Download or read book Diderot and Rousseau written by Marian Hobson and published by . This book was released on 2011 with total page 366 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Marian Hobson's work has made a seminal contribution to our understanding of the European Enlightenment, and of Diderot and Rousseau in particular. This book presents her most important articles in a single volume, translated into English for the first time. Hobson's distinctive approach is to take a given text or problématique and position it within its intellectual, historical and polemical context. From close analysis of the underlying conceptual structures of literary texts, she offers a unique insight into the vibrant networks of people and ideas at work throughout Europe, and across disciplinary boundaries as diverse as literature and mathematics, medicine and music. In their translations of Hobson's essays, Kate Tunstall and Caroline Warman present the primary sources in both the original eighteenth-century French and modern English, making the detail of these debates accessible to everyone, from the specialist to the student, whatever their academic discipline or interest.
Download or read book Catherine Diderot written by Robert Zaretsky and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2019-02-18 with total page 273 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A dual biography crafted around the famous encounter between the French philosopher who wrote about power and the Russian empress who wielded it with great aplomb. In October 1773, after a grueling trek from Paris, the aged and ailing Denis Diderot stumbled from a carriage in wintery St. Petersburg. The century’s most subversive thinker, Diderot arrived as the guest of its most ambitious and admired ruler, Empress Catherine of Russia. What followed was unprecedented: more than forty private meetings, stretching over nearly four months, between these two extraordinary figures. Diderot had come from Paris in order to guide—or so he thought—the woman who had become the continent’s last great hope for an enlightened ruler. But as it soon became clear, Catherine had a very different understanding not just of her role but of his as well. Philosophers, she claimed, had the luxury of writing on unfeeling paper. Rulers had the task of writing on human skin, sensitive to the slightest touch. Diderot and Catherine’s series of meetings, held in her private chambers at the Hermitage, captured the imagination of their contemporaries. While heads of state like Frederick of Prussia feared the consequences of these conversations, intellectuals like Voltaire hoped they would further the goals of the Enlightenment. In Catherine & Diderot, Robert Zaretsky traces the lives of these two remarkable figures, inviting us to reflect on the fraught relationship between politics and philosophy, and between a man of thought and a woman of action.
Download or read book The Rousseauian Mind written by Eve Grace and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2019-01-17 with total page 602 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778) is a major figure in Western Philosophy and is one of the most widely read and studied political philosophers of all time. His writings range from abstract works such as On the Social Contract to literary masterpieces such as The Reveries of the Solitary Walker as well as immensely popular novels and operas. The Rousseauian Mind provides a comprehensive survey of his work, not only placing it in its historical context but also exploring its contemporary significance. Comprising over forty chapters by a team of international contributors the Handbook covers: The predecessors and contemporaries to Rousseau’s work The major texts of the 'system' Autobiographical texts including Confessions, Reveries of the Solitary Walker and Dialogues Rousseau’s political science The successors to Rousseau’s work Rousseau applied today. Essential reading for students and researchers in philosophy, Rousseau’s work is central to the study of political philosophy, the Enlightenment, French studies, the history of philosophy and political theory.
Download or read book Diderot and the Art of Thinking Freely written by Andrew S. Curran and published by Other Press, LLC. This book was released on 2019-01-15 with total page 496 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Best Book of the Year – Kirkus Reviews A spirited biography of the prophetic and sympathetic philosopher who helped build the foundations of the modern world. Denis Diderot is often associated with the decades-long battle to bring the world’s first comprehensive Encyclopédie into existence. But his most daring writing took place in the shadows. Thrown into prison for his atheism in 1749, Diderot decided to reserve his best books for posterity–for us, in fact. In the astonishing cache of unpublished writings left behind after his death, Diderot challenged virtually all of his century's accepted truths, from the sanctity of monarchy, to the racial justification of the slave trade, to the norms of human sexuality. One of Diderot’s most attentive readers during his lifetime was Catherine the Great, who not only supported him financially, but invited him to St. Petersburg to talk about the possibility of democratizing the Russian empire. In this thematically organized biography, Andrew S. Curran vividly describes Diderot’s tormented relationship with Rousseau, his curious correspondence with Voltaire, his passionate affairs, and his often iconoclastic stands on art, theater, morality, politics, and religion. But what this book brings out most brilliantly is how the writer's personal turmoil was an essential part of his genius and his ability to flout taboos, dogma, and convention.
