Rousseau's Counter-Enlightenment

Rousseau's Counter-Enlightenment PDF Author: Graeme Garrard
Publisher: State University of New York Press
ISBN: 0791487431
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 207

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Book Description
Arguing that the question of Jean-Jacques Rousseau's relationship to the Enlightenment has been eclipsed and seriously distorted by his association with the French Revolution, Graeme Garrard presents the first book-length case that shows Rousseau as the pivotal figure in the emergence of Counter-Enlightenment thought. Viewed in the context in which he actually lived and wrote—from the middle of the eighteenth century to his death in 1778—it is apparent that Rousseau categorically rejected the Enlightenment "republic of letters" in favor of his own "republic of virtue." The philosophes, placing faith in reason and natural human sociability and subjecting religion to systematic criticism and doubt, naively minimized the deep tensions and complexities of collective life and the power disintegrative forces posed to social order. Rousseau believed that the ever precarious social order could only be achieved artificially, by manufacturing "sentiments of sociability," reshaping individuals to identify with common interests instead of their own selfish interests.

Rousseau's Counter-Enlightenment

Rousseau's Counter-Enlightenment PDF Author: Graeme Garrard
Publisher: State University of New York Press
ISBN: 0791487431
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 207

Get Book Here

Book Description
Arguing that the question of Jean-Jacques Rousseau's relationship to the Enlightenment has been eclipsed and seriously distorted by his association with the French Revolution, Graeme Garrard presents the first book-length case that shows Rousseau as the pivotal figure in the emergence of Counter-Enlightenment thought. Viewed in the context in which he actually lived and wrote—from the middle of the eighteenth century to his death in 1778—it is apparent that Rousseau categorically rejected the Enlightenment "republic of letters" in favor of his own "republic of virtue." The philosophes, placing faith in reason and natural human sociability and subjecting religion to systematic criticism and doubt, naively minimized the deep tensions and complexities of collective life and the power disintegrative forces posed to social order. Rousseau believed that the ever precarious social order could only be achieved artificially, by manufacturing "sentiments of sociability," reshaping individuals to identify with common interests instead of their own selfish interests.

Counter-Enlightenments

Counter-Enlightenments PDF Author: Graeme Garrard
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1134662238
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 409

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Book Description
The Enlightenment and its legacy are still actively debated, with the Enlightenment acting as a key organizing concept in philosophy, social theory and the history of ideas. Counter-Enlightenments is the first full-length study to deal with the history and development of counter-enlightenment thought from its inception in the eighteenth century right through to the present. Engaging in a critical dialogue with Isaiah Berlin’s work, this book analyzes the concept of counter-enlightenment and some of the most important issues and problems it raises. Graeme Garrard explores the diverse forms of thought in this field, with a wide-ranging review of the principle figures of the past two hundred and fifty years, and an incisive assessment of the persuasiveness of the most common and important criticisms of the Enlightenment.

Mass Enlightenment

Mass Enlightenment PDF Author: Julia Simon
Publisher: SUNY Press
ISBN: 9780791426388
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 252

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Book Description
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.

Rousseau: A Very Short Introduction

Rousseau: A Very Short Introduction PDF Author: Robert Wokler
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 0192801988
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 193

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Book Description
In this study of Rousseau's life and works, across a range of disciplines, Robert Wokler shows how his thinking and writing were all inspired by an ideal of mankind's self-realization in a condition of unfettered freedom.

Against Rousseau

Against Rousseau PDF Author: Joseph de Maistre
Publisher: McGill-Queen's Press - MQUP
ISBN: 077356604X
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 245

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Book Description
On the State of Nature and On the Sovereignty of the People are Maistre's most comprehensive treatment of Rousseau's ideas and his most sustained critique of the ideological foundations of the revolution. On the State of Nature, a detailed critique of Rousseau's Discourse on the Origin and Foundations of Inequality, focuses on Rousseau's belief in the natural goodness of man; On the Sovereignty of the People, a critique of Social Contract, explores Rousseau's theory of popular sovereignty. In Maistre's eyes Rousseau encouraged the socially destructive individualism that lay at the heart of the French Revolution. However, the essays reveal some surprising ambiguities in the relationship between two seminal thinkers who are usually thought of as polar opposites, suggesting that Maistre's vision was more akin to Rousseau's than he would have admitted. Against Rousseau offers valuable insights into the evolution of Maistre's counter-revolutionary ideas during the crucial years of 1792-97 and illustrates his remarkable insights into society and politics. It is vital to any consideration of his thought or the counter-revolutionary movement in eighteenth-century France.

Enemies of the Enlightenment

Enemies of the Enlightenment PDF Author: Darrin M. McMahon
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 0195158938
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 277

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Book Description
"Drawing on a wide range of primary sources, Darrin M. McMahon shows that well before the French Revolution, enemies of the Enlightenment were warning that the secular thrust of modern philosophy would give way to horrors of an unprecedented kind. Greeting 1789, in turn, as the realization of their worst fears, they fought the Revolution from its onset, profoundly affecting its subsequent course. The radicalization - and violence - of the Revolution was as much the product of militant resistance as any inherent logic."--BOOK JACKET.

Rousseau, the Age of Enlightenment, and Their Legacies

Rousseau, the Age of Enlightenment, and Their Legacies PDF Author: Robert Wokler
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691147884
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 418

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Book Description
Robert Wokler was one of the world's leading experts on Rousseau and the Enlightenment, but some of his best work was published in the form of widely scattered and difficult-to-find essays. This book collects for the first time a representative selection of his most important essays on Rousseau and the legacy of Enlightenment political thought. These essays concern many of the great themes of the age, including liberty, equality and the origins of revolution. But they also address a number of less prominent debates, including those over cosmopolitanism, the nature and social role of music and the origins of the human sciences in the Enlightenment controversy over the relationship between humans and the great apes. These essays also explore Rousseau's relationships to Rameau, Pufendorf, Voltaire and Marx; reflect on the work of important earlier scholars of the Enlightenment, including Ernst Cassirer and Isaiah Berlin; and examine the influence of the Enlightenment on the twentieