Networks and Readings
The Second Enlightenment and any social process of change is, by definition, a collaborative effort. At the same time, no one can be involved in all aspects of change.
So I have collected below some links to organizations that are doing work in some areas of the Second Enlightenment, as well as some particularly powerful articles that may help you hone in on your particular interests and passions. There are many different ways to get involved: volunteering, working for them, debating, donating, etc.
I hope you will find a group that resonates with you and your passion for the world. (and, if you have any network connections or websites to share, please Contact us so we can post it for others.)
About Wealth
Millionaires for Humanity is a group of very wealthy individuals who feel that the amount of personal wealth they have inherited is neither just nor fair to the rest of the world. This group is working on ways to reorganize wealth in the world to bring more equity in more systemic ways, not just through philanthropy. Click here.
Kialo is an engaging website forum for critical debate. On this page linked below the discussion question is “Should Inheritance Be Abolished?” To read and contribute to the list of pros and cons of abolishing inheritance, click here.
Why do we bequeath and inherit? This provocative article from The Atlantic explores the history and effects of inheritance, encouraging a re-evaluation of this ancient practice. Click here.
Enough! This concise (5 minute) and highly engaging video called “Enoughness” from First Peoples Worldwide Productions offers a compelling indigenous view of the source of imbalances and greed in the world. Click here.
About Peace in the World
Want to find out how to build peace? Visit this site, from International Alert, an organization that works towards peace from all angles. Click here.
What IS “peace-building” anyway? For a 6 minute video tutorial, click here.
About the Importance of Ecology
Understand more about the critical role of ecology in politics (or as they say on the site, ‘ecologizing politics’) through an insightful interview with Corine Pelluchon. Click here
Find out more about Corine Pelluchon’s paradigm-expanding work towards an ecological enlightenment. Click here
Learn more and get involved with returning Europe to a more wild state. Click here
For the work of rewilding in the US, click here
Visit some rewilding sites in the US where you can ‘watch nature reclaim the USA’. Click here
Learn of an inspiring vision of giving “animals, trees and rivers” legal rights, from Plant Based News. click here
“Give Rivers Rights” – An exciting journalistic piece from NPR describing the global efforts towards giving rights to elements of the natural world. Click here
About Life and Death
Many people are aware of birth doulas, the people who support women giving birth. But did you know that there are also death doulas who support those in the final stages of dying? To find out more, click here
For a compelling and engaging essay on Medium about a personal journey of discovery and exploration of the idea of not having children, click here
Not sure how you feel about having children these days? Check out this site that explores the concept of anti-natalism, and powerful reasons for not having children. Click here.
About Religion
“Religion as a Private Matter” – For an insightful article from Liberty magazine that traces the evolution of religion from a public to a private practice, click here
“Religions descending from Abraham (ie, Judaism, Christianity and Islam) give rise to the human identity, through emphasis on the private life of the individual. What is the extent of privacy in the Islamic point of view?” For this intriguing article clarifying the view of religious privacy from an Islamic point of view (but very relevant for all religions), click here
“Do Not Bring Hinduism Into Politics” For this article about the importance of keeping government non-religious, click here
About Healthcare as a Human Right
To learn more about the global work of Partners in Health and their fight against the ‘pathologies of power’, click here.
To read a statement from the head of the WHO who details exactly WHY health is a human right, click here.
Even the law profession agrees about healthcare. Read the compelling argument from the American Bar Association supporting healthcare as a right. Click here.
Below are additional resources (books and articles) exploring politics and religion and their interwoven connections in different contexts:
For an exploration of the Mongolian history of the relationship between Buddhism and the law.
For an article about perspectives on Judaism and its role in politics, click here
“Using Islam as Political Ideology (Turkey)”
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/09213740020140010201?journalCode=cdya
“Why Religion Belongs in the Private Sphere, Not the Public Square.”
Poverty and Natural resources Readings
The links below lead to publications that offer perspectives about the relationship between poverty and natural resources in multiple environments, from India to Africa.
This book explores the connections between natural resources and development, particularly considering why Africa with its vast resources has been underdeveloped for so long.
