New Essays on Diderot

New Essays on Diderot PDF Author: James Fowler
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1139500554
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 281

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Book Description
The great eighteenth-century French thinker Denis Diderot (1713–84) once compared himself to a weathervane, by which he meant that his mind was in constant motion. In an extraordinarily diverse career he produced novels, plays, art criticism, works of philosophy and poetics, and also reflected on music and opera. Perhaps most famously, he ensured the publication of the Encyclopédie, which has often been credited with hastening the onset of the French Revolution. Known as one of the three greatest philosophes of the Enlightenment, Diderot rejected the Christian ideas in which he had been raised. Instead, he became an atheist and a determinist. His radical questioning of received ideas and established religion led to a brief imprisonment, and for that reason, no doubt, some of his subsequent works were written for posterity. This collection of essays celebrates the life and work of this extraordinary figure as we approach the tercentenary of his birth.

New Essays on Diderot

New Essays on Diderot PDF Author: James Fowler
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1139500554
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 281

Get Book Here

Book Description
The great eighteenth-century French thinker Denis Diderot (1713–84) once compared himself to a weathervane, by which he meant that his mind was in constant motion. In an extraordinarily diverse career he produced novels, plays, art criticism, works of philosophy and poetics, and also reflected on music and opera. Perhaps most famously, he ensured the publication of the Encyclopédie, which has often been credited with hastening the onset of the French Revolution. Known as one of the three greatest philosophes of the Enlightenment, Diderot rejected the Christian ideas in which he had been raised. Instead, he became an atheist and a determinist. His radical questioning of received ideas and established religion led to a brief imprisonment, and for that reason, no doubt, some of his subsequent works were written for posterity. This collection of essays celebrates the life and work of this extraordinary figure as we approach the tercentenary of his birth.

Diderot and the Art of Thinking Freely

Diderot and the Art of Thinking Freely PDF Author: Andrew S. Curran
Publisher: Other Press, LLC
ISBN: 1590516729
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 496

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Book Description
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.

The Genius of the Future

The Genius of the Future PDF Author: Anita Brookner
Publisher: London ; New York : Phaidon
ISBN:
Category : Art criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 204

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Book Description


Blindness and Enlightenment: An Essay

Blindness and Enlightenment: An Essay PDF Author: Kate E. Tunstall
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN: 1441119329
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 251

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Book Description
Blindness and Enlightenment presents a reading and a new translation of Diderot's Letter on the Blind. Diderot was the editor of the Encyclopédie, that Trojan horse of Enlightenment ideas, as well as a novelist, playwright, art critic and philosopher. His Letter on the Blind of 1749 is essential reading for anyone interested in Enlightenment philosophy or eighteenth-century literature because it contradicts a central assumption of Western literature and philosophy, and of the Enlightenment in particular, namely that moral and philosophical insight is dependent on seeing. Kate Tunstall's essay guides the reader through the Letter, its anecdotes, ideas and its conversational mode of presenting them, and it situates the Letter in relation both to the Encyclopedie and to a rich tradition of writing about and, most importantly, talking and listening to the blind.

Diderot's Early Philosophical Works

Diderot's Early Philosophical Works PDF Author: Denis Diderot
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 268

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Book Description


The Skeptic's Walk

The Skeptic's Walk PDF Author: Denis Diderot
Publisher: Independently Published
ISBN: 9781980752486
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 87

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Book Description
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.

Diderot, Interpreter of Nature

Diderot, Interpreter of Nature PDF Author: Denis Diderot
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 374

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Book Description


Selected Writings on Art and Literature

Selected Writings on Art and Literature PDF Author: Denis Diderot
Publisher: Penguin Classics
ISBN:
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 414

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Book Description


Catherine & Diderot

Catherine & Diderot PDF Author: Robert Zaretsky
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674737903
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 273

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Book Description
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.

Not Saved

Not Saved PDF Author: Peter Sloterdijk
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 0745697003
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 305

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Book Description
One can rightly say of Peter Sloterdijk that each of his essays and lectures is also an unwritten book. That is why the texts presented here, which sketch a philosophical physiognomy of Martin Heidegger, should also be characterized as a collected renunciation of exhaustiveness. In order to situate Heidegger's thought in the history of ideas and problems, Peter Sloterdijk approaches Heidegger's work with questions such as: If Western philosophy emerged from the spirit of the polis, what are we to make of the philosophical suitability of a man who never made a secret of his stubborn attachment to rural life? Is there a provincial truth of which the cosmopolitan city knows nothing? Is there a truth in country roads and cabins that would be able to undermine the universities with their standardized languages and globally influential discourses? From where does this odd professor speak, when from his professorial chair in Freiburg he claims to inquire into what lies beyond the history of Western metaphysics? Sloterdijk also considers several other crucial twentieth-century thinkers who provide some needed contrast for the philosophical physiognomy of Martin Heidegger. A consideration of Niklas Luhmann as a kind of contemporary version of the Devil's Advocate, a provocative critical interpretation of Theodor Adorno's philosophy that focuses on its theological underpinnings and which also includes reflections on the philosophical significance of hyperbole, and a short sketch of the pessimistic thought of Emil Cioran all round out and deepen Sloterdijk's attempts to think with, against, and beyond Heidegger. Finally, in essays such as "Domestication of Being" and the "Rules for the Human Park," which incited an international controversy around the time of its publication and has been translated afresh for this volume, Sloterdijk develops some of his most intriguing and important ideas on anthropogenesis, humanism, technology, and genetic engineering.