Martin Mulsow - Böcker

A compelling alternative account of the history of knowledge from the Renaissance to the EnlightenmentUntil now the history of knowledge has largely been about formal and documented accumulation, concentrating on systems, collections, academies, and institutions. The central narrative has been one of advancement, refinement, and expansion. Martin Mulsow tells a different story. Knowledge can be lost: manuscripts are burned, oral learning dies with its bearers, new ideas are suppressed by censors. Knowledge Lost is a history of efforts, from the Renaissance to the Enlightenment, to counter such loss. It describes how critics of ruling political and religious regimes developed tactics to preserve their views; how they buried their ideas in footnotes and allusions; how they circulated their tracts and treatises in handwritten copies; and how they commissioned younger scholars to spread their writings after death.Filled with exciting stories, Knowledge Lost follows the trail of precarious knowledge through a series of richly detailed episodes. It deals not with the major themes of metaphysics and epistemology, but rather with interpretations of the Bible, Orientalism, and such marginal zones as magic. And it focuses not on the usual major thinkers, but rather on forgotten or half-forgotten members of the “knowledge underclass,” such as Pietro della Vecchia, a libertine painter and intellectual; Charles-César Baudelot, an antiquarian and numismatist; and Johann Christoph Wolf, a pastor, Hebrew scholar, and witness to the persecution of heretics.Offering a fascinating new approach to the intellectual history of early modern Europe, Knowledge Lost is also an ambitious attempt to rethink the very concept of knowledge.

A compelling alternative account of the history of knowledge from the Renaissance to the EnlightenmentUntil now the history of knowledge has largely been about formal and documented accumulation, concentrating on systems, collections, academies, and institutions. The central narrative has been one of advancement, refinement, and expansion. Martin Mulsow tells a different story. Knowledge can be lost: manuscripts are burned, oral learning dies with its bearers, new ideas are suppressed by censors. Knowledge Lost is a history of efforts, from the Renaissance to the Enlightenment, to counter such loss. It describes how critics of ruling political and religious regimes developed tactics to preserve their views; how they buried their ideas in footnotes and allusions; how they circulated their tracts and treatises in handwritten copies; and how they commissioned younger scholars to spread their writings after death.Filled with exciting stories, Knowledge Lost follows the trail of precarious knowledge through a series of richly detailed episodes. It deals not with the major themes of metaphysics and epistemology, but rather with interpretations of the Bible, Orientalism, and such marginal zones as magic. And it focuses not on the usual major thinkers, but rather on forgotten or half-forgotten members of the “knowledge underclass,” such as Pietro della Vecchia, a libertine painter and intellectual; Charles-César Baudelot, an antiquarian and numismatist; and Johann Christoph Wolf, a pastor, Hebrew scholar, and witness to the persecution of heretics.Offering a fascinating new approach to the intellectual history of early modern Europe, Knowledge Lost is also an ambitious attempt to rethink the very concept of knowledge.

The early German Enlightenment is seen as a reform movement that broke free from traditional ties without falling into anti-Christian and extremist positions, on the basis of secular natural law, an anti-metaphysical epistemology, and new social ethics. But how did the works which were radical and critical of religion during this period come about? And how do they relate to the dominant 'moderate' Enlightenment? Martin Mulsow offers fresh and surprising answers to these questions by reconstructing the emergence and dissemination of some of the radical writings created between 1680 and 1720. The Hidden Origins of the German Enlightenment explores the little-known freethinkers, persecuted authors, and secretly circulating manuscripts of the era, applying an interdisciplinary perspective to the German Enlightenment. By engaging with these cross-regional, clandestine texts, a dense and highly original picture emerges of the German early Enlightenment, with its strong links with the experience of the rest of Europe.

The early German Enlightenment is seen as a reform movement that broke free from traditional ties without falling into anti-Christian and extremist positions, on the basis of secular natural law, an anti-metaphysical epistemology, and new social ethics. But how did the works which were radical and critical of religion during this period come about? And how do they relate to the dominant 'moderate' Enlightenment? Martin Mulsow offers fresh and surprising answers to these questions by reconstructing the emergence and dissemination of some of the radical writings created between 1680 and 1720. The Hidden Origins of the German Enlightenment explores the little-known freethinkers, persecuted authors, and secretly circulating manuscripts of the era, applying an interdisciplinary perspective to the German Enlightenment. By engaging with these cross-regional, clandestine texts, a dense and highly original picture emerges of the German early Enlightenment, with its strong links with the experience of the rest of Europe.

This volume brings together key findings of the long-term research project ‘Religious Individualisation in Historical Perspective’ (Max Weber Centre for Advanced Cultural and Social Studies, Erfurt University). Combining a wide range of disciplinary approaches, methods and theories, the volume assembles over 50 contributions that explore and compare processes of religious individualisation in different religious environments and historical periods, in particular in Asia, the Mediterranean, and Europe from antiquity to the recent past. Contrary to standard theories of modernisation, which tend to regard religious individualisation as a specifically modern or early modern as well as an essentially Western or Christian phenomenon, the chapters reveal processes of religious individualisation in a large variety of non-Western and pre-modern scenarios. Furthermore, the volume challenges prevalent views that regard religions primarily as collective phenomena and provides nuanced perspectives on the appropriation of religious agency, the pluralisation of religious options, dynamics of de-traditionalisation and privatisation, the development of elaborated notions of the self, the facilitation of religious deviance, and on the notion of dividuality.

Dieser Band bietet einen Einblick in die Arbeit der Kolleg-Forschungsgruppe „Religiöse Individualisierung in historischer Perspektive", erschließt bibliographisch ihre Ergebnisse und fasst sie zusammen: Individualisierung ist keine Folge der Modernisierung. Religion ist Motor, nicht Gegenspieler von Individualisierung. Religiöse Individualisierung ist außerhalb des „Westens" und vor verschiedenen „Modernen" ebenso zu finden wie in ihnen.

Wann ist die Renaissance zu Ende gegangen? Frances Yates hat ihr Ende provokativ präzise mit 1614 angegeben, dem Jahr, in dem Isaac Casaubon die angeblich uralten Schriften des Hermes Trismegistos als spätantike Fälschungen entlarvt hat. Doch Casaubon war nicht der erste, der Argumente gegen das 'Corpus Hermeticum' vorgebracht hat. Schon im Venedig und Padua der 1580er Jahre gab es eine intensive Datierungsdebatte. Neue handschriftliche Funde zeigen, wie komplex bereits die mündlich erörterten Einwände gegen Hermes gewesen sind.Dieser Band dokumentiert die Datierungsdebatte. Die Beiträge von international renommierten Renaissanceforschern stellen sie in den Kontext der neuen naturphilosophischen Entwicklungen um Telesio und Patrizi und offenbaren die ideologischen Interessen von Hermetikern und Antihermetikern. Das 'Ende der Renaissance' und das 'Ende des Hermetismus' sind also erheblich früher anzusetzen als bisher angenommen. Sie erweisen sich als ein langfristiger komplexer Prozeß im Spannungsfeld von philologischer Kritik, philosophischer Spekulation und naturwissenschaftlicher Empirie.

Frechheit oder Freiheit? Was galt als respektlos, ketzerisch oder obszön? Und was wurde als akademische Freiheit toleriert? Acht Essays decken die Spielräume auf, die Gelehrte der Frühen Neuzeit nutzten, um neues Gedankengut zu entfalten. Ein faszinierender Blick auf die Ideengeschichte.