Voltaire Foundation

The Poetics of Text Reuse: Digital Intertextuality in the Eighteenth-century Archive First Annual Voltaire Foundation Lecture on Digital Enlightenment Studies Glenn Roe (Sorbonne University & University of Oxford) The Poetics of Text Reuse: Digital Intertextuality in the Eighteenth-century Archive

Professor Richard Bourke delivers the 2023 Annual Besterman Lecture. Hegel described philosophy as its own time comprehended in thought. For him, that meant understanding the Enlightenment and its aftermath. Examining what the Enlightenment meant for Hegel involves separating its generic meaning as an historical process from its specific sense as a determinate period and its still narrower significance as a canon of thinkers. In the Phenomenology of Spirit (1807), Hegel depicted the Enlightenment era as a struggle between Reason and Faith. This was a stage in a longer development, the passage from rudeness to refinement, which might itself be depicted in terms of gradual enlightenment. As Hegel saw it, the latest episode in the world-historical drama bred crisis, a collision between human values and the conditions of existence. For Hegel, among the most resourceful responses to this situation came from Immanuel Kant and Friedrich Jacobi. However, resourcefulness did not entail success. The lecture will reconstruct Hegel’s thought in terms of his analysis of how these philosophers failed to reconcile rational inquiry with the content of belief.

Dan Edelstein from Stanford University gives the Inaugural George Rousseau Lecture, the convenor is Avi Lifschitz, Magdalen College.

A highly critical account of Adam Smith's views on famine, which fail to recognize that you can have starvation in the midst of plenty.

Final talk of the Besterman Enlightenment Workshop 2017, Laurence Brockliss explains the popularity of Paris as a place to visit in the 18th century and explores the opportunities for and obstacles to making contacts in the European Republic of Letters. Laurence Brockliss is Fellow and Tutor in History at Magdalen College and Professor of Early Modern French History at the University of Oxford.

Professor Ritchie Robertson FBA, Taylor Professor of German at the University of Oxford, will speak on ‘Writing the Enlightenment: Reflections on Work in Progress’.

Professor Colin Jones CBE (Queen Mary University of London) delivers the annual Besterman Lecture for the Voltaire Foundation at Wolfson College, Oxford

Professor Joachim Whaley, Professor of German History and Thought, Cambridge, gives the 2014 Besterman Lecture, hosted by The Besterman Centre for the Enlightenment and the TORCH Enlightenment Programme. Introduced by Ritchie Robertson, Taylor Professor of the German Language and Literature.

Short podcast looking at Enlightenment philosopher Rousseau's copy of La Lettre à d'Alembert, housed in the Bodleian Library.

Professor Nathalie Ferrand (École Normale Supérieure Paris) gives the 2012 Besterman Lecture for the Voltaire Foundation. This lecture is in French.