Download or read book Samuel Johnson and Three Infidels written by Mark J. Temmer and published by University of Georgia Press. This book was released on 2009-01-01 with total page 230 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: European literary history teems with prejudices. Nowhere perhaps is bias more evident than in the field of Anglo-French relations of the eighteenth century. In England looms the formidable figure of Samuel Johnson, while the French-speaking world is dominated by Rousseau, Voltaire, and Diderot. Samuel Johnson thought little of Voltaire and never mentioned Diderot. That he wanted to banish Rousseau to the American colonies is well known. All three men were, in Johnson's mind, infidels to the Christian order of society. In Samuel Johnson and Three Infidels, Mark Temmer reevaluates dogmatic views and critical commonplaces that have encrusted these relationships by comparing representative works of the three Continental authors to corresponding works and realities embodied and created by Samuel Johnson. After reviewing existing harmonies and dissonances between France and England, Temmer turns to the lives of Johnson and Rousseau, interpreting them as ontological masterpieces made visible mainly in Rousseau's Confessions and in biographies of Johnson by James Boswell and Hester Piozzi, both of whom insist on remarkable affinities between the two men. In the words of Mrs. Piozzi, they were "alike as sensations of frost and fire." Despite their opposing doctrines, Temmer reveals a pietism in Rousseau that often matches in intensity Johnson's otherworldly yearnings. Temmer moves from this comparison into a discussion of Candide and Rasselas, works published within months of each other in 1759. Integrating Voltaire's satire and Johnson's moral tale into the philosophical history of the age, Temmer goes on to uncover shared moments of laughter and music, ringing out against the gray background of a life in which, for both men, "much is to be endured and little to be enjoyed." Finally, exploring Johnson's Life of Richard Savage and Diderot's Le Neveu de Rameau, Temmer suggests the strong possibility that Diderot's masterpiece may have been influenced by Johnson's biography as well as by Savage's own An Author to be Lett. In this book, Temmer moves beyond the boundaries that have traditionally defined eighteenth-century scholarship on either shore of the English Channel. Creating a cross-cultural conversation bounded only by the lives and interests of his subjects, Temmer relates Johnson to Continental literature and defines his innovative role in a tradition that leads to Hegel, Dostoevsky, and Nietzsche.
Download or read book Thinking with Rousseau written by Helena Rosenblatt and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2017-06-16 with total page 339 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Rousseau's relation to the Western intellectual tradition is re-examined through a series of 'conversations' between Rousseau and other 'great thinkers'.
Download or read book Mass Enlightenment written by Julia Simon and published by SUNY Press. This book was released on 1995-01-01 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Using the writings of the critical theorists of the Frankfurt School as a framework, this book uncovers the tensions and contradictions associated with the rise of capitalism as manifested in the writings of Rousseau and Diderot.
Download or read book The Skeptic s Walk written by Denis Diderot and published by Independently Published. This book was released on 2018-04-05 with total page 87 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is a Divine Comedy or Pilgrim's Progress for the post-religious age. Finding himself on a quest through the forest of life towards the general rendez-vous at the end, our hero journeys first on the path of religion and faith, then the path of the philosophers where debate and ideas reign, and finally the path of worldly pursuits and pleasure. Along the way he dodges inquisitors, raging fanatics, insane philosophers, faithless lovers, and scheming social climbers. Truly a neglected classic. As Diderot said, "even if you are not amused, you may still benefit from it."This third edition was revised in 2018.
Download or read book Free Will in Montaigne Pascal Diderot Rousseau Voltaire and Sartre written by Mary Efrosini Gregory and published by Currents in Comparative Romance Languages and Literatures. This book was released on 2012 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Free Will in Montaigne, Pascal, Diderot, Rousseau, Voltaire and Sartre takes the reader on a journey through the corridors of time to explore the evolution of thought regarding free will. The arguments and works presented in this volume raise critical and timeless issues for ethicists, the criminal justice system and the responsible citizen. Montaigne held that humans can break out of the determinist confines of their given cultures and acquired habits by employing reason, welcoming change and promoting education. In The Nun, Diderot chronicles portraits of pathology, records symptoms and leaves it up to the reader to decide whether the unfortunate victims are products of nature, nurture or both. Rousseau thought that civilized man, having joined society, surrenders his free will to the general will to enjoy protection of his person, family and property. Sartre, an indeterminist, averred that since humans have the capacity to be self-reflective, they can exercise creativity with regard to who and how they choose to be from moment to moment. Freud observed that we are marionettes whose strings are commandeered by various realms competing for dominance - the conscious and subconscious; id, ego and superego. Bernays, Freud's nephew, employed psychoanalytic theory as a tool to advise corporations how to entice the public to purchase their products when confronted with a range of choices. This book opens the door to lively classroom discussion on moral issues. French literature, philosophy, psychology and political science classes will find it an invaluable source presenting a wealth of views on free will.
