Research Catalog

Title

On enlightenment / David Stove ; Andrew Irvine, editor ; with a preface by Roger Kimball.

Author

Stove, D. C. (David Charles)

Publication

New Brunswick, N.J. : Transaction Publishers, 2002.

Items in the Library & Off-site

Details

Additional Authors

Irvine, A. D.

Description

xxxvii, 185 pages : illustrations; 24 cm

Summary

• "David Stove, in On Enlightenment, attacks the intellectual roots of enlightenment thought, to define the limitations of its successes and the areas of its likely failures. Stove is not insensitive to the many valuable aspects of enlightenment thought. He champions the use of reason and rationality, and recognizes the falsity of religious claims as well as the importance of individual liberty.
• What he rejects is the enlightenment's uncritical optimism regarding social progress and its willingness to embrace revolutionary change.".
• "He advocates a conservative "go slow" approach to change, pointing out that today's social structures are so large and complex that any widespread social reform will have innumerable unforeseen consequences. For example, the welfare state may diminish individual initiative. The use of pesticides may increase the food supply while polluting the water supply, the popularizing of university education, may lead to a decline in academic standards. Since government has a virtual monopoly on large-scale change.
• It follows, in Stove's view, that its powers must be limited in order to prevent large-scale damage, instead, he argues that reforms, when they are to be made at all, must be realistic, local, necessary and never coercive."--BOOK JACKET.

Subject

Enlightenment

Bibliography (note)

• Includes bibliographical references and index.

Contents

Preface / Roger Kimball -- Introduction: David Stove on Enlightenment / Andrew Irvine -- Pt. I. So You Think You're an Egalitarian? -- 1. Did Babeuf Deserve the Guillotine? -- 2. A Promise Kept by Accident -- 3. The Bateson Fact, or One in a Million -- Pt. II. Why the World is the Way It Is -- 4. The Malthus Check -- 5. Population, Privilege, and Malthus' Retreat -- 6. The Diabolical Place: A Secret of the Enlightenment -- 7. Glimpses of Pioneer Life -- 8. Altruism and Darwinism -- 9. Paralytic Epistemology, or the Soundless Scream -- Pt. III. Reclaiming the Jungle -- 10. The Columbus Argument -- 11. Bombs Away -- 12. Jobs for the Girls -- 13. Righting Wrongs -- 14. Why You should be a Conservative.

ISBN

0765801361 (alk. paper)

LCCN

2002073210

OCLC

• ocm50348243
• SCSB-4325389

Owning Institutions

Columbia University Libraries