Friends — I have this idea. Periodically I want to interrupt whatever I’m doing on Magically Real so that I can ask writers I respect and admire 5 questions, which they will then answer. I’m doing this so that we’ll have the opportunity to hear their own unique […]
Friends – I spent some time talking about Lessing’s plea for interfaith tolerance and understanding in a previous post about Nathan the Wise, a play written in German in the late 18th Century. You can read my thoughts about it here, and I recommend doing so before continuing […]
Hi everyone — welcome back as we take a second look at this seminal piece of writing by Jean Jacques Rousseau. Last time, I talked about Rousseau’s theory of humans in the state of nature. Now we’ll take a quick look at some of his other ideas. […]
Friends – I’ve been putting off talking about one of the most problematic and fascinating figures of Enlightenment writing. I mean the author who my husband and I love to hate, and hate to love – the philosopher, social theorist, novelist, pedagogy expert, and memoirist, Jean Jacques Rousseau. […]
Friends – In my last post I talked about the important work done by playwright/poet/historian Friedrich Schiller. As I mentioned last time, Schiller wrote frequently about rebels. Almost all his plays feature protagonists (sometimes a man, and sometimes a woman) who are frustrated with the status quo and […]
Friends – I talked last time about one of my favorite German Enlightenment writers, Gotthold Ephraim Lessing and his play about religious tolerance, Nathan the Wise. I mentioned that when we talk about German Enlightenment writing we see less of an immediate influence on American thinkers, because – […]
Friends – Last week I shared some thoughts about Jonathan Swift’s autobiographical poem and the connection of some its ideas to the attitudes expressed by the Founding Fathers and indeed to one of the sentiments expressed in the Declaration of Independence. This week, I want to share some […]