Download or read book Jean Jacques Rousseau written by Leopold Damrosch and published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. This book was released on 2005 with total page 586 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Reconstructs the life of the French literary genius whose writing changed opinions and fueled fierce debate on both sides of the Atlantic during the period of the American and French revolutions.
Download or read book Catherine the Great and the French Philosophers of the Enlightenment written by Inna Gorbatov and published by Academica Press,LLC. This book was released on 2006 with total page 277 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This research monograph is the result of many years of archival investigation in Russia, France and elsewhere into the nature of Catherine the Great's involvement with the French Enlightenment. Professor Gorbatov's conclusions go far beyond the consensus of philosophic and cultural interests masking an authoritarian and, at times, barbarous emerging European power and delves instead into Catherine's fascination with French political and social ideals. Catherine's thirty-four year reign was marked by a furious wholesale consumption of French arts and objets as well as a lavish patronage of French artists and philosophers. Even Rousseau, the self proclaimed "enemy of monarchs", was seriously studied (though detested) and debated by Catherine and her circle as the Czarina attempted to reform the educational system. It is this theme of reform and renewal, along with Europeanization, that provides the great impetus of interest and patronage towards the philosophes and their ideas. Professor Gorbatov also shows the effect of Catherine's interest on the higher aristocracy, writers, and emergent professional classes that was to reach a intellectual and political crisis upon the outbreak of the French Revolution, the rise of Napoleon and her grandson's battles with the Decembrists.
Download or read book Tolerance written by Caroline Warman and published by Open Book Publishers. This book was released on 2016-01-04 with total page 146 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Inspired by Voltaire’s advice that a text needs to be concise to have real influence, this anthology contains fiery extracts by forty eighteenth-century authors, from the most famous philosophers of the age to those whose brilliant writings are less well-known. These passages are immensely diverse in style and topic, but all have in common a passionate commitment to equality, freedom, and tolerance. Each text resonates powerfully with the issues our world faces today. Tolerance was first published by the Société française d’étude du dix-huitième siècle (the French Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies) in the wake of the Charlie Hebdo assassinations in January 2015 as an act of solidarity and as a response to the surge of interest in Enlightenment values. With the support of the British Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies, it has now been translated by over 100 students and tutors of French at Oxford University.
Download or read book Rousseau s Platonic Enlightenment written by David Lay Williams and published by Penn State Press. This book was released on 2010-11-01 with total page 356 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "In this sterling, deeply researched study, Williams explores how thinkers ranging from Hobbes to d'Holbach highlight various sets of ideas that Rousseau combated in developing his philosophical teaching. The account of Rousseau's predecessors who might be called Platonists is especially interesting, as is the account of those who qualify as materialists. Moreover, Williams provides a good overview of Rousseau's teaching, demonstrates a commendable grasp of the relevant secondary literature, and argues ably for the superiority of his own interpretations ... Clearly written and superbly organized, this book contributes much to Rousseau studies. An indispensable book for Rousseau scholars, this volume also will appeal to general readers and students at all levels."--C.E. Butterworth, CHOICE.
Download or read book Rameau s Nephew written by Denis Diderot and published by . This book was released on 2011-08-01 with total page 81 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 18th Century Frenchman Diderot uses a fictional conversation between two men to criticize those who argued against the Enlightenment. As his prior works of political opinion had caused his imprisonment, Diderot was especially careful to craft "Rameau's Nephew" in such a way to not face further trouble.
