Avi Lifschitz
Biographic Data
| ID | 3597364 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Avi Lifschitz |
| GIVEN NAMES | Avi |
| FAMILY NAME | Lifschitz |
| SIGNATURE | LIFSCHITZ A |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Oxford |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-0386-2805 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 13 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 6 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 11 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 2 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2004 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 2 |
Enlightenment for the Common People? Frederick II and the Philosophes on Popular Prejudice, Deception, and Education
Could the common people, including illiterate laborers, be enlightened? How should cultural elites and political leaders embark on the task? Frederick II, king of Prussia, discussed these issues in an extensive correspondence with Voltaire and d’Alembert in the 1760s and 1770s, exchanges that led to an infamous prize contest on the potentially useful deception of the people (Berlin, 1780). Analyzing this discussion in detail for the first time, t…
Philosophy and Political Agency in the Writings of Frederick Ii of Prussia
Frederick II's writings have conventionally been viewed either as political tools or as means of public self-fashioning – part of his campaign to raise the status of Prussia from middling principality to great power. This article, by contrast, argues that Frederick's works must also be taken seriously on their own terms, and interpreted against the background of Enlightenment philosophy. Frederick's notions of kingship and state service were not …
The Book of Job and the Sex Life of Elephants: The Limits of Evidential Credibility in Eighteenth-Century Natural History and Biblical Criticism
Rethinking Lessing's Laocoon
Ever since its publication in 1766, Gotthold Ephraim Lessing’s treatise Laocoon, or On the Limits of Painting and Poetry has shaped debates about aesthetic experience and the medial distinctions between words and images. Rethinking Lessing’s Laocoon provides a reassessment of this seminal work on its 250th anniversary, examining Lessing’s interpretation of ancient art and poetry, the Enlightenment contexts of the treatise, and its subsequent lega…
The German Enlightenment
The term Enlightenment (or Aufklärung) remains heavily contested. Even when historians delimit the remit of the concept, assigning it to a particular historical period rather than to an intellectual or moral programme, the public resonance of the Enlightenment remains high and problematic—especially when equated in an essentialist manner with modernity or some core values of ‘the West’. This Forum has been convened to discuss recent research on t…
Lessing’s Laocoon as Analytical Instrument: Antiquity, Enlightenment, and the 'Limits' of Painting and Poetry
Luca Giuliani evaluates Laocoon as an ‘analytical tool’ for twenty-first-century classical archaeology. In doing so, he returns to some of the same literary case studies that so engrossed Lessing 250 years ago—and none more so than Homer’s Iliad . By probing Lessing’s theories of the respective workings of art and text, and exploring them in the context of ancient depictions of the Iliad (especially seventh- and sixth-century BC vase-paintings), …
Engaging with Rousseau: Reaction and Interpretation from the Eighteenth Century to the Present
Jean-Jacques Rousseau has been cast as a champion of Enlightenment and a beacon of Romanticism, a father figure of radical revolutionaries and totalitarian dictators alike, an inventor of the modern notion of the self, and an advocate of stern ancient republicanism. Engaging with Rousseau treats his writings as an enduring topic of debate, examining the diverse responses they have attracted from the Enlightenment to the present. Such notions as t…
Tim Blanning, Frederick the Great: King of Prussia
Genesis for Historians: Thomas Abbt on Biblical and Conjectural Accounts of Human Nature
Natural sociability and the basic features of human nature stood at the centre of Thomas Abbt's confrontation with conjectural history, the popular eighteenth-century mode of reconstructing the evolution of human culture. Abbt (1738–1766) criticised conjectural histories due to their arbitrary character, and opted for a synthetic approach consisting of both sacred and secular history. He suggested that the anthropology of Genesis should be accept…
Freedom and the Construction of Europe: Volume 2, Free Persons and Free States
