The best of the Enlightenment

Diderot. D'Alembert.

Not Voltaire.

Your top picks?

Originally posted by Bosse de Nage
Diderot. D'Alembert.

Not Voltaire.

Your top picks?

Philidor(have to throw in at least one chess genius). Rousseau. John Locke. I like your picks as well.

Was ist Aufklarung?

Hume, Lessing and Kant, as well as the foregoing. But whatever you consider not to be the best might still be more vital to what Enlightenment meant and means. There's a school of thought that Western thought has essentially revolved around the answer to the question, what is Enlightenment, since first it was posed (and perhaps before).

Love the juxtaposition of Locke and Rousseau above.

Originally posted by DrKF
Was ist Aufklarung?

Hume, Lessing and Kant, as well as the foregoing. But whatever you consider not to be the best might still be more vital to what Enlightenment meant and means. There's a school of thought that Western thought has essentially revolved around the answer to the question, what is Enlightenment, since first it was posed (and perhaps before).

Love the juxtaposition of Locke and Rousseau above.

I agree, I mean the Enlightenment's unthinkable without Voltaire, however much a jerk he was.

I'll throw in Berkeley (the silly dialogues), Sade ('Frenchmen, one more effort ... '😉 and Marx (as an untimely after-product and logical consequence).

Which Kant would you most like to have as an audiobook?

Originally posted by scacchipazzo
Philidor(have to throw in at least one chess genius). Rousseau. John Locke. I like your picks as well.

What music would you consider 'Enlightened'?

Originally posted by Bosse de Nage
I agree, I mean the Enlightenment's unthinkable without Voltaire, however much a jerk he was.

I'll throw in Berkeley (the silly dialogues), Sade ('Frenchmen, one more effort ... '😉 and Marx (as an untimely after-product and logical consequence).

Which Kant would you most like to have as an audiobook?

Great choice with Berkeley. I can always go back to him, and I've never been wholly satisfied that his most radical propositions have been - or can be - refuted. Radical idealism is always fun, I suppose... And Hume and Schopenhauer would have been different without Berkeley.

Sade is also a must - although it's more commentary on Sade that's important to our history of the Enlightenment and modernity, perhaps.

Modern figures like Freud, Marx and Nietsche are perhaps only the after-product and inevitable consequence of Enlightenment via Romanticism - so I'd also like to nominate the counter-Enlightenment(s) as some of the best of Enlightenment (and therefore, in a striking display of conformism, I'll have to nominate the three Critiques as the very best of Enlightenment, because of what they open up).

For my audiobook, I will have the Prolegomena, please, if only because it's relatively short.

Originally posted by Bosse de Nage
What music would you consider 'Enlightened'?

Probably Classical, but some very late Baroque might apply depending on the composer.

Originally posted by Bosse de Nage
What music would you consider 'Enlightened'?

From the era or now? Current music is a cacophony of garbage. From the era the great masters were always exploring new idioms, sounds, orchestrations and played with the dictums and constraints of the era. Beethoven, although somewhat later was the only true equivalent of enlightenment as was Berlioz. Schubert used enlightenment poetry for his lyrics for his lieder.

Originally posted by scacchipazzo
From the era or now? Current music is a cacophony of garbage. From the era the great masters were always exploring new idioms, sounds, orchestrations and played with the dictums and constraints of the era. Beethoven, although somewhat later was the only true equivalent of enlightenment as was Berlioz. Schubert used enlightenment poetry for his lyrics for his lieder.

From the era.

Beethoven was the first that came to mind; couldn't think of any others. Haydn? Somehow ...

Originally posted by DrKF
Great choice with Berkeley. I can always go back to him, and I've never been wholly satisfied that his most radical propositions have been - or can be - refuted. Radical idealism is always fun, I suppose... And Hume and Schopenhauer would have been different without Berkeley.

Sade is also a must - although it's more commentary on Sade that's important iobook, I will have the Prolegomena, please, if only because it's relatively short.

And it has a few jokes, or wry turns of phrase at least.

According to Heine, Kant deliberately chose a lousy style for the Critiques as a sort of weapon to invest his work with an aura of scientific respectability -- for, as Heine points out, Kant was often quite witty before he started pushing out the big ones.

Hegel = deathwish?

I find Berkeley very entertaining -- it's fun to imagine Hylas & Philonous in different settings (a modern office, a pub, a Turkish baths ... ). I think that Beckett was also haunted by Berkeley: 'world world world world world' could just as easily be 'mind mind mind mind mind'. But didn't Bertrand Russell succeed in showing that his reasoning rests on an equivocation between act and object?

Descartes, Newton and Leibniz. The rest were just in awe of these.

Originally posted by Palynka
Descartes, Newton and Leibniz. The rest were just in awe of these.

Leibniz fits well into a greatest hits anthology -- he wrote many short pieces that give a good idea of what he's on about. I'm not too sure about Descartes & Newton -- of course their influence cannot be disputed, but which of their writings would you pick? With Descartes, perhaps the musings on wax? For Newton, I'm tempted to go with an equation and something chosen at random from his writings on Revelation (just to show that Enlightenment can't shake off its shadow).

Originally posted by Bosse de Nage
Leibniz fits well into a greatest hits anthology -- he wrote many short pieces that give a good idea of what he's on about. I'm not too sure about Descartes & Newton -- of course their influence cannot be disputed, but which of their writings would you pick? With Descartes, perhaps the musings on wax? For Newton, I'm tempted to go with an equation and ...[text shortened]... rom his writings on Revelation (just to show that Enlightenment can't shake off its shadow).

It's obvious that I'm biased towards their contributions to mathematics. Hey, I also have no idea why you picked Diderot and D'Alembert.

What do you mean by best then? I thought this was more about chocolate or vanilla.

Originally posted by Palynka
It's obvious that I'm biased towards their contributions to mathematics. Hey, I also have no idea why you picked Diderot and D'Alembert.

What do you mean by best then? I thought this was more about chocolate or vanilla.

I was thinking along the lines of 'The Best of the 70s'. With a groovy psychedelic album cover.

Why Diderot? He was a quintessential Enlightenment man ... I also love 'Le neveu de Rameau'.

We had to get round to Leibniz, but he's one of the Enlightenment curveballs, to my mind - particularly when you stray away from his contribution to mathematics and in to metaphysics.

Playnka, I don't know - other than the maths bias - how you can exclude Kant from your list! Everyone and his goat was in awe of his accomplishments... But it's good to have a scienntist on-board, as I should think Bosse and I would just have continued to trade Idealist Top Trumps otherwise 😉

And Bosse, I'd be prepared to grant the Heine thesis some credence, except that it would take quite the effort of will to sustain that level of dry tedium over three massive volumes... I almost hope it wasn't a deliberate strategy...

The Berkeley-Russell refutation is excellent work, but I remain unconvinced: what is there of 'a colour in itself' (or any non-mental sense datum) which is not also (always already) the sensation of that colour (datum) for the human who perceives the colour (datum)? And beyond that to spectrum analysis, etc. in the case of colour, what is there of those 'objective' qualities that is not always already their perception? There may be a 'non-human' (ie objective) answer to that question, but it would not be possible for a human to avail himself of it.

I'll throw my hands up - not that there is much need by this stage - and nail my colours to the mast as something of a radical idealist...

I think your 'best of...' will have to be a double album, at least. But at least we get a gatefold sleeve with it...