International conference "In the Shadow of the Enlightenment: Scholasticism, Humanism and Baroque on the Threshold of Modernity"
The conference is dedicated to the large-scale “discursive formations” of the Early Modern Times, marginalized or “overshadowed” by the great “Project of Enlightenment”. Flourishing post-Tridentine scholasticism and exuberant Baroque antiquarianism underwent the same process of rapid decline nearly at the time D’Alembert and Diderot’s Encyclopédie came off the press. Neo-Kantian history of philosophy canonized the image of the decisive victory of recentiores, with Descartes as their godfather, over the ghosts of the scholarly pedantry and intellectual idolatry. Nowadays what had been previously considered as a dead-end is perceived as a “hidden possibility in modern inquiry” (N.S. Struever): new trends in modal logic, history of statistics, logic of speech acts, “nouvelle rhétorique”, new history of medicine, different versions of the “history of concepts” shifted our view of early modern thought profoundly. This historiographic décalage cast a new light on such giants of baroque era as Juan Caramuel-y-Lobkowitz or Giambattista Vico, whose 350th anniversary is celebrated this year. Consequently, our conference is divided into three parts: first one is dedicated to Vico’s legacy, second one – to Later Scholasticism and history of early modern right, third one – to the “Counter-Enlightenment” aspects of the early modern Belles-Lettres (we consider as such aspects, e.g., préciosité or some radical instantiations of libertinage in their polemical interplay with the “Enlightenment Project”).
Conference Programme
Conference address: 11 Myasnitskaya, room 508.
Working languages: English, German, French, Italian, Russian.