To understand more about the relationship poverty and people’s relationship to the land in India, click here.
https://www.files.ethz.ch/isn/128380/CPRC-IIPA_25.pdf
To understand how poverty and the environment and sustainable development are interconnected, click here.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/019592559290005I
For a revealing article about ‘The Resource Curse’ that asks, “Why is it that countries that have so much, seem to have so little?” click here.
Relevant Readings
If you like to explore certain topics of the first and Second Enlightenment further, you may be interested in the following sources.
- Achtner, Wolfgang. “The Evolution of Evolutionary Theories of Religion.” In The Biological Evolution of Religious Mind and Behavior, E. Voland and W. Schiefenhövel, Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer Verlag 2009.
- Adamson, Peter. “Abu Bakr al-Razi on Animals.” Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie 94, 3 (2012). Doi:10.1515/AGPH-2012-0011.
- Assmann, Jan. The Invention of Religion: Faith and Covenant in the Book of Exodus. Princeton: Princeton University press, 2018.
- Beck, Ulrich. Risikogesellschaft: Auf dem Weg in eine andere Moderne. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1986.
- Cassirer, Ernst. Philosophie der Aufklärung, Leipzig, 1932.
- Cooper, William S. The Evolution of Reason: Logic as the Branch of Biology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001.
- Fetchenhauer, Detlef. “Evolutionary Perspective on Religion – What They Can and What They Cannot Explain (Yet).” In The Biological Evolution of Religious Mind and Behavior, E. Voland and W. Schiefenhövel, Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer Verlag 2009.
- Frey, Ulrich. “Cognitive Foundations of Religiosity.” In The Biological Evolution of Religious Mind and Behavior, E. Voland and W. Schiefenhövel, Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer Verlag 2009.
- Frick, Marie-Luisa. Mutig Denken; Aufklärung als offener Prozess, Reclam, 2021.
- Greenblatt, Stephen. “How St. Augustine Invented Sex: He Rescued Adam and Eve from Obscurity, Devised the Doctrine of Original Sin – and the Rest Is Sexual History.” The New Yorker: Annals of Culture, June 19, 2017.
- —–. The Rise and Fall of Adam and Eve. New York and London: W. W. Norton and Company, 2017.
- —–. The Swerve: How the World Became Modern. New York: W. W. Norton, 2011.
- Hannah-Jones, Nikole. The 1619 Project: A New Origin Story. New York: Random House 2021.
- Hickel, Jason. Less is More: How Degrowth Will Save the World. Penguin Random House, 2021.
- —–. The Divide: A Brief Guide to Global Inequality and Its Solutions. Random House, 2017.
- Horkheimer, Max. und Adorno, Theodor W. Dialektik der Aufklärung: Philosophische Fragmente, 1947.
- Jefferson, Thomas. Notes on the State of Virginia, Paris, 1785, London, 1787.
- Kahneman, Daniel. Thinking, Fast and Slow. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2011.
- Kant, Immanuel. “Beantwortung der Frage: Was ist Aufklärung?” Berlinische Monatsschrift, Dezember Heft 1784, S. 481-494.
- Lorenz, Konrad. The Waning of Humaneness, Warren Kickert, Boston and Toronto: Little Brown and Co., 1987.
- Lucretius. The Nature of Things. Translated by A. E. Stallings, introduction by Richard Jenkyns, London: Penguin Classics, 2007.
- Margreiter, Reinhard. “Mythos versus Religion?: Über eine Denkfigur bei Cohen und Cassirer.” Philosophisches Jahrbuch, Freiburg, München: Verlag Karl Alber 2003.
- —– Schopenhauers Tierethik im kulturellen West-Ost-Dialog, 2021.
- Mattioli, Aram. Verlorene Welten: Geschichte der Indianer Nordamerikas 1700-1900. Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta, 2018.
- Meiners, Christoph. “Über die Natur der afrikanischen Neger (und die davon abhängige Befreyung, oder Einschränkung der Schwarzen),” Göttingisches Historisches Magazin, 6 (1790), 386–7.
- Mīr Findiriskī, Abu’l Qāsim. Muntakhab-i Jūg-basasht. Edited and introduction by Fathullah Mojatabai, bilingual edition of Persian and English based on PhD dissertation at Harvard University 1976, Tehran: Iranian Institute of Philosophy, 2006.
