decades. Now Penelope Gouk introduces a new element into the debate: how music mediated between these two domains. Arguing that changing musical practice in sixteenth-century Europe affected seventeenth-century English thought on science and magic, she maps the various relationships among these apparently separate disciplines. Gouk explores these relationships in several ways. She adopts the methods of social geography to discuss the disciplinary, social, and intellectual overlapping of music, science, and natural magic. She gives a historical account of the emergence of acoustics in English science, the harmonically based physics of Robert Hooke, and the position of harmonics within Newton's transformation of natural philosophy. And she provides a gallery of images in which contemporary representations of instruments, practices, and concepts demonstrate the way in which musical models informed and transformed those of natural philosophy. Gouk shows that as the "occult" features of music became subject to the new science of experimentation, and as their causes became evident, so natural magic was pushed outside the realms of scientific discourse.

This volume begins in a period in which bitterness and revenge vied with hope and a new ideal of liberty. The Reconstruction imposed by the North upon the South is examined by the author from all points of view. He traces the steps by which the economy recovered and by which the USA emerged as the world's industrial giant. Factors as various as the anarchy of the Wild West and the gold rush, the completion of the railroad system, the maturing of the great centers of learning, the numerous manifestations of opportunity and strength led to the formation of a distinct culture and to a new consciousness of nationhood. They also gave birth, Professor Wright argues, to the American Dream, an elusive idea of such force that it informed much of the twentieth century in the USA and, as American power became pre-eminent, influenced the world at large. After describing the key American involvement in the European, Pacific and Asian wars, and the development of culture, politics, and ideology at home, the author examines the dissipation of that dream in the disillusion and corruption of the Reagan years.

Ironically, this was the time when the USA emerged as the world's sole super-power. And the country remained - as it had been for almost all its history - the ideal destination for the poor and downtrodden of the world, a beacon of opportunity, hope and, above all, of liberty.

Inner Hygiene explores the serious health threat of constipation, and discusses the extraordinary variety of preventive and curative measures that have been developed to save people from the toxic effects of intestinal irregularity. The book examines the evolution over the last two centuries of the belief that constipation is a disease brought on by an unnatural lifestyle of urban, industrial society. Particular attention is given to the many constipation therapies that people have used, including laxatives, enemas, mineral waters, bran cereals, yogurts, electrotherapy, calisthenics, rectal dilation devices, and many other remedies. The story is carried up to the present and demonstrates that many of constipation therapies of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries are continuing into the twenty-first.

This is an important new analysis of the problematic relationship between dreams and madness as perceived by nineteenth-century French writers, thinkers, and doctors. Those wishing to know the nature of madness, wrote Voltaire, should observe their dreams. The relationship between the dream-state and madness is a key theme of nineteenth-century European, and specifically French, thought. The meaning of dreams and associated phenomena such as somnambulism, ecstasy, and hallucinations (including those induced by hashish) preoccupied writers, philosophers, and psychiatrists. In this path-breaking cross-disciplinary study, Tony James shows how doctors (such as Esquirol, Lelut, and Janet), thinkers (including Maine de Biran and Taine), and writers (for example, Balzac, Nerval, Baudelaire, Victor Hugo, and Rimbaud) grappled in very different ways with the problems raised by the so-called 'phenomena of sleep'. Were historical figures such as Socrates or Pascal in fact mad? Might dream be a source of creativity, rather than a merely subsidiary, 'automatic' function? What of lucid dreaming? By exploring these questions, Dreams, Madness, and Creativity in Nineteenth-Century France makes good a considerable gap in the history of pre-Freudian psychology and sheds new and fascinating light on the central French writers of the period.

It has been called "the most singular centaur that religion and science have ever produced" (Franz Boll). Astrology as a cultural form has puzzled and fascinated generations of humankind. It reached its apogee in the European Renaissance, when it flourished in literature, political expression, medicine, art, and all the other areas of endeavor catalogued in this unique collection. Brill's Companion to Renaissance Astrology brings together a wide array of expertise from around the globe to explain the method and matter of this cultural form, including the Arab and Classical heritage, the medieval tradition, the clash with organized religion, the influence on knowledge and the competition with newly emerging ways of knowing, summarizing the current state of research and suggesting new paths. Contributors include: Giuseppe Bezza, Dieter Blume, Claudia Brosseder, Brendan Dooley, William Eamon, Ornella Faracovi, Hiro Hirai, Wolfgang Hubner, Eileen Reeves, Steven Vanden Broecke, and Graziella Federici Vescovini.

Drawing upon a rich set of asylum patient case records, Sex, Religion, and the Making of Modern Madness in Germany reconstructs the encounter of state officials and medical practitioners with peasant madness at a transitional time in both the history of psychiatry, and German history during the period 1815 to 1849. Focusing on religious madness, nymphomania, masturbatory insanity, and Jewishness, it probes the daily encounters in which psychiatric categories were applied, experienced, and resisted in the settings of family, village, and insane asylum.

"A ready reference aid and an inspiration to designers … All in all the best book now available on symbols." —Library Journal This unparalleled reference represents a major achievement in the field of graphic design. Famed industrial designer Henry Dreyfuss recognized the importance of symbols in communicating more quickly and effectively; for many years he and his staff collected and codified graphic symbols as they are used in all walks of life throughout the world. The result is this "dictionary" of universally used graphic symbols. Henry Dreyfuss designed this sourcebook to be as practical and easy to use as possible by arranging the symbol information within ingeniously devised sections: Basic Symbols represents a concise and highly selective grouping of symbols common to all disciplines (on-off, up-down, etc.). Disciplines provides symbols used in accommodations and travel, agriculture, architecture, business, communications, engineering, photography, sports, safety, traffic controls, and many other areas. Color lists the meanings of each of the colors in various worldwide applications and cultures. Graphic Form displays symbols from all disciplines grouped according to form (squares, circles, arrows, human figures, etc.) creating a unique way to identify a symbol out of context, as well as giving designers a frame of reference for developing new symbols. To make the sourcebook truly universal, the Table of Contents contains translations of each of the section titles and discipline areas into 17 languages in addition to English.

