Duration of stay:
October 16th – December 22nd, 2016
Curriculum Vitae
Dr. Avi Lifschitz is Senior Lecturer (USA: Associate Professor) in European History at University College London (UCL). Previous research fellowships included the Lichtenberg-Kolleg at the University of Göttingen, the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin (2012/13) and the Clark Library at UCLA (2007).
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Research activities in Halle
I.
Correspondence between Enlightenment theologians and colonial administrators
Preparation of first modern English edition of a range of philosophical works by Frederick the Great
II.
Organization of the workshop “Unsocial Sociability: The German Enlightenment at the Intersection of European Discourses”/”Ungesellige Geselligkeit. Die deutsche Aufklärung am Schnittpunkt der europäischen Diskurse”, IZEA, Martin-Luther-Universität Halle-Wittenberg, 14-16 December 2016 (with Laura Macor in cooperation with Elisabet Décultot)
General research fields
Intellectual and cultural history of Europe in the long eighteenth century (c. 1680-1820) with a special focus on the links between Enlightenment anthropology, theology, and political theory
Translation and cross-cultural transfer, especially between France and Germany
History of universities and royal academies
Exiled intellectuals in the eighteenth century
Publications (a selection)
Monographies
Language and Enlightenment: The Berlin debates of the eighteenth century. Oxford 2012.
Edited volumes
Rethinking Lessing’s Laocoon: Antiquity, Enlightenment, and the ‘limits’ of painting and poetry. Co-edited with Michael Squire. Oxford [forthcoming].
Engaging with Rousseau: Reaction and interpretation from the eighteenth century to the present. Cambridge 2016.
Epicurus in the Enlightenment. Co-edited with Neven Leddy. Oxford 2009.
Rousseau’s imagined antiquity (History of Political Thought, special issue, 37/2016)
Current editorial project
Frederick II of Prussia, Writings of a philosopher-king (the first modern English edition of a range of philosophical works by Frederick the Great; to be published by Princeton University Press)
Articles and book chapters
Naturalizing the arbitrary: Lessing’s Laocoon and Enlightenment semiotics. In: Rethinking Lessing’s Laocoon: Antiquity, Enlightenment, and the ‘limits’ of painting and poetry. Ed. by Avi Lifschitz and Michael Squire. Oxford [forthcoming].
[with Michael Squire] Rethinking Lessing’s Laokoon: an introduction. In: Rethinking Lessing’s Laocoon: Antiquity, Enlightenment, and the ‘limits’ of painting and poetry. Ed. by Avi Lifschitz and Michael Squire. Oxford [forthcoming].
How to do things with signs: Rousseau’s ancient performative idiom. In: History of Political Thought 37 (2016), pp. 46-63.
Roussseau’s imagined antiquity: an introduction. In: History of Political Thought 37 (2016), pp. 1-7.
Between Friedrich Meinecke and Ernst Cassirer: Isaiah Berlin’s Bifurcated Enlightenment. In: Isaiah Berlin and the Enlightenment. Ed. by Ritchie Roberston and Laurence Brockliss. Oxford 2016, pp. 51-66.
An Epicurean democracy in language: the volte face in Johann David Michaelis’s early career. In: Life forms in the thinking of the long eighteenth century. Ed. by Keith Michael Baker and Jenna M. Gibbs. Toronto 2016, pp. 45-69.
Adrastus versus Diogenes: Frederick the Great and Jean-Jacques Rousseau on self-love. In: Engaging with Rousseau: Reaction and interpretation from the eighteenth century to the present. Ed. by Avi Lifschitz. Cambridge 2016, pp. 17-32.
Engaging with Rousseau: Preface. In: Engaging with Rousseau: Reaction and interpretation from the eighteenth century to the present. Ed. by Avi Lifschitz. Cambridge 2016, pp. XI-XX.
Genesis for historians: Thomas Abbt on biblical and conjectural accounts of human nature. In: History of European Ideas 41/5 (2015), pp. 605-618.
A natural yet providential tongue: Moses Mendelssohn on Hebrew as a language of action. In: Language as bridge and border: Linguistic, cultural and political constellations in eighteenth- to twentieth-century German-Jewish thought. Ed. by Sabine Sander. Berlin 2015, pp. 31-50.
Natur und menschliche Kultur: Diskussionen um Sprache und Entwicklung des Menschen im Zeitalter der Aufklärung. In: Aufklärung 25 (2014), pp. 51-71.
Language. In: The Routledge companion to eighteenth-century philosophy. Ed. by Aaron Garrett. London 2014, pp. 663-683.
Poetic knowledge and the knowledge of poetry: foreword. In: The poetic Enlightenment: Poetry and human science, 1650-1820. Ed. by Tom Jones and Rowan Boyson. London 2013, pp. 11-13.
Zeichensprache. In: Rousseau und die Moderne. Eine kleine Enzyklopädie. Ed. by Iwan-Michelangelo D’Aprile and Stefanie Stockhorst. Göttingen 2013, pp. 339-348.
Language as a means and an obstacle to freedom: the case of Moses Mendelssohn. In: Freedom and the construction of Europe. Vol. 2. Ed. by Quentin Skinner and Martin van Gelderen. Cambridge 2013, pp. 84-102.
The arbitrariness of the linguistic sign: variations on an Enlightenment theme. In: Journal of the History of Ideas 73/4 (2012), pp. 537-557.
The Enlightenment’s ‘experimental metaphysics’: inquiries into the origins and history of language. In: Lumières et histoire – Enlightenment and history. Ed. by Tristan Coignard, Peggy Davis and Alicia Montoya. Paris 2010, pp. 63-76.
Translation in theory and practice: the case of Johann David Michaelis’ prize essay on language and opinions (1759). In: Cultural transfer through translation in eighteenth-century Europe. Ed. by Stefanie Stockhorst. Amsterdam 2010, pp. 29-43.
The Enlightenment revival of the Epicurean history of language and civilisation. In: Epicurus in the Enlightenment. Ed. by Neven Leddy and Avi Lifschitz. Oxford 2009, pp. 207-226.
From the corruption of French to the cultural distinctiveness of German: the controversy over Prémontval’s Préservatif (1759). In: Studies on Voltaire and the Eighteenth Century 6 (2007), pp. 265-290.
Language as the key to the epistemological labyrinth: Turgot’s changing view of human perception. In: Historiographia Linguistica 31/2-3 (2004), pp. 345-365.