Nathaniel Wolloch
Biographic Data
| ID | 1016096 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Nathaniel Wolloch |
| GIVEN NAMES | Nathaniel |
| FAMILY NAME | Wolloch |
| SIGNATURE | WOLLOCH N |
| AFFILIATIONS | independent scholar |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-9758-7834 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 18 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 14 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 18 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1999 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2021 |
| H-INDEX | 2 |
Jane Spencer, Writing about Animals in the Age of Revolution
Robert Coram and the European Sources of Radical Enlightenment in America
This article argues for the indebtedness of the American Enlightenment to the European Enlightenment by examining the philosophy of Robert Coram, the revolutionary‐era radical philosopher of education. Coram criticised unequal distribution of land and argued for the compensatory influence of universal public education. He developed a primitivist critique of advanced civilisation, praising agricultural society and the American Indians. He presente…
New Perspectives on the Mediterranean Enlightenment
In Memory of Professor Michael Heyd The present collection of articles is the first project in print to emerge from the activities of The Mediterranean Society for Enlightenment Studies. 1 The Soci
William Robertson on Natural Resources and Cultural Contacts in Colonial America
Key to the Scottish conception of historical progress was the famous four-stages theory, claiming that all societies, given the proper natural surroundings, would progress from a hunting stage, to a shepherding (pastoral), agricultural, and finally the commercial stage found in modern advanced societies. Scholars have long recognized that each stage was characterized by the development of new modes of acquiring subsistence. What has not been suff…
Peter M. Jones. Agricultural Enlightenment
In Agricultural Enlightenment: Knowledge, Technology, and Nature, 1750–1840, Peter M. Jones investigates the Enlightenment roots of the agricultural revolution—how the eighteenth-century accumulation of agricultural knowledge enabled subsequent technological progress in agricultural practices. Jones makes a consistent point that the Agricultural Enlightenment was pan-European. He claims that it was the pluralization of the interpretation of the E…
Alexis de Tocqueville, John Stuart Mill, and the Modern Debate on the Enlightenment
This article discusses Tocqueville’s and Mill’s views of the cultural progress of indigenous colonial societies in the context of the current debate about the Enlightenment. The analysis of their philosophical outlooks tends to support Jonathan Israel’s interpretation of the Enlightenment, yet with one important difference: while Israel emphasizes the Radical Enlightenment as the chief instigator of the movement towards modern democracy, Tocquevi…
Adam Smith’s economic and ethical consideration of animals
This article examines Adam Smith’s views on animals, centering on the singularity of his economic perspective in the context of the general early ethical debate about animals. Particular emphasis is placed on his discussions of animals as property. The article highlights the tension between Smith’s moral sensitivity to animal suffering on the one hand, and his emphasis on the constitutive role that the utilization of animals played in the progres…
The liberal origins of the modern view of nature
This article depicts early nineteenth-century liberal thought as the source of the modern Western ideological view of nature. Highlighting the views of David Ricardo, T. R. Malthus, and particularly John Stuart Mill and Alexis de Tocqueville, this view is depicted as dialectical in nature – on the one hand as evincing recognition of the environmental price resulting from increasing industrialization, but on the other as recognizing that this pric…
Denise PHILLIPS. Acolytes of Nature
In Acolytes of Nature Denise Phillips presents a compelling account of the development of modern scientific culture in late Enlightenment and early nineteenth-century Germany. Two interrelated tales merge into a single narrative. The first is the emergence of the concept of Naturwissenschaft, broadly signifying scientific investigation of nature, and the second is the development of new types of scientific societies. The result is an original and…
Joseph de Guignes and Enlightenment Notions of Material Progress
Additional informationNotes on contributorsNathaniel WollochIndependent Scholar
History and Nature in the Enlightenment
The Civilizing Process, Nature, and Stadial Theory