Freedom, today perceived simply as a human right, was a continually contested idea in the early modern period. In Freedom and the Construction of Europe an international group of scholars explore the richness, diversity and complexity of thinking about freedom in the shaping of modernity. Volume 2 considers free persons and free states, examining differing views about freedom of thought and action and their relations to conceptions of citizenship…
The Arbitrariness of the Linguistic Sign: Variations on an Enlightenment Theme
From the late seventeenth century to the middle of the eighteenth, an important shift occurred in attitudes to the arbitrariness of the first human words. While authors such as Locke and Pufendorf emphasized linguistic arbitrariness and human liberty, mid-eighteenth-century thinkers highlighted the natural aspects of language and the limited scope of freedom and reason. This change is linked to the contemporary view of the cultural world as a nat…
Language as the Key to the Epistemological Labyrinth: Turgot’s changing view of human perception
A belief in a firm correspondence between objects, ideas, and their representation in language pervaded the works of Anne Robert Jacques Turgot (1727-1781) in 1750. This conviction is particularly manifest in Turgot's sharp critique of Berkeley's philosophical system and his remarks on Maupertuis's reconstruction of the origin of language. During the 1750s Turgot's epistemological views underwent a change, apparent in two of his contributions to …
Language as the Key to the Epistemological Labyrinth: Turgot's Changing View of Human Perception
A belief in a firm correspondence between objects, ideas, and their representation in language pervaded the works of Anne Robert Jacques Turgot (1727-1781) in 1750. This conviction is particularly manifest in Turgot's sharp critique of Berkeley's philosophical system and his remarks on Maupertuis's reconstruction of the origin of language. During the 1750s Turgot's epistemological views underwent a change, apparent in two of his contributions to …
The Arbitrariness of the Linguistic Sign: Variations on an Enlightenment Theme
From the late seventeenth century to the middle of the eighteenth, an important shift occurred in attitudes to the arbitrariness of the first human words. While authors such as Locke and Pufendorf emphasized linguistic arbitrariness and human liberty, mid-eighteenth-century thinkers highlighted the natural aspects of language and the limited scope of freedom and reason. This change is linked to the contemporary view of the cultural world as a nat…
The Book of Job and the Sex Life of Elephants: The Limits of Evidential Credibility in Eighteenth-Century Natural History and Biblical Criticism
Language as the Key to the Epistemological Labyrinth: Turgot’s changing view of human perception
A belief in a firm correspondence between objects, ideas, and their representation in language pervaded the works of Anne Robert Jacques Turgot (1727-1781) in 1750. This conviction is particularly manifest in Turgot's sharp critique of Berkeley's philosophical system and his remarks on Maupertuis's reconstruction of the origin of language. During the 1750s Turgot's epistemological views underwent a change, apparent in two of his contributions to …
Language as the Key to the Epistemological Labyrinth: Turgot’s changing view of human perception
A belief in a firm correspondence between objects, ideas, and their representation in language pervaded the works of Anne Robert Jacques Turgot (1727-1781) in 1750. This conviction is particularly manifest in Turgot's sharp critique of Berkeley's philosophical system and his remarks on Maupertuis's reconstruction of the origin of language. During the 1750s Turgot's epistemological views underwent a change, apparent in two of his contributions to …
Language as the Key to the Epistemological Labyrinth: Turgot's Changing View of Human Perception
A belief in a firm correspondence between objects, ideas, and their representation in language pervaded the works of Anne Robert Jacques Turgot (1727-1781) in 1750. This conviction is particularly manifest in Turgot's sharp critique of Berkeley's philosophical system and his remarks on Maupertuis's reconstruction of the origin of language. During the 1750s Turgot's epistemological views underwent a change, apparent in two of his contributions to …
The Arbitrariness of the Linguistic Sign: Variations on an Enlightenment Theme
From the late seventeenth century to the middle of the eighteenth, an important shift occurred in attitudes to the arbitrariness of the first human words. While authors such as Locke and Pufendorf emphasized linguistic arbitrariness and human liberty, mid-eighteenth-century thinkers highlighted the natural aspects of language and the limited scope of freedom and reason. This change is linked to the contemporary view of the cultural world as a nat…
