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Tag Archives: Voltaire
perfide manon: peace with the “petit collet”
Perfide Manon and Abbe Prevost. She was the classic cocotte, and he the classic dupe; first the Abbe wrote his famous story, and then he set out to live it… …Prevost ventured back to France, and there was joined by … Continue reading
catherine: search for golden pheasants
Catherine’s boat ride. It was 1787 and the Empress was showing off the wonders of her realm, which were many indeed. Question was, were they real,or fake? Only General Potemkin, the one-eyed giant, knew for sure. And he wasn’t saying… … Continue reading
Posted in Feature Article, Ideas/Opinion, Madame Pickwick Weekend
Tagged Catherine the Great, Czar Peter III, Diderot in Russia, Friedrich Melchior Grimm, General Potemkin, Madame Pickwick, madame pickwick art blog, Mae West, peter woditsch, potemkin village, Taurian Palace, Virginia Rounding, Voltaire
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ever since Abraham gave Ishmael the boot
There has been a couple of articles over the past several months in Haaretz, the Israeli secular left wing daily that try to confront the issue of co-existence with the Palestinians and of course the larger Islamic world from the … Continue reading
Posted in Feature Article, Ideas/Opinion
Tagged Andrew Bostom, benjamin disraeli, Benny Morris Historian, Benzion Netanyahu, Cairo Geniza, doug saunders globe and mail, Fouad Ajami, Golden Age of Muslim Spain, Heinrich Graetz, Jane Gerber, Maimonides, Maimonides in Egypt, Marcel Duchamp, Martin Buber, meron benvenisti, Montesquieu, Moritz Steinschneider, Nicky Larkin director, Pierre Bayle, Piet Mondrian, Robert Wistrich, Shlomo Dov Goiten, Voltaire
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tencin: high wire act between rationalism and passion
“My menagerie,” Alexandrine Tencin called her salon; her guests were “mes betes.” Her Tuesdays she filled with good talk, high spirits, and low comedy involving chamber pots and such. Her leisure she filled with literature, the recourse of the bored. … Continue reading
Posted in Feature Article, Ideas/Opinion
Tagged Abbe Dubois, Abbe Raynal, Abbe Tencin, Charlotte Lennox, Claudine Alexandrine Guerin de Tencin, Francois Boucher, francois boucher paintings, Guillaume Thomas Francois abbe Raynal, Jean-Honore Fragonard, La Fresnais and Mme de Tencin, Lord Chesterfield, Madame Pickwick, madame pickwick art blog, Milton Albrecht, Mme de Tencin, Montesquieu, Peter Gay, Regent Fontenelle, Rene Vaillot, Renee Vaillot, Renee Winegarten, Voltaire
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liberation: french identity on the short leash
The liberation of Mme de Tencin. From convent to court, from bank to boudoir, she was always prone to argue. It was the end of the Louis XIV reign, a hey-day of cynical license that characterized the Regency period that … Continue reading
Posted in Feature Article, Ideas/Opinion
Tagged Abbe Dubois, Abbe Prevost, Abbe Raynal, Abbe Tencin, Chevalier Destouches, Claudine Alexandrine Guerin de Tencin, Claudine de Tencin, D'Alembert, Fontenelle, Helvetius, Jean Antoine Watteau, Jean Le Rond, John Law The Mississippi Bubble, La Fresnais and Mme de Tencin, La Fresnais suicide, Lord Bolingbroke, Lord Chesterfield, Manon Lescaut, Marivaux, Matthew Prior, Mme de Tencin, Montesquieu, Pyramus-and-Thisbe, Voltaire, Voltaire in the Bastille
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hume: a fire hose in paradise
Our tradition of the Enlightenment. Secularism and at least partly a sectarian quarrel with religion. They could never fairly assess the contours of Christian thought, art and humanitarianism and in so doing opened the door to the counter Enlightenment which … Continue reading
when the noble run free
The Enlightenment. It has become an ordinary and familiar thing; like a Marcel Duchamp sculpture, what was once subversive and novel, the quarrel with Christianity and that people of different religious affiliations could live peacefully together, has now become an … Continue reading
avoiding the seductive charms of despair
“Returning form Syracuse?” ….Four hundred years ago, the French “politiques” advanced the novel, and totally subversive notion of the time that people of different religious persuasions could live together, in peace, in the same country and under the same sovereign. … Continue reading
Posted in Feature Article, Ideas/Opinion, Modern Arts/Craft
Tagged daniel ludwig, Ernest Juenger, Frank Stella art, Friedrich Nietzsche, friedrich schelling, gadamer, Hannah Arendt, Hegel Philosopher, Immanuel Kant, Martin Heidegger, Noam Chomsky, Oswald Spengler, Otto Dix, The Enlightenment, Voltaire
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sunset of a new dawn
The Enlightenment. Its the basis of our secular society and ints values underpin much of the consumer economy. Its values have dominated the public sphere since the dawn of the industrial age. This liberal, rational, humanitarian way of thought has … Continue reading
Posted in Feature Article, Ideas/Opinion, Modern Arts/Craft
Tagged Christopher Hitchens, Edward Gibbon, Franz Xaver Messerschmidt, Friedrich Nietzsche, Hannah Arendt, Madame Pickwick, madame pickwick art blog, Martin Heidegger, Noam Chomsky, Norman Finkelstein, Peter Howson, Richard Dawkins, Slavoj Zizek, Voltaire
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lessing and nathan the wise guy
It says much about the Enlightenment spirit that the playwright Gotthold Lessing preferred to look upon himself as a critic. It says much about Lessing the critic that his greatest work of poetic criticism was entitled Laokoon. To Lessing, the … Continue reading