Republic of Letters

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Republic of Letters is a phrase describing the phenomenon of increased correspondence in the form of letters exchanged between the influential philosophers and other thinkers during the Age of Enlightenment. It is commonly used to denote a notion of an imaginary space where free thinking people could exchange ideas. The Republic of Letters began as a network of private correspondence and evolved into the more complex and institutionalised system of newspapers and academic journals.

Recently, the notion of the Republic of Letters has been revived and used to refer to new phenomena, especially those related to the Internet, which enables even more rapid forms of communication and led to the creation of new discussion networks that function without the intermediary figure of the editor, like those of Usenet or Internet forums. However, modern day blogs and other forms of internet debate are not usually discussions between experts on the discussed topics, so the comparison to the Age of Enlightenment Republic of Letters may be imprecise.

[edit] Resources

Further information may be found in:

Dena Goodman, The Republic of Letters: A Cultural History of the French Enlightenment. Ithaca NY: Cornell University Press, 1994, ISBN 0-8014-2968-4.