Freedom and the Construction of Europe: Volume 2, Free Persons and Free States
Freedom, today perceived simply as a human right, was a continually contested idea in the early modern period. In Freedom and the Construction of Europe an international group of scholars explore the richness, diversity and complexity of thinking about freedom in the shaping of modernity. Volume 2 considers free persons and free states, examining differing views about freedom of thought and action and their relations to conceptions of citizenship…
Genesis for Historians: Thomas Abbt on Biblical and Conjectural Accounts of Human Nature
Natural sociability and the basic features of human nature stood at the centre of Thomas Abbt's confrontation with conjectural history, the popular eighteenth-century mode of reconstructing the evolution of human culture. Abbt (1738–1766) criticised conjectural histories due to their arbitrary character, and opted for a synthetic approach consisting of both sacred and secular history. He suggested that the anthropology of Genesis should be accept…
Engaging with Rousseau: Reaction and Interpretation from the Eighteenth Century to the Present
Jean-Jacques Rousseau has been cast as a champion of Enlightenment and a beacon of Romanticism, a father figure of radical revolutionaries and totalitarian dictators alike, an inventor of the modern notion of the self, and an advocate of stern ancient republicanism. Engaging with Rousseau treats his writings as an enduring topic of debate, examining the diverse responses they have attracted from the Enlightenment to the present. Such notions as t…
Tim Blanning, Frederick the Great: King of Prussia
Rethinking Lessing's Laocoon
Ever since its publication in 1766, Gotthold Ephraim Lessing’s treatise Laocoon, or On the Limits of Painting and Poetry has shaped debates about aesthetic experience and the medial distinctions between words and images. Rethinking Lessing’s Laocoon provides a reassessment of this seminal work on its 250th anniversary, examining Lessing’s interpretation of ancient art and poetry, the Enlightenment contexts of the treatise, and its subsequent lega…
The German Enlightenment
The term Enlightenment (or Aufklärung) remains heavily contested. Even when historians delimit the remit of the concept, assigning it to a particular historical period rather than to an intellectual or moral programme, the public resonance of the Enlightenment remains high and problematic—especially when equated in an essentialist manner with modernity or some core values of ‘the West’. This Forum has been convened to discuss recent research on t…
Lessing’s Laocoon as Analytical Instrument: Antiquity, Enlightenment, and the 'Limits' of Painting and Poetry
Luca Giuliani evaluates Laocoon as an ‘analytical tool’ for twenty-first-century classical archaeology. In doing so, he returns to some of the same literary case studies that so engrossed Lessing 250 years ago—and none more so than Homer’s Iliad . By probing Lessing’s theories of the respective workings of art and text, and exploring them in the context of ancient depictions of the Iliad (especially seventh- and sixth-century BC vase-paintings), …
The Book of Job and the Sex Life of Elephants: The Limits of Evidential Credibility in Eighteenth-Century Natural History and Biblical Criticism
Philosophy and Political Agency in the Writings of Frederick Ii of Prussia
Frederick II's writings have conventionally been viewed either as political tools or as means of public self-fashioning – part of his campaign to raise the status of Prussia from middling principality to great power. This article, by contrast, argues that Frederick's works must also be taken seriously on their own terms, and interpreted against the background of Enlightenment philosophy. Frederick's notions of kingship and state service were not …
Enlightenment for the Common People? Frederick II and the Philosophes on Popular Prejudice, Deception, and Education
Could the common people, including illiterate laborers, be enlightened? How should cultural elites and political leaders embark on the task? Frederick II, king of Prussia, discussed these issues in an extensive correspondence with Voltaire and d’Alembert in the 1760s and 1770s, exchanges that led to an infamous prize contest on the potentially useful deception of the people (Berlin, 1780). Analyzing this discussion in detail for the first time, t…
Epistemology (8 works) · Law (7 works) · Philosophy (7 works) · Political science (7 works) · Enlightenment (5 works) · History (5 works) · History (5 works) · Law (5 works) · Philosophy (5 works) · Art (4 works)