Wednesday October 1 2008 / Culture & Science
Burgerhart Lecture: Peter Reill
The first Burgerhart Lecture reflects on the topic issue of the Enlightenment and will be given by Peter Reill (Professor and Director of the Center for 17th and 18th Century Studies, University of California). Reill criticizes the common view of the Enlightenment as the source of rationalism, individualism, universalism, humanism and masculinity.
As no other, Reill has an eye for other than rational influences on thought in the 18th and 19th centuries. Recently he wrote about enlightened thinkers who abondoned a mechanical worldview in the middle of the 18th century. They believed in a vitalistic approach to nature influenced by biology and chemistry. This vitalism cannot be seen as a forerunner of Romanticism or as an exponent of the so-called Counter Enlightenment; it is an approach in its own right. This alternative vision of the Enlightenment has important consequences for the present: the idea that the Enlightenment is the source of modernity seems in many respects to be a myth.
After the lecture Peter Reill will talk with Arnold Heumakers, editor of the Dutch newspaper NRC Handelsblad.
Peter Reill is the author of the leading study: Vitalizing Nature in the Enlightenment. University of California Press, 2005.
Once a year the 18th Century Working Group invites a distinguished scientist to Felix Meritis to reflect on the topicality of the Enlightenment. This lecture is made possible by SNS REAAL Fonds and Felix Meritis.
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