Table of Contents

Introduction
1: The mutual emergence of language, mind, and society: an Enlightenment debate
2: Symbolic cognition from Leibniz to the 1760s: theology, aesthetics, and history
3: The evolution and genius of language: debates in the Berlin Academy
4: J. D. Michaelis on language and vowel points: from confessional controversy to naturalism
5: A point of convergence and new departures: the 1759 contest on language and opinions
6: Language and cultural identity: the controversy over Prémontval's Préservatif
7: Tackling the naturalistic conundrum: instincts and conjectural history to 1771
8: Conclusion and a glimpse into the future

About the Author

Avi Lifschitz is Lecturer in Early Modern European History at University College London (UCL), and Research Fellow at the Institute for Advanced Study (Wissenschaftskolleg) in Berlin. He is co-editor of Epicurus in the Enlightenment (2009).

Reviews

This impressive monograph provides a powerful and original contribution to the cultural history of Prussia and sustains its author's claim that 'The Academy became a major centre of intellectual regeneration in Germany'.
*Tim Blanning, English Historical Review*

Lifschitz has made an important contribution to our understanding of the Aufklärung. His book will be required reading for anyone who now wishes to study the subject. At the same time his work will have much to say to scholars of the European Enlightenment and to anyone interested in the history of linguistic thought in the eighteenth century.
*Joachim Whaley, History*

Successfully combining the larger picture with thick description of local contexts, Language and Enlightenment is a rich book that will be read with profit by those interested in the philosophy of langugae, the history of ideas, and cultural history alike.
*Iwan-Michelangelo D'Aprile, Bulletin of the German Historical Institute, London*

Lifschitz's extensive and patient historical analysis ... enriches in many ways our knowledge of the Berlin debates and helps us think in new ways about the authors and works that characterize the age of Enlightenment.
*Stefano Gensini, Historiographia Linguistica*

This excellent, lucid and stimulating volume compellingly demonstrates the multifaceted complexity and fascination of eighteenth-century grapplings with language in Berlin and beyond ... Language & Enlightenment is a masterly work of intellectual history, taking ideas seriously and summarising them with great lucidity, while always relating them to cultural, social and political aspects.
*Adam Sutcliffe, Journal for Eighteenth-Century Studies*

Concise and powerful book ... This book does justice to both the general and the particular and as such is a rare find indeed.
*Jonathan Sheehan, Journal of Modern History*

Avi Lifschitz has written a very concise study and covered a vast field.
*Sundar Henny, European History Quarterly*