0000000000824346
AUTHOR
Anne Pollok
showing 2 related works from this author
How the Better Reason Wins
2020
Abstract This paper considers Mendelssohn’s attempt at a definition of Enlightenment in terms of Bildung, comprising the theoretical element of the enlightenment of reason with the practical requirements of culture. To avoid a possible dialectics of enlightenment, where the very methods one uses to enlighten harbour the seeds of new blindness, Mendelssohn advocates considering the lively connections between people, the role of traditions and personal relations in the formation of an individual self, and the connections we should have to our past, present, and future. Thus, his essay from 1784 can be read as an apt defence of a dialogical notion of freedom within the Enlightenment era.
Femininity and the Salon
2020
This chapter concerns Salon Culture and its role as a distributor of philosophy at the beginning of the nineteenth century, marking the importance of the mostly unacknowledged contribution by female thinkers. The salon presents the space between private and profession in which the participants could try out new roles and change old ones. Thus, the establishment of sentimental circles such as the Tugendbund around Henriette Herz, the extensive net of communication and representation established by Rahel Varnhagen, the opportunity to publish under either pseudonyms or hidden behind a male editorship used by writers such as Dorothea Schlegel may all count as first attempts to form a role as sa…