This article examines the similarities and continuity between Enlightenment stadial theorizing on the rise of civilization and the later views of Norbert Elias, specifically in his famous book The Civilizing Process. The article discusses the emphasis of both these historical interpretations on the vital importance of the mastery of nature for the rise of civilization. A connection is made between these types of historiographical interpretations …
William Smellie and Enlightenment Anti-Anthropocentrism
This article examines the anti-anthropocentric views of the eighteenth-century Scottish natural philosopher William Smellie, in particular in comparison with the predominant anthropocentric ethic of the human mastery of nature more common during the Enlightenment. Smellie's views on this issue, and their importance for understanding some key aspects of eighteenth-century cosmology, are outlined, as is also their relevance for understanding the hi…
Facts, or Conjectures
This article examines an eighteenth-century historical work, Antoine-Yves Goguet's De L'origine des loix, des arts, et des sciences, et de leurs progrès chez les anciens peuples. Goguet studied ancient cultures, but maintained that they were inferior to modern European civilization. His methodology, wide erudition, and detailed footnotes were praised at the time, including by the customarily critical Edward Gibbon. Goguet's work was translated in…
The Status of Animals in Scottish Enlightenment Philosophy
This article examines the consideration of animals by various eighteenth-century Scottish philosophers, with special attention given to the physician and philosopher John Gregory, who utilized the comparison of human beings with animals as a starting point for a discussion about human moral and social improvement. In so doing Gregory, like most of his contemporary fellow Scottish philosophers, exemplified the basic anthropocentrism of the common …
Animals, Extraterrestrial Life and Anthropocentrism in the Seventeenth Century
Both the issue of early modern attitudes toward animals and the early modern debate on the possibility of the existence of extraterrestrial life have received ample attention in early modern scholarship. However, almost no attention has been given to possible connections between these two issues. Such a connection nevertheless exists, since the early modern debates of both these issues were closely linked to the development of an anthropocentric …
Christiaan Huygens's Attitude toward Animals
The debate on the status of animals has interested people since ancient times. In the early modern era this debate reached one of its most historically important and sedulous stages, drawing the attention of some of the most famous minds in Europe. Curiously enough, the historiography of this debate has failed to take cognizance of the part played in it by the famous Dutch scientist Christiaan Huygens (1629-95), renowned for his invention of the …
Dead Animals and the Beast‐Machine
Paintings of dead animals became a distinct and popular sub‐genre in seventeenth‐century European still‐life painting, and particularly in Dutch and Flemish painting. The seventeenth century was also the time of one of the most vigorous debates on the characteristics of animals and the possibility of moral duties toward them. The main reference point in this debate was the Cartesian theory of the ‘beast‐machine’, which viewed animals as senseless…
The Civilizing Process, Nature, and Stadial Theory
This article examines the similarities and continuity between Enlightenment stadial theorizing on the rise of civilization and the later views of Norbert Elias, specifically in his famous book The Civilizing Process. The article discusses the emphasis of both these historical interpretations on the vital importance of the mastery of nature for the rise of civilization. A connection is made between these types of historiographical interpretations …
Alexis de Tocqueville, John Stuart Mill, and the Modern Debate on the Enlightenment
This article discusses Tocqueville’s and Mill’s views of the cultural progress of indigenous colonial societies in the context of the current debate about the Enlightenment. The analysis of their philosophical outlooks tends to support Jonathan Israel’s interpretation of the Enlightenment, yet with one important difference: while Israel emphasizes the Radical Enlightenment as the chief instigator of the movement towards modern democracy, Tocquevi…
Joseph de Guignes and Enlightenment Notions of Material Progress
Additional informationNotes on contributorsNathaniel WollochIndependent Scholar
Facts, or Conjectures
This article examines an eighteenth-century historical work, Antoine-Yves Goguet's De L'origine des loix, des arts, et des sciences, et de leurs progrès chez les anciens peuples. Goguet studied ancient cultures, but maintained that they were inferior to modern European civilization. His methodology, wide erudition, and detailed footnotes were praised at the time, including by the customarily critical Edward Gibbon. Goguet's work was translated in…
