Apologies for the uncharacteristically long hiatus between posts:  the resumption of teaching and the need to discharge a few other claims on what Kant would have classified as the “private use” of what counts as my “reason” have kept me from finishing off a series of posts that are simmering away on the back burner (one deals with the origins of Ernst Cassirer’s Philosophie der Aufklärung, the other with the early work of Peter Gay, and a third with Whittaker Chambers, of all people).

In the meantime, friends of enlightenment would be well-advised to scoot over to Ether Wave Propaganda, Will Thomas’ wonderful history of science blog, which has been running a fascinating series of posts on Simon Schaffer’s 1999 discussion of “Enlightened Automata.”