Placing the Enlightenment: Thinking Geographically about the Age of Reason
Charles W. J. Withers
Abstract
The Enlightenment was the age in which the world became modern, challenging tradition in favor of reason, freedom, and critical inquiry. While many aspects of the Enlightenment have been rigorously scrutinized—its origins and motivations, its principal characters and defining features, its legacy and modern relevance—the geographical dimensions of the era have until now largely been ignored. This book contends that the Age of Reason was not only a period of pioneering geographical investigation but also an age with spatial dimensions to its content and concerns. Investigating the role space an ... More
The Enlightenment was the age in which the world became modern, challenging tradition in favor of reason, freedom, and critical inquiry. While many aspects of the Enlightenment have been rigorously scrutinized—its origins and motivations, its principal characters and defining features, its legacy and modern relevance—the geographical dimensions of the era have until now largely been ignored. This book contends that the Age of Reason was not only a period of pioneering geographical investigation but also an age with spatial dimensions to its content and concerns. Investigating the role space and location played in the creation and reception of Enlightenment ideas, the book draws from the fields of art, science, history, geography, politics, and religion to explore the legacies of Enlightenment national identity, navigation, discovery, and knowledge. Ultimately, geography is revealed to be the source of much of the raw material from which philosophers fashioned theories of the human condition.
Keywords:
Enlightenment,
tradition,
Age of Reason,
freedom,
critical inquiry,
national identity,
navigation,
human condition,
geographical investigation,
geography
Bibliographic Information
| Print publication date: 2007 |
Print ISBN-13: 9780226904054 |
| Published to Chicago Scholarship Online: March 2013 |
DOI:10.7208/chicago/9780226904078.001.0001 |
