Author Archives: James Schmidt

About James Schmidt

Professor of History, Philosophy, and Political Science Boston University

Periods and Plots: A Postscript to Bentham’s Critique of the Declaration of Independence

Posted on July 4, 2014

Shortly after uploading Jeremy Bentham’s critique of the Declaration of Independence, I got around to reading the discussion in the New York Times of Danielle Allen’s questioning of the period that appears immediately after the words “life, liberty, and the … Continue reading →

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Of Rights and Witches: Bentham’s Critique of the Declaration of Independence

Posted on July 3, 2014

It is not surprising that friends of the Enlightenment tend to assume that the Enlightenment was generally friendly towards the American Revolution. Richard Price had, after all, been an energetic supporter of the Colonial cause and, like Joseph Priestley, saw … Continue reading →

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Foucault, the “History of Thought,” and the Question of Enlightenment

Posted on June 30, 2014

My previous post examined how, during the last eighteen months of his life, Foucault repeatedly drew a distinction between the “history of thought” in which he was engaged and more conventional (though, in his view, “entirely legitimate“) approaches employed within … Continue reading →

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“The Radical Enlightenment” – Diametros Volume 40

Posted on June 26, 2014

Volume 40 of the online philosophy journal Diametros (available here) focuses on “The Radical Enlightenment.”  The main event is the latest in the ongoing series of exchanges between Jonathan Israel and Margaret C. Jacob, along with discussions of Israel’s work by Sebastian Gardner … Continue reading →

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On Michel Foucault’s Distinction between the “History of Ideas” and the “History of Thought”

Posted on June 23, 2014

In a May 1984 interview with Paul Rabinow, Michel Foucault characterized his general approach as follows: For a long time, I have been trying to see if it would be possible to describe the history of thought as distinct both … Continue reading →

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Foucault on “Enlightenment” in Discipline and Punish

Posted on June 15, 2014

Discussing Michel Foucault’s Discipline and Punish (or, to be more accurate, that portions of it that turn up in The Foucault Reader) in a seminar I taught this spring, I was struck, once again, by a sentence that reminded me … Continue reading →

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Zöllner on Prejudices and Superstitions: An Article from the German Museum

Posted on June 8, 2014

Introduction to Zöllner, “On Prejudices and Superstitions” While Johann Friedrich Zöllner (1753-1804) is hardly a major thinker he deserves a bit more attention than he’s gotten in the Anglophone world. He was, after all, the person who asked the question … Continue reading →

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