Ebook Download The Dark Side of the Enlightenment: Wizards, Alchemists, and Spiritual Seekers in the Age of Reason, by John V. Fleming
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The Dark Side of the Enlightenment: Wizards, Alchemists, and Spiritual Seekers in the Age of Reason, by John V. Fleming
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Why spiritual and supernatural yearnings, even investigations into the occult, flourished in the era of rationalist philosophy.
In The Dark Side of the Enlightenment, John V. Fleming shows how the impulses of the European Enlightenment—generally associated with great strides in the liberation of human thought from superstition and traditional religion—were challenged by tenacious religious ideas or channeled into the “darker” pursuits of the esoteric and the occult. His engaging topics include the stubborn survival of the miraculous, the Enlightenment roles of Rosicrucianism and Freemasonry, and the widespread pursuit of magic and alchemy.
Though we tend not to associate what was once called alchemy with what we now call chemistry, Fleming shows that the difference is merely one of linguistic modernization. Alchemy was once the chemistry, of Arabic derivation, and its practitioners were among the principal scientists and physicians of their ages. No point is more important for understanding the strange and fascinating figures in this book than the prestige of alchemy among the learned men of the age.
Fleming follows some of these complexities and contradictions of the “Age of Lights” into the biographies of two of its extraordinary offspring. The first is the controversial wizard known as Count Cagliostro, the “Egyptian” freemason, unconventional healer, and alchemist known most infamously for his ambiguous association with the Affair of the Diamond Necklace, which history has viewed as among the possible harbingers of the French Revolution and a major contributing factor in the growing unpopularity of Marie Antoinette. Fleming also reviews the career of Julie de Krüdener, the sentimental novelist, Pietist preacher, and political mystic who would later become notorious as a prophet.
Impressively researched and wonderfully erudite, this rich narrative history sheds light on some lesser-known mental extravagances and beliefs of the Enlightenment era and brings to life some of the most extraordinary characters ever encountered either in history or fiction.
- Sales Rank: #883360 in eBooks
- Published on: 2013-07-22
- Released on: 2013-07-15
- Format: Kindle eBook
Review
Fleming's book is about two cultural commonplaces, the so-called darkness of the Middle Ages and the reputed brightness of the later age that called them dark. In nine greatly informative and entertaining chapters, Fleming turns the tables by showing that the enlightenment had a dark side that was an integral part of it. Hence, its dark side must be understood as co-Enlightenment, not as what is often called the Counter-Enlightenment. This, in a deep sense, is an important book in the cultural study of history. --Hans Aarsleff, author of From Locke to Saussure
John Fleming has written a fascinating, compulsively readable account of the shadowy world that lay just beyond the clear, clean, well-ordered boundaries of the Age of Reason. His protagonists, vividly brought to life, are a motley collection of miracle workers, charlatans, confidence men, and half-crazed visionaries, caught up in a frenzied pursuit of occult truths, secret powers, and illicit pleasures. Never has the Enlightenment seemed stranger. --Stephen Greenblatt, author of The Swerve"
Fleming s book is about two cultural commonplaces, the so-called darkness of the Middle Ages and the reputed brightness of the later age that called them dark. In nine greatly informative and entertaining chapters, Fleming turns the tables by showing that the enlightenment had a dark side that was an integral part of it. Hence, its dark side must be understood as co-Enlightenment, not as what is often called the Counter-Enlightenment. This, in a deep sense, is an important book in the cultural study of history. --Hans Aarsleff, author of From Locke to Saussure"
This is a book that sparkles with wit and learning and mischief. In place of a pale age of reason, John Fleming guides us through the witching hour of the Enlightenment, a time haunted by visions of magic, mystery, and the occult enchanted and enchanting. --Lawrence Lipking, Chester D. Tripp Professor of Humanities, Northwestern University"
About the Author
John V. Fleming, a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, taught humanistic studies at Princeton University for forty years. He is the author of The Anti-Communist Manifestos: Four Books That Shaped the Cold War. He lives in Princeton, New Jersey.
Most helpful customer reviews
24 of 28 people found the following review helpful.
Fascinating History of Twisted, Strange Souls
By HenryC
All periods of history have a dark side, a buried story. Sometimes we lack the scholarly search-and-rescue tools to recover the hidden tale. Sometimes we flinch from the implications of that stretch of time retold. But always, to free these other, stranger counter-narratives demands a cultural historian of vast experience, erudition and nerve.
