[lit-ideas] The Scottish Enlightenment -- and *us*
- From: Jlsperanza@xxxxxxx
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Tue, 23 Oct 2007 20:55:56 EDT
Thanks to Ritchie for his comments and citations:
>It is Einbinder's view that the motive for Britannica
>was not as [J. L.] Speranza suggests, an attempt to
>mimic Diderot's *intellectual* achievement, but rather
>--plus ca change--to make a groat or two by copying
>something that seemed to be selling well [in Paris].
>Thus an engraver, a printer and William Smellie
>cobbled together the first edition. Other writers take a
>view closer to [Speranza].
I like your 'plus ca change', what a good example of a negationless negation.
One such writer seems to be the blogger at
blogs.britannica.com/blog/main/blogs.britannica.com/blog/main/<WBR>2007/06/the-an
who unashamedly writes:
"The EB was founded in 1768 by members
of the Scottish Enlightment who were the
“Web 2.0″ of their time"
Perhaps I should spell that 'EnglightENment' and tell that perhaps another
interesting source seems to be, voila, the article for "Scottish
Enlightenment" in, voila, the "EB" online:
_http://www.britannica.com/eb/article-261867/Scottish-Enlightenment_
(http://www.britannica.com/eb/article-261867/Scottish-Enlightenment)
"Those who date the end of the Scottish Enlightenment to
the beginning of the French Revolution in 1789 are vulnerable
[like Superman to kryptonite?] to the fact that Smith
lived until 1790 and Hutton died in 1797."
Since the EB was first published in 1768, when France was still a monarchy,
I grant that it's a controversial issue.
"The Scottish Enlightenment" seems to become, to me, one of those hateful
phrases, as it were, a hateful phrase, if I were to read, repeatedly, of "The
Argentine Enlightenment". If you look at the wikipedia reference list for
'Scottish Englightenment" it seems that whoever was enlightened _and_ Scottish
was part of it -- which makes the denomination, as R. Paul will agree,
'tautological'.
Cheers,
JL
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