Bringing together renowned scholars from Germany, Switzerland, the Netherlands, and the U.S., the conference Humanism and Revolution: Eighteenth-Century Europe and Its Transatlantic Legacy examines the influence of the ideas of humanism and revolution on philosophy, literature, art, and politics. Itself a truly transatlantic collaboration, the conference is supported by Rice's School of Humanities and the Humanities Research Center as well as two of the foremost German institutions, the Freie Universität Berlin and the Kulturwissenschaftliches Institut Essen.

Already in early modern Europe the concept of revolutio increasingly came to adopt the meaning of a decisive change, violent rupture or radical break with a past normative order now seen as both oppressive and as blocking future development. Since the events of the eighteenth century, in particular the French and American Revolutions, the concept of revolution has become one of the most important, and most widely used, concepts of modern political and philosophical thought.

The revolutions of the eighteenth century are, however, also marked by a temporal logic that questions their radical departure from the past, both intellectually and practically. Indeed, the concept of revolution is often coupled with a renewed interest in ideals of human self-conception, moral beauty and education that are seen as having emerged in the classical antiquity of Greece and Rome. On both sides of the Atlantic, references to classical antiquity support contemporary achievements, on the one hand, and are used to question the existing state of political and intellectual affairs, on the other.

The conference will examine the link between “revolution” and “humanism” in the intellectual and cultural context of Europe and its transatlantic legacy with regard to its relevance for contemporary debates in both the humanities and social sciences.

Program

Friday, December 11

9-9:45 am    
Welcome by Allen Matusow, Dean of the School of Humanities,
and Caroline Levander, Director of the Humanities Research Center

9:45-10 am    
Coffee/Tea

10-11 am    
Hubert Cancik (Universität Tübingen, Germany)
Nature and Human Rights: Ancient Foundations of a Modern Concept
Moderator: Harvey Yunis, Rice University

11 am-12 noon    
Georg Essen (Radboud Universiteit Nijmegen, The Netherlands)
“Is There Anything More Insane to Be Conceived?” Human Rights, the Catholic Church, and the Ideas of 1789
Moderator: Steven Crowell, Rice University

12 noon-2 pm    
Lunch

2-3 pm    
Rachel Zuckert (Northwestern University)
Kant and Revolution
Moderator: Christian J. Emden, Rice University

3-4 pm    
Barbara Hahn (Vanderbilt University)
Hannah Arendt’s Struggle with Her Century: Reflecting on Eighteenth-Century Revolutions in the Age of Totalitarianism
Moderator: Christian J. Emden, Rice University

4-4:30 pm    
Coffee/Tea

4:30-5:30 pm    
Hans-Helmuth Gander (Universität Freiburg/Br., Germany)
Husserl and Heidegger on Humanism
Moderator: Steven Crowell, Rice University

Saturday, December 12

9-10 am    
William Rasch (Indiana University–Bloomington)
City or Soul? On the Political Primacy of Civil Peace
Moderator: Peter C. Caldwell, Rice University

10-11 am    
Hauke Brunkhorst (Universität Flensburg, Germany)
Cosmopolitanism in Eighteenth-Century Constitutional Revolutions
Moderator: John H. Zammito, Rice University

11-11:30 am    
Coffee/Tea

11:30 am-12:30 pm    
Günther Lottes (Universität Potsdam, Germany)
Historical Progress v. Human Rights: Well-Hidden Contradictions in Meaning Well
Moderator: Uwe Steiner, Rice University

12:30 pm-2 pm    
Lunch

2-3 pm    
Alexander Honold (Universität Basel, Switzerland)
The Celebration of Time in the Revolutionary Community: From Robespierre to Schiller and from Rousseau to Hölderlin
Moderator: Martin Blumenthal-Barby, Rice University

3-4 pm    
John Hamilton (Harvard University)
“Ich liebe dich wie das Grab”: Rhetoric, Revolution, and Necromancy in Dantons Tod
Moderator: Bernd Seidensticker, Freie Universität Berlin, Germany

4-4:30 pm    
Coffee/Tea

4:30-5:30 pm    
Ulrich Johannes Schneider (Universität Leipzig, Germany)
New Ways of Knowing Things in the Eighteenth Century
Moderator: John H. Zammito, Rice University

Sunday, December 13

10-11 am    
Mark-Georg Dehrmann  (Universität Hannover, Germany)
Philology, Theory, and “Aesthetic Revolution” in Friedrich Schlegel
Moderator: Uwe Steiner, Rice University

11 am-12 noon    
Karin Gludovatz (Freie Universität Berlin, Germany)
Goya’s Revolutions and the Solitude of Heroes
Moderator: Bernd Seidensticker, Freie Universität Berlin, Germany

12 noon-2 pm   
Lunch

2-3 pm    
Elizabeth Millán-Zaibert (De Paul University)
Alexander von Humboldt’s Presentation of the Spanish American Landscape: A Case of Interpretative Justice
Moderator: Luis Duno-Gottberg, Rice University

3-4 pm    
Anna Brickhouse (University of Virginia)
Humanism and the (Other) American Revolution
Moderator: Caroline Levander, Rice University

4-4:30 pm    
Final Discussion