Download or read book Freedom in French Enlightenment Thought written by Mary Efrosini Gregory and published by Peter Lang. This book was released on 2010 with total page 260 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Freedom in French Enlightenment Thought examines how five eighteenth-century French theorists - Montesquieu, Diderot, Rousseau, Voltaire, and Condorcet - kindled the flame of freedom in America and France. Each thinker laid down a building block that would eventually inspire the language in constitutions around the world. They held that citizens have certain inalienable rights that are dictated by natural law and endowed to all by our Creator; that these rights include equality before the law, justice, safety and security of persons and property, and freedom of speech, press, assembly, and religion. Montesquieu recommended three separate branches of government that function independently of each other. Diderot held that there is no true sovereign, except the nation; that there is no true legislator, except the people. Rousseau advised that the individual will must be subordinate to the general will and private interest to that of the community: he warned against legislators who act from their own financial interests and enact laws to aggrandize themselves. Voltaire believed that selfishness, greed, and the desire for luxury are not only part of human nature, but that they compel people to achieve, trade with others, search, explore, and invent: the passions are the engine that makes capitalism run and that stimulate all human endeavor. Condorcet, a champion of civil rights, boldly proclaimed equality for women, blacks, and the poor. The philosophes held that free and universal public education will permit more citizens to participate in the progress of the arts and sciences and will improve the standard of living among all strata of society. An unrestrained press permits citizens to make informed decisions. Their polemics have indeed changed the face of the world.
Download or read book Rousseau s Reader written by John T. Scott and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2020-05-06 with total page 339 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: On his famous walk to Vincennes to visit the imprisoned Diderot, Rousseau had what he called an “illumination”—the realization that man was naturally good but becomes corrupted by the influence of society—a fundamental change in Rousseau’s perspective that would animate all of his subsequent works. At that moment, Rousseau “saw” something he had hitherto not seen, and he made it his mission to help his readers share that vision through an array of rhetorical and literary techniques. In Rousseau’s Reader, John T. Scott looks at the different strategies Rousseau used to engage and persuade the readers of his major philosophical works, including the Social Contract, Discourse on Inequality, and Emile. Considering choice of genre; textual structure; frontispieces and illustrations; shifting authorial and narrative voice; addresses to readers that alternately invite and challenge; apostrophe, metaphor, and other literary devices; and, of course, paradox, Scott explores how the form of Rousseau’s writing relates to the content of his thought and vice versa. Through this skillful interplay of form and content, Rousseau engages in a profoundly transformative dialogue with his readers. While most political philosophers have focused, understandably, on Rousseau’s ideas, Scott shows convincingly that the way he conveyed them is also of vital importance, especially given Rousseau’s enduring interest in education. Giving readers the key to Rousseau’s style, Scott offers fresh and original insights into the relationship between the substance of his thought and his literary and rhetorical techniques, which enhance our understanding of Rousseau’s project and the audiences he intended to reach.
Download or read book The Pursuit of Laziness written by Pierre Saint-Amand and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2011-05-09 with total page 169 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: We think of the Enlightenment as an era dominated by ideas of progress, production, and industry--not an era that favored the lax and indolent individual. But was the Enlightenment only about the unceasing improvement of self and society? The Pursuit of Laziness examines moral, political, and economic treatises of the period, and reveals that crucial eighteenth-century texts did find value in idleness and nonproductivity. Fleshing out Enlightenment thinking in the works of Denis Diderot, Joseph Joubert, Pierre de Marivaux, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and Jean-Siméon Chardin, this book explores idleness in all its guises, and illustrates that laziness existed, not as a vice of the wretched, but as an exemplar of modernity and a resistance to beliefs about virtue and utility. Whether in the dawdlings of Marivaux's journalist who delayed and procrastinated or in the subjects of Chardin's paintings who delighted in suspended, playful time, Pierre Saint-Amand shows how eighteenth-century works provided a strong argument for laziness. Rousseau abandoned his previous defense of labor to pursue reverie and botanical walks, Diderot emphasized a parasitic strategy of resisting work in order to liberate time, and Joubert's little-known posthumous Notebooks radically opposed the central philosophy of the Enlightenment in a quest to infinitely postpone work. Unsettling the stubborn view of the eighteenth century as an age of frenetic industriousness and labor, The Pursuit of Laziness plumbs the texts and images of the time and uncovers deliberate yearnings for slowness and recreation. Some images inside the book are unavailable due to digital copyright restrictions.
