Cultures of Learning and Patriotism in the Eighteenth Century

Speaker

Mikkel Munthe Jensen, Interdisziplinäres Zentrum für die Erforschung der Europäischen Aufklärung, Martin-Luther-Universität Halle-Wittenberg.

Book

Mikkel, Munthe Jensen, Patriotism and Reform in Nordic Universities during the Long Eighteenth Century. Oxford University Studies in the Enlightenment series, Liverpool UP, 2023.

Presentation

The study explores how the Nordic academic world and its learned cosmopolitan culture were challenged by the new political demands and patriotic needs of the eighteenth century. It examines how new political reforms and a growing sense of patriotism consolidated State and University in a joint effort to achieve greater ‘utility for the fatherland’. From the State’s perspective, universities became crucial instruments for the development of society in general and the state administration in particular.

As a result, the state also sought to exert much greater control over the universities’ purposes and activities. By introducing a series of comprehensive university reforms intended to strengthen the fatherland, the state and the growing patriotism challenged the academic culture and practices at the universities, which for centuries had been rooted in a learned cosmopolitanism. This development forced many eighteenth-century academics to reposition themselves between transnational academic ideals and territorially-oriented obligations to the fatherland.

Speaker

Leo Catana, Section of Philosophy, Department of Communication, UCPH.

Book

Jacob Brucker, Critical History of Philosophy: ‘Preliminary Discourse’ and ‘On the Socratic School’. Introduction, English translation and notes by Leo Catana. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2024.

Presentation

The German historian and minister Johann Jacob Brucker (1696-1770) is widely recognized as the father of modern historiography of philosophy. In 1742-1744, he published his Historia critica philosophiae in Leipzig. The second edition was published (again in Leipzig) in 1766-1767.

The Historia was the most comprehensive history of philosophy produced in the eighteenth century, influencing general histories of philosophy and many encyclopedia (including those by Zedler and Diderot) over the following two hundred years. Brucker played an overwhelming role in the transformation of history of philosophy from a historical to a philosophical discipline — a transformation that is often reflected in the present-day institutionalization of history of philosophy as an academic enterprise.

The book provides English translations of the ‘Dissertatio praeliminaris’, laying the methodological foundation of history of philosophy as a philosophical discipline, and of the chapter ‘De schola socratica’, demonstrating many of Brucker’s methodological precepts.

Speaker

Juliane Engelhardt (The Saxo Institute, UCPH)

Book

Juliane Engelhardt, Sociability and civic spirit in northern Europe. Practicing patriotism in the age of Enlightenment. Oxford University Studies in the Enlightenment, 2024

Presentation

The book is about a number of patriotic societies founded in Denmark and Norway in the late Enlightenment. Through these societies, the members aimed at implementing agrarian and industrial reforms, initiate philanthropic work and spread enlightenment among the general public.

The study uncovers the role of the societies internally among their members and externally in the wider public sphere. Internally, the societies played a significant role in the formation of the social identity of the emerging middling sort. Externally, members participated in public debates and explained the concepts of freedom, equality and solidarity.

This presentation will discuss the characteristics of the social identity of the middling sort and what the members' real goal was when they proclaimed that they wished to disseminate freedom, equality and solidarity among the population.