Cosmopolis: The Hidden Agenda of ModernityIn the seventeenth century, a vision arose which was to captivate the Western imagination for the next three hundred years: the vision of Cosmopolis, a society as rationally ordered as the Newtonian view of nature. While fueling extraordinary advances in all fields of human endeavor, this vision perpetuated a hidden yet persistent agenda: the delusion that human nature and society could be fitted into precise and manageable rational categories. Stephen Toulmin confronts that agenda—its illusions and its consequences for our present and future world. "By showing how different the last three centuries would have been if Montaigne, rather than Descartes, had been taken as a starting point, Toulmin helps destroy the illusion that the Cartesian quest for certainty is intrinsic to the nature of science or philosophy."—Richard M. Rorty, University of Virginia "[Toulmin] has now tackled perhaps his most ambitious theme of all. . . . His aim is nothing less than to lay before us an account of both the origins and the prospects of our distinctively modern world. By charting the evolution of modernity, he hopes to show us what intellectual posture we ought to adopt as we confront the coming millennium."—Quentin Skinner, New York Review of Books |
From inside the book
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Page ix
... cultural changes that began around 1965 were ( it seemed to me ) cutting into our traditions more deeply than was widely appreciated . I tried to capture this point in a draft essay for Daedalus , dealing with changes in the philosophy ...
... cultural changes that began around 1965 were ( it seemed to me ) cutting into our traditions more deeply than was widely appreciated . I tried to capture this point in a draft essay for Daedalus , dealing with changes in the philosophy ...
Page x
... Europe set itself on a cultural and political road that has led both to its most striking technical successes and to its deepest human failures . If we have any lesson to learn from the experience of the 1960s and ' x Preface.
... Europe set itself on a cultural and political road that has led both to its most striking technical successes and to its deepest human failures . If we have any lesson to learn from the experience of the 1960s and ' x Preface.
Page xii
... cultural future is not the only thing at stake . Striking a better balance between the abstract exactitude needed in the physical sciences and the practical wisdom typical of fields like clinical medicine can also be a matter of ...
... cultural future is not the only thing at stake . Striking a better balance between the abstract exactitude needed in the physical sciences and the practical wisdom typical of fields like clinical medicine can also be a matter of ...
Page 1
... culture in the next century and the coming millennium . Some of the writers who participated in that debate analyzed the current trends and extrapolated them over future decades , so arriving at long - range social and political ...
... culture in the next century and the coming millennium . Some of the writers who participated in that debate analyzed the current trends and extrapolated them over future decades , so arriving at long - range social and political ...
Page 3
... cultures that existed before the age of " modernity " . Twenty years ago many writers still retained this faith . Their confident extrapolation for decades ahead — their readiness to take mid - 20th - century social tendencies and cultural ...
... cultures that existed before the age of " modernity " . Twenty years ago many writers still retained this faith . Their confident extrapolation for decades ahead — their readiness to take mid - 20th - century social tendencies and cultural ...
Contents
What Is the Problem About Modernity? | 5 |
The Standard Account and Its Defects | 13 |
The Modernity of the Renaissance | 22 |
Retreat from the Renaissance | 30 |
From Humanists to Rationalists | 36 |
The 17thCentury CounterRenaissance | 45 |
Young Rene and the Henriade | 56 |
John Donne Grieves for Cosmopolis | 62 |
The Far Side of Modernity | 139 |
Dismantling the Scaffolding | 145 |
19201960 Rerenaissance Deferred | 152 |
Humanism Reinvented | 160 |
The Twin Trajectories of Modernity | 167 |
The Way Ahead | 175 |
Humanizing Modernity | 180 |
The Recovery of Practical Philosophy | 186 |
The Politics of Certainty | 69 |
The First Step Back from Rationalism | 80 |
The Modern World View | 89 |
Leibniz Discovers Ecumenism | 98 |
Newton and the New Cosmopolis | 105 |
The Subtext of Modernity | 117 |
The Second Step Back from Rationalism | 129 |
Other editions - View all
Cosmopolis: The Hidden Agenda of Modernity Stephen Toulmin,Stephen Edelston Toulmin No preview available - 1992 |
Common terms and phrases
17th-century abstract accepted agenda arguments assumptions belief Cartesian Catholic causal central century changes Church claims classical skepticism cosmopolis Counter-Reformation criticism culture debate developed Discourse on Method distinct doctrines Donne dream emotions Encyclopédie England essay ethics Europe European experience formal framework France French Galileo Henri IV's Henry of Navarre Henry's historians historical human humanists ideas institutions intellectual Isaac Newton issues John Donne late Leibniz less logic look mathematical matter medieval methods Michel de Montaigne modern philosophy Montaigne Montaigne's moral nation-state nationhood natural philosophy natural science Newton Newtonian Peace of Westphalia physics political post-modern practical problems Protestant Quest for Certainty questions rational rationalist reason received view religious Renaissance Renaissance humanism René Descartes respectable Revolution rhetoric science and philosophy scientific scientists skepticism social society sovereign stability standard account theological theoretical theory things thinkers Thirty thought timeless toleration took traditional turn universal world view
Popular passages
Page vi - Tis all in peeces, all cohaerence gone; All just supply, and all Relation: Prince, Subject, Father, Sonne, are things forgot, For every man alone thinkes he hath got To be a Phoenix, and that then can bee None of that kinde, of which he is, but hee.