Category Archives: Uncategorized

If Adorno had an Ngram

Posted on March 10, 2013 by James Schmidt

I’ve never been good at speculating on what earlier thinkers would have said about later developments. This was driven home to me several years ago when someone who’d bought an audio book on the Enlightenment that I’d been recruited to … Continue reading →

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Dreyfus, Dieterle, and Vienna Philharmonic (a Postscript to the Culture Industry)

Posted on March 7, 2013 by James Schmidt

My plan has been to limit posts on this blog to one a week (and schedule it for Sunday), but two recent articles in the New York Times have a certain relevance for my recent discussion of Horkheimer and Adorno’s … Continue reading →

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Enlightenment as “Mass Deception”? — “Culture Industry” in the Dialectic of Enlightenment

Posted on March 3, 2013 by James Schmidt

As a sequel to last week’s post on what Horkheimer and Adorno’s Dialectic of Enlightenment has to do with “the Enlightenment,” I thought it might make sense to consider what, if any, rationale there might be for a discussion of … Continue reading →

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What, if anything, does Dialectic of Enlightenment have to do with the Enlightenment?

Posted on February 24, 2013 by James Schmidt

It’s hardly surprising that scholars working in the area of eighteenth-century studies tend not to be well-disposed towards Dialectik der Aufklärung. At best, anyone who enters Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno’s labyrinth hoping to learn something about “the Enlightenment” is … Continue reading →

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John Quincy Adams, Translator and Anti-Jacobin (Another Presidents’ Day Special)

Posted on February 18, 2013 by James Schmidt

Were there, in fact, a holiday called “Presidents’ Day” (for a discussion of why there isn’t, see my previous post) the existence of John Quincy Adams, sixth President of the United States, would be enough to justify it. Like his … Continue reading →

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Jefferson, an Epicurean? (Presidents’ Day Special, Part 1)

Posted on February 17, 2013 by James Schmidt

Readers outside the United States are likely not aware that, while tomorrow is officially “Washington’s Birthday” (a national holiday celebrated on the third Monday in February, a day on which George Washington’s actual birthday — February 22 (new style) — … Continue reading →

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Further Thoughts on “the Enlightenment,” the OED, the History of Concepts

Posted on February 10, 2013 by James Schmidt

Last week’s post ended with some misgivings about the distinction Koselleck drew between the “history of concepts” and the “history of words.” Admittedly, the distinction seems plausible enough: since concepts can be designated by a number of different words (e.g., … Continue reading →

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The Enlightenment, the OED, and the History of Concepts, with Ngrams

Posted on February 3, 2013 by James Schmidt

In the fall of 2010, the online Oxford English Dictionary revised its entry for “Enlightenment.” Since 1891 the definition had read as follows: 1. The action of enlightening; the state of being enlightened …. [I]mparting or receiving mental or spiritual … Continue reading →

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Diderot to the Pantheon, Diderot in the Times

Posted on January 26, 2013 by James Schmidt

Nine months before Denis Diderot’s body is scheduled to make its rendezvous with those of Voltaire, Rousseau, and Condorcet in the Pantheon, his name has made its first appearance on the op-ed pages of the New York Times in a … Continue reading →

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