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期刊名称：SEVENTEENTH CENTURY ISSN： 0268-117X 出版频率： Quarterly 出版社： ROUTLEDGE JOURNALS, TAYLOR & FRANCIS LTD, 2-4 PARK SQUARE, MILTON PARK, ABINGDON, ENGLAND, OXON, OX14 4RN   出版社网址： http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rsev20 期刊网址： http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rsev20 主题范畴： MEDIEVAL & RENAISSANCE STUDIES 期刊简介(About the journal)    投稿须知(Instructions to Authors)    编辑部信息(Editorial Board)    About the journal   General Editor: Professor Richard Maber, School of Modern Languages & Cultures, Durham University, Elvet Riverside, New Elvet, Durham, DH1 3JT, UK email: R.G.Maber@durham.ac.uk The Seventeenth Century is established as the leading forum for interdisciplinary approaches to the period, and complements these with stimulating specialist studies on a wide range of subjects. The journal is international in its scope. There is a general preference for articles embodying original research. All contributions should be accessible to scholars who are not specialists in the field concerned. Subjects covered include literature, political and economic history, social history, theology, philosophy, colonial history, natural sciences, music, and the visual arts. There is substantial coverage of book reviews; the journal also publishes review articles and surveys of recent research. From time to time special issues will be devoted to one theme or topic, although the journal normally aims for a broad spread of interest in each issue. Books sent for review should be addressed to the General Editor. Instructions to Authors As a historical category, the term "Enlightenment" refers to a series of changes in European thought and letters. It is one of the few historical categories that was coined by the people who lived through the era (most historical categories, such as "Renaissance," "early modern," "Reformation," "Tokugawa Enlightenment," etc., are made up by historians after the fact). When the writers, philosophers and scientists of the eighteenth century referred to their activities as the "Enlightenment," they meant that they were breaking from the past and replacing the obscurity, darkness, and ignorance of European thought with the "light" of truth.    Although the Enlightenment is one of the few self-named historical categories, determining the beginning of the Enlightenment is a difficult affair, as we noted earlier in this module. Not only can we not easily find a beginning to the Enlightenment, we can't really identify an end point either. For we still more or less live in an Enlightenment world; while philosophers and cultural historians have dubbed the late nineteenth and all of the twentieth century as "post-Enlightenment," we still walk around with a world view largely based on Enlightenment thought.    So in the spirit of not dating the Enlightenment, we will simply refer to the changes in European thought in the seventeenth century as "Seventeenth Century Enlightenment Thought," with the understanding that our use of the term may invite criticism.    The main components of Enlightenment thought are as follows: The universe is fundamentally rational, that is, it can be understood through the use of reason alone; Truth can be arrived at through empirical observation, the use of reason, and systematic doubt; Human experience is the foundation of human understanding of truth; authority is not to be preferred over experience; All human life, both social and individual, can be understood in the same way the natural world can be understood; once understood, human life, both social and individual, can be manipulated or engineered in the same way the natural world can be manipulated or engineered; Human history is largely a history of progress; Human beings can be improved through education and the development of their rational facilities; Religious doctrines have no place in the understanding of the physical and human worlds;    There are two distinct developments in Enlightenment thought: the scientific revolution which resulted in new systems of understanding the physical world (this is covered in a later chapter), and the redeployment of the human sciences that apply scientific thinking to what were normally interpretive sciences. In the first, the two great innovations were the development of empirical thought and the mechanistic world view. Empiricism is based on the notion that human observation is a reliable indicator of the nature of phenomena; repeated human observation can produce reasonable expectations about future natural events. In the second, the universe is regarded as a machine. It functions by natural and predictable rules; although God created the universe, he does not interfere in its day to day runnings. Once the world is understood as a machine, then it can be manipulated and engineered for the benefit of humanity in the same way as machines are. The Human Sciences    These ideas were steadily exported to the human sciences as well. In theories of personality, human development, and social mechanics, seventeenth century thinkers moved away from religious and moral explanations of human behavior and interactions and towards an empirical analysis and mechanistic explanation of the laws of human behavior and interaction. Thomas Hobbes    The first major thinker of the seventeenth century to apply new methods to the human sciences was Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679) whose book Leviathan is one of the most revolutionary and influential works on political theory in European history. Hobbes was greatly interested in the new sciences; he spent some time in Italy with Galileo and eagerly read the work of William Harvey, who was applying the new physical science methods to human physiology. After the English Civil War, Hobbes determined that political philosophy had to be seriously revised. The old political philosophy, which relied on religion, ethics, and interpretation, had produced what he felt was a singular disaster in English history. He proposed that political philosophy should be based on the same methods of exposition and explanation as were being applied to the physical sciences.    When he applied these explanatory principles to politics and states, he arrived at two radical and far-reaching conclusions: All human law derives from natural law; when human law departed from natural law, disaster followed; All monarchs ruled not by the consent of heaven, but by the consent of the people.    These were radical ideas. In the first, Hobbes believed that human beings were material, physical objects that were ruled by material, physical laws. Everything that human beings feel, think, and judge, are simply physical reactions to external stimuli. Sensation produces feeling, and feeling produces decision, and decision produces action. We are all, then, machines. The fundamental motivation that spurs human beings on is selfishness: all human beings wish to maximize their pleasure and minimize their pain. As long as political philosophy is built on some other principle, such as morality, the human inclination to selfishness will always result in tragedy.    Since all human beings are selfish, this means that no person is really safe from the predations of his or her fellow beings. In its natural state, humanity is at war with itself. Individuals battle other individuals in a perpetual struggle for advantage, power, and gain. Hobbes argued that the society was a group of selfish individuals that united into a single body in order to maximize their safety-- to protect themselves from one another. The primary purpose of society is to maximize the happiness of its individuals. At some early point, individuals gathered into a society and agreed to a "social contract" that stipulated the laws and rules they would all live by. Editorial Board General Editor: Professor Richard Maber, School of Modern Languages & Cultures, Durham University, Elvet Riverside, New Elvet, Durham, DH1 3JT, UK email: R.G.Maber@durham.ac.uk Associate Editors: Christopher Brooks, Durham University, UK Alan Ford, Nottingham University, UK Paul Hammond, Leeds University, UK Editorial Board : Alan Cromartie, University of Reading, UK Martin Dzelzainis, University of Leicester, UK Howard Hotson, St Anne’s College, Oxford, UK Michael Hunter, Birkbeck College, University of London, UK David Knight, Durham University, UK Andrew McRae, University of Exeter, UK Gwenda Morgan, Newcastle University, UK Timothy Raylor, Carleton College, Minnesota, USA Keith Wrightson, Yale University, USA