Kant and the Culture of Enlightenment

Contents

Contents
Acknowledgments vii Note on the Texts Used ix Introduction: A Critical Answer to the Question, What Is Enlightenment? 1 Chapter 1. The Enlightenment in Question 13 1. Enlightenment as an “Age of Criticism” 13 2. Diderot, Rousseau, and the Tasks of Criticism 16 3. Diderot’s Normative Impasse 20 4. Rousseau’s Conception of Freedom and Its Problems 30 5. Mendelssohn, Reinhold, and the Limits of Enlightenment 41 Chapter 2. The Idea of a Culture of Enlightenment 55 1. Kant’s Answer to the Question, What Is Enlightenment? 55 2. A New Approach to Independent Thinking 59 3. The Culture of Enlightenment: Public Argument as Social Practice 69 4. Communication, Autonomy, and the Maxims of Common Understanding 77 5. Reason’s Good Name and Reason’s Public 85 6. Power and Authority: Hamann on the Immature and Their Guardians 92 Chapter 3. Culture as a Historical Project 99 1. Kant’s Attempt at a Philosophical History 99 2. The “Plan of Nature”: History from a Political Perspective 104 3. Teleological Judgments of Nature and of Culture 112 v 4. Culture and Moral Progress: Two Perspectives on Rational Ends 118 5. The a priori Thread of History, Providence, and the Possibility of Hope 128 Chapter 4. Nature and the Criticism of Culture 133 1. Schiller on the Predicament of the “Moderns” 133 2. The Failures of Enlightenment 136 3. Nature Condemned: The Severity of Kantian Morality 142 4. Schiller’s “Aesthetic State” and Its Criticism 149 5. Nature, Reason, and the Beginning of Culture 154 Chapter 5. Culture after Enlightenment 159 1. Enlightenment and Its Discontents 159 2. Adorno and Horkheimer on Enlightened Thought 161 3. Foucault on the Origin of Norms 169 4. Gilligan on Mature Adulthood 176 5. Culture within the Bounds of Reason 183 Notes 187 Bibliography 231 Index 243 vi CONTENTS ...