This book is the first comprehensive examination of the close relationship that obtained between leading groups of British socialists and American progressives in the first three decades of the twentieth century. Employing new methods of conceptual and institutional analysis, and drawing on extensive original archival research, the book examines the efforts of leading political theorists to transform the initially distinctive theories of the British and American lefts into a single unified ideology. In so doing it challenges traditional narratives emphasising the exceptional development the American and British lefts, and argues instead that the central theoretical and practical commitments of both movements were constantly shaped and reshaped by international ideological exchange.

This is a collection of writings by the late Lord Quinton, one of the wittiest and most versatile philosophers of his generation. The first part ranges over the last four hundred years of intellectual history, discussing such thinkers as Francis Bacon, Spinoza, Coleridge, Kant, Hegel, T. H. Green, Dewey, Quine, and Ayer. The subject of the second part of the volume is, broadly speaking, value in human society: Quinton discusses freedom, morality, politics, language, culture, and the relation between humans and animals. Together these writings demonstrate the enormous breadth of their author's learning, and the clarity, elegance, and urbanity of his style. Seven of the pieces are previously unpublished.

The "Key Issues" series aims to make available the contemporary responses that met important books and debates on their first appearance. These take the form of journal articles, book extracts, public letters, sermons and pamphlets which provides an insight into the historical relevance and the social and political context in which a publication or particular topic emerged. The 1870s is a key decade in the evolution of British thinking about the nature, purpose and future of empire. Increasing economic competition began to disturb the assumption about Britain's leadership in technology and in the world economy. The growth of other countries, most notably the United States and Germany, also put a question mark over Britain's survival as a great power. These changes set in motion a reappraisal of Britain's empire and its importance to the motherland, and a debate as to whether colonialism and imperialism were a burden rather than a benefit to Britain. The discussions on the 1870s set the agenda for the debates of the next half-century. This text documents the writings that were central to this debate, and includes contributions by British thinkers, statesmen and officials such as J.A. Froude, Robert Lowe, Edward Dicey, Frederic Seebohm, Lord Carnarvon, Gladstone, Julius Vogel and Lord Blachford.

Ever since the Middle Ages the Otherworld of Faerie has been the object of serious intellectual scrutiny. What science in the end dismissed as airy nothings was given a local habitation and a name by art. This book presents some of the main chapters from the history and tradition of otherworldly spirits and fairies in the folklore and literature of the British Isles and Northern Europe. In eleven contributions different experts deal with some of the main problems posed by the scholarly and artistic confrontation with the Otherworld, which not only fuelled the imagination, but also led to the ultimate redundancy of learned perceptions of that Otherworld as it was finally obfuscated by the clarity of an enlightened age. Contributors include: Henk Dragstra, John Flood, Julian Goodare, Tette Hofstra, Robert Maslen, Richard North, Karin E. Olsen, David J. Parkinson, Rudolf Suntrup, Jan R. Veenstra, and Helen Wilcox.

Paul Abela presents a powerful, experience-sensitive form of realism about the relation between mind and world, based on an innovative interpretation of Kant. Abela breaks with tradition in taking seriously Kant's claim that his Transcendental Idealism yields a form of empirical realism, and giving a realist analysis of major themes of the Critique of Pure Reason. Abela's blending of Kantian scholarship with contemporary epistemology offers a new way of resolving philosophical debates about realism.

This is the first full study in English of the German historicist tradition. Frederick C. Beiser surveys the major German thinkers on history from the middle of the eighteenth century until the early twentieth century, providing an introduction to each thinker and the main issues in interpreting and appraising his thought. The volume offers new interpretations of well-known philosophers such as Johann Gottfried Herder and Max Weber, and introduces others who are scarcely known at all, including J. A. Chladenius, Justus Moser, Heinrich Rickert, and Emil Lask. Beyond an exploration of the historical and intellectual context of each thinker, Beiser illuminates the sources and reasons for the movement of German historicism--one of the great revolutions in modern Western thought, and the source of our historical understanding of the human world.

Multiple Normalities enhances sociological understandings of normality by illustrating it with the help of British novels. It demonstrates commonalities and differences between the meanings of normality in these two periods, exemplifying the emergence of the multiple normalities and the transformation of ways in which we give meaning to the world.

This collection of original essays by prominent historians from the United States, Great Britain, Canada, and Germany provides new insight into the social, political and intellectual components of German conservatism from its origins in the late-18th century through to the end of the Third Reich. The essays combine fresh empirical research with new theoretical and historiographical perspectives to provide the basis for a collective reassessment of the role that conservatism has played in Germany's national development. The collection thus serves to fill a prominent gap in the existing body of secondary literature on modern German history and to provide the history of German conservatism with the sort of detailed attention that German liberalism and socialism have recently received.

This book deals with reactions to geological discoveries in early nineteenth-century England. How did theologians cope with new scientific evidence of the antiquity of the world which was contrary to accepted biblical chronology? And what repercussions did this picture have on philosophers, poets and novelists?
The first part of the book concentrates on Charles Lyell's religious and scientific views. This is followed by a study of William Buckland, Adam Segdwick and William Whewell, three clergymen who were also geologists. The last section explores the literary reception of the revolutionary discoveries of Lyell and his contemporaries.