How fortunate that the great medievalist John V. Fleming, in his so-called retirement from Princeton, is tackling a host of offbeat book projects, each more surprising and rewarding than the last, from The Anti-Communist Manifestos: Four Books That Shaped The Cold War to the poetry of Luis de Camoes, the Shakespeare of Portugal. The Dark Side of the Enlightenment, Fleming's newest report from a rich yet neglected corner of Western cultural life, is a readable and fascinating study of the wizards, alchemists, cultists, Freemasons, healers, showboaters, and charismatic nut jobs who danced through the shadowy side of the Enlightenment. They had more power than we might think, destabilizing regimes, restructuring science, and encouraging off-brand beliefs and behaviors that rationalists like Gibbon and Voltaire (or Franklin and Jefferson) much preferred to hustle offstage.
Without these mystical entrepreneurs, the powerful strain of esoteric and occult obsession that runs like an underground river through Europe's intellectual life might well have died out in the 1700s. The magicians and myth-makers of the Counter-Enlightenment kept it alive to galvanize the Romantics, and trouble our own times. Without the dark side of the long 18th century, there would be no social Darwinism, and no Hitler. And no Enlightenment, either, for its day and night aspects, as Fleming so clearly shows, were twinned from the start, a cultural double helix of logic and dream.
Fleming calls The Dark Side of the Enlightenment "an odd book about odd people," which is like calling Moby-Dick a useful handbook on whaling. His portraits of these twisted, strange souls are terrific set-pieces of biographical detection, from that supreme confidence-man Count Cagliostro to the relentless self-marketer and prophetess Julie de Krudener. The book's opening chapter, "The Light and the Dark," is brilliant, a model of historiography, deft, audacious and funny. As with all Prof. Fleming's oeuvre, you come for the jokes, stay for the footnotes, applaud the lightning insights, and depart with gratitude for time spent with an eminent scholar-writer, immensely learned, immensely approachable. (See also his fine weekly blog, at [...].)
10 of 10 people found the following review helpful.
Focus? What focus?
By Bern
That the Enlightenment was not universal is a commonplace. Fleming's book promises to shed light on the "dark" side: magic, miracles, séances and alchemy. For the first part of the book, he presents essays on several of these topics - Freemasonry, alchemy, Jansenism, and faith healing. What I first dismissed as an anomaly - a short biography of an obscure faith healer from Ireland - turns into a major flaw.
Fleming delves into the details of the life of Count Cagliostro, who among other things was a medium and an alchemist. But the worst is yet to come. Do we really need a hundred page biography of Julie de Krüdener - a mediocre romance novelist and religious fantasist? I don't think so. Fleming's choice to focus on biographical detail of individuals without placing them in broader context is, in my mind, a major flaw.
The publisher's blurb promises a broad-ranging overview of anti-Enlightenment trends. Fleming occasionally delivers, but then loses focus, choosing instead to pursue individuals whose broader impact and significance is left largely unexplored.
13 of 15 people found the following review helpful.
Enlightening !
By Paul Gelman
These days only a handful men and women who are professional historians can interest and stimulate. The reasons vary, but I believe the main one is still the adage: Publish Or Perish.
Thus most historians rush to publish books-histories or monographs-that are meant to be read by only some of their colleagues, in the hope of gaining some more kudos and perhaps earn some more points in order to advance at their respective departments.
However, here comes Professor Fleming and proves that in spite of being a very erudite man and one who is a famous Professor, he can also write for the masses a most enjoyable and readable book without any specific academic jargon.
Indeed, this book is a gem and its purpose is to show that alonside the Enlightenment there was a Counter-Enlightenment, which contained many facets and elements. If one were to sum up the purpose of the anti-Enlightenment activists, one could easily say that those alchemists ,conmen, occultists and wizards wanted to attain a complete knowledge of everything.
The book has many chapters about Contortionists, Kabbala, esoteric texts, weird persons, charlatans, writers, impostors, seances-you name it. You will meet many unknown figures and some very famous ones along the way.You will be in England, Germany, France and Italy and also in Egypt.
Read this book and will get an insight into the mentality of some of the masses during the 17th to the early 19th century. This book is a treasure to be preserved for years.
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