William Robertson on Natural Resources and Cultural Contacts in Colonial America
Key to the Scottish conception of historical progress was the famous four-stages theory, claiming that all societies, given the proper natural surroundings, would progress from a hunting stage, to a shepherding (pastoral), agricultural, and finally the commercial stage found in modern advanced societies. Scholars have long recognized that each stage was characterized by the development of new modes of acquiring subsistence. What has not been suff…
Adam Smith’s economic and ethical consideration of animals
This article examines Adam Smith’s views on animals, centering on the singularity of his economic perspective in the context of the general early ethical debate about animals. Particular emphasis is placed on his discussions of animals as property. The article highlights the tension between Smith’s moral sensitivity to animal suffering on the one hand, and his emphasis on the constitutive role that the utilization of animals played in the progres…
The Status of Animals in Scottish Enlightenment Philosophy
This article examines the consideration of animals by various eighteenth-century Scottish philosophers, with special attention given to the physician and philosopher John Gregory, who utilized the comparison of human beings with animals as a starting point for a discussion about human moral and social improvement. In so doing Gregory, like most of his contemporary fellow Scottish philosophers, exemplified the basic anthropocentrism of the common …
Christiaan Huygens's Attitude toward Animals
The debate on the status of animals has interested people since ancient times. In the early modern era this debate reached one of its most historically important and sedulous stages, drawing the attention of some of the most famous minds in Europe. Curiously enough, the historiography of this debate has failed to take cognizance of the part played in it by the famous Dutch scientist Christiaan Huygens (1629-95), renowned for his invention of the …
Dead Animals and the Beast‐Machine
Paintings of dead animals became a distinct and popular sub‐genre in seventeenth‐century European still‐life painting, and particularly in Dutch and Flemish painting. The seventeenth century was also the time of one of the most vigorous debates on the characteristics of animals and the possibility of moral duties toward them. The main reference point in this debate was the Cartesian theory of the ‘beast‐machine’, which viewed animals as senseless…
Christiaan Huygens's Attitude toward Animals
The debate on the status of animals has interested people since ancient times. In the early modern era this debate reached one of its most historically important and sedulous stages, drawing the attention of some of the most famous minds in Europe. Curiously enough, the historiography of this debate has failed to take cognizance of the part played in it by the famous Dutch scientist Christiaan Huygens (1629-95), renowned for his invention of the …
Animals, Extraterrestrial Life and Anthropocentrism in the Seventeenth Century
Both the issue of early modern attitudes toward animals and the early modern debate on the possibility of the existence of extraterrestrial life have received ample attention in early modern scholarship. However, almost no attention has been given to possible connections between these two issues. Such a connection nevertheless exists, since the early modern debates of both these issues were closely linked to the development of an anthropocentric …
The Status of Animals in Scottish Enlightenment Philosophy
This article examines the consideration of animals by various eighteenth-century Scottish philosophers, with special attention given to the physician and philosopher John Gregory, who utilized the comparison of human beings with animals as a starting point for a discussion about human moral and social improvement. In so doing Gregory, like most of his contemporary fellow Scottish philosophers, exemplified the basic anthropocentrism of the common …
Facts, or Conjectures
This article examines an eighteenth-century historical work, Antoine-Yves Goguet's De L'origine des loix, des arts, et des sciences, et de leurs progrès chez les anciens peuples. Goguet studied ancient cultures, but maintained that they were inferior to modern European civilization. His methodology, wide erudition, and detailed footnotes were praised at the time, including by the customarily critical Edward Gibbon. Goguet's work was translated in…
William Smellie and Enlightenment Anti-Anthropocentrism
This article examines the anti-anthropocentric views of the eighteenth-century Scottish natural philosopher William Smellie, in particular in comparison with the predominant anthropocentric ethic of the human mastery of nature more common during the Enlightenment. Smellie's views on this issue, and their importance for understanding some key aspects of eighteenth-century cosmology, are outlined, as is also their relevance for understanding the hi…
