Table of Contents
Acknowledgments
Note on the Texts Used
Introduction: A Critical Answer to the Question, What Is Enlightenment?
1. The Enlightenment in Question
Enlightenment as an "Age of Criticism"
Diderot, Rousseau, and the Tasks of Criticism
Diderot's Normative Impasse
Rousseau's Conception of Freedom and Its Problems
Mendelssohn, Reinhold, and the Limits of Enlightenment
2. The Idea of a Culture of Enlightenment
Kant's Answer to the Question, What Is Enlightenment?
A New Approach to Independent Thinking
The Culture of Enlightenment: Public Argument as Social Practice
Communication, Autonomy, and the Maxims of Common Understanding
Reason's Good Name and Reason's Public
Power and Authority: Hamann on the Immature and Their Guardians
3. Culture as a Historical Project
Kant's Attempt at a Philosophical History
The "Plan of Nature": History from a Political Perspective
Teleological Judgments of Nature and of Culture
Culture and Moral Progress: Two Perspectives on Rational Ends
The a priori Thread of History, Providence, and the
Possibility of Hope
4. Nature and the Criticism of Culture
Schiller on the Predicament of the "Moderns"
The Failures of Enlightenment
Nature Condemned: The Severity of Kantian Morality
Schiller's "Aesthetic State" and Its Criticism
Nature, Reason, and the Beginning of Culture
5. Culture after Enlightenment
Enlightenment and Its Discontents
Adorno and Horkheimer on Enlightened Thought
Foucault on the Origin of Norms
Gilligan on Mature Adulthood
Culture within the Bounds of Reason
Notes
Bibliography
Index