- Mulgan, Geoff. Another World is Possible: How to Reignite Social and Political Imagination. London: Hurst & Company, 2022.
- Pagden, Anthony. The Enlightenment and Why It Still Matters. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015.
- Parkes, Graham. About the Climate Crisis: A Philosophical Guide to Saner Ways of Living, Bloomsburry, 2021.
- —–. “Death and Detachment: Montaigne, Zen, Heidegger and the Rest.” In Death and Philosophy, edited by Jeff Malpas and Robert C. Solomon, 75-87. London & New York: Routledge, 1998.
- —– “Confucian and Daoist, Stoic and Epicurean. Some Parallels in Ways of Living.” In Confucius and Cicero: Old Ideas for a New World, New Ideas for an Old World. 43-58, edited by Andrea Balbo and Jaewon Ahn, 43-58. Leck: De Gruyter, 2019.
- Pellochun, Corine. Les Lumières à l ´ âge du vivant, Paris: Seuil, 2021.
- Pinker, Steven. Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism and Progress. New York: Viking-Penguin, 2018.
- Rizzolatti, Giacomo, Fadiga, Luciano, Fogassi, Leonardo and Gallese, Vittorio. “From Mirror Neurons to Imitation: Facts and Speculations.” In Imitative Mind: Development, Evolution and Brain Bases, Andrew N. Meltszoff and Wolfgang Prinz, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002.
- Roberts, Justin. Slavery and the Enlightenment in the British Atlantic, 1750–1807. Cambridge Univ. 2013.
- Rogers, G.A. J. “Locke, Newton and Enlightenment.” Vista in Astronomy 22/4 (1978): 471-76.
- Sapolsky, Robert. Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst. New York: Penguin Press, 2017.
- Schlegel, Fredrich von. “On the Languages and Wisdom of the Indians,” A Reader in Nineteenth Century Historical Indo-European Linguists, P. Lehmann (ed.), Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1967. (pp. 21-28).
- Starr, S. Fredrick. Lost Enlightenment: Central Asia’s Golden Age from the Arab Conquest to Tamerlane. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2015.
- Stenger, Gerhardt. Diderot, Le combattant de la liberté. Paris: Perrin, 2013.
- Stroumsa, Sarah. Freethinkers of Medieval Islam: Ibn al-Rawandi, Abu Bakr al- Razi and Their Impact on Islamic Thought. Leiden/Boston/Koln: Brill, 1999.
- Thomson, J. Anderson, Aukofer, Clare and Richard Dawkins (Foreword). Why We Believe in God(s): A Concise Guide to the Science of Faith. Charlottesville: Pitchstone Publishing, 2011.
- Thurow, Joshua C. “Does Cognitive Science Show Belief in God to be Irrational? The Epistemic Consequences of the Cognitive Science of Religion.” International Journal for Philosophy of Religion, 74/1 (2013): 77– 98.
- Topa Wahinkpe and Narvaez, Darcia. Restoring the Kinship Worldview: Indigenous Voices Introduce 28 Precepts for Rebalancing Life on Planet Earth, Berkeley: North Atlantic Books, 2022.
- Walker Donald. F. et al., “Changes in Personal Religion/Spirituality During and After Childhood Abuse: A Review and Synthesis.” Psychological Trauma Theory Research Practice and Policy 1, no. 2, (2009): 130-145.
- Wilson, W. Daniel. Das Goethe-Tabu: Protest und Menschenrechte im klassischen Weimar, München, 1999.
- Wolfe, Charles T. “A Happiness Fit for Organic Bodies: La Mettrie’s Medical Epicureanism.” In Epicurus in the Enlightenment, Neven Leddy and Avis Liefschitz (eds.) 69-84, Oxford: Voltaire Foundation, University of Oxford, 2009.
- Yalom, Irvin D. Existential Psychotherapy. New York: Basic Books, 1980
- Ziporyn, Brook (Translation and Introduction). Zhuangzi: The Essential Writings, With Selections from Traditional Commentaries. Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, Inc., 2009.