Joseph de Guignes and Enlightenment Notions of Material Progress
Additional informationNotes on contributorsNathaniel WollochIndependent Scholar
History and Nature in the Enlightenment
The Civilizing Process, Nature, and Stadial Theory
This article examines the similarities and continuity between Enlightenment stadial theorizing on the rise of civilization and the later views of Norbert Elias, specifically in his famous book The Civilizing Process. The article discusses the emphasis of both these historical interpretations on the vital importance of the mastery of nature for the rise of civilization. A connection is made between these types of historiographical interpretations …
Adam Smith’s economic and ethical consideration of animals
This article examines Adam Smith’s views on animals, centering on the singularity of his economic perspective in the context of the general early ethical debate about animals. Particular emphasis is placed on his discussions of animals as property. The article highlights the tension between Smith’s moral sensitivity to animal suffering on the one hand, and his emphasis on the constitutive role that the utilization of animals played in the progres…
The liberal origins of the modern view of nature
This article depicts early nineteenth-century liberal thought as the source of the modern Western ideological view of nature. Highlighting the views of David Ricardo, T. R. Malthus, and particularly John Stuart Mill and Alexis de Tocqueville, this view is depicted as dialectical in nature – on the one hand as evincing recognition of the environmental price resulting from increasing industrialization, but on the other as recognizing that this pric…
Denise PHILLIPS. Acolytes of Nature
In Acolytes of Nature Denise Phillips presents a compelling account of the development of modern scientific culture in late Enlightenment and early nineteenth-century Germany. Two interrelated tales merge into a single narrative. The first is the emergence of the concept of Naturwissenschaft, broadly signifying scientific investigation of nature, and the second is the development of new types of scientific societies. The result is an original and…
William Robertson on Natural Resources and Cultural Contacts in Colonial America
Key to the Scottish conception of historical progress was the famous four-stages theory, claiming that all societies, given the proper natural surroundings, would progress from a hunting stage, to a shepherding (pastoral), agricultural, and finally the commercial stage found in modern advanced societies. Scholars have long recognized that each stage was characterized by the development of new modes of acquiring subsistence. What has not been suff…
Peter M. Jones. Agricultural Enlightenment
In Agricultural Enlightenment: Knowledge, Technology, and Nature, 1750–1840, Peter M. Jones investigates the Enlightenment roots of the agricultural revolution—how the eighteenth-century accumulation of agricultural knowledge enabled subsequent technological progress in agricultural practices. Jones makes a consistent point that the Agricultural Enlightenment was pan-European. He claims that it was the pluralization of the interpretation of the E…
Alexis de Tocqueville, John Stuart Mill, and the Modern Debate on the Enlightenment
This article discusses Tocqueville’s and Mill’s views of the cultural progress of indigenous colonial societies in the context of the current debate about the Enlightenment. The analysis of their philosophical outlooks tends to support Jonathan Israel’s interpretation of the Enlightenment, yet with one important difference: while Israel emphasizes the Radical Enlightenment as the chief instigator of the movement towards modern democracy, Tocquevi…
Robert Coram and the European Sources of Radical Enlightenment in America
This article argues for the indebtedness of the American Enlightenment to the European Enlightenment by examining the philosophy of Robert Coram, the revolutionary‐era radical philosopher of education. Coram criticised unequal distribution of land and argued for the compensatory influence of universal public education. He developed a primitivist critique of advanced civilisation, praising agricultural society and the American Indians. He presente…
New Perspectives on the Mediterranean Enlightenment
In Memory of Professor Michael Heyd The present collection of articles is the first project in print to emerge from the activities of The Mediterranean Society for Enlightenment Studies. 1 The Soci
Jane Spencer, Writing about Animals in the Age of Revolution
Philosophy (17 works) · History (16 works) · Epistemology (13 works) · Enlightenment (11 works) · Philosophy (11 works) · History (10 works) · Political science (9 works) · Sociology (9 works) · Archaeology (8 works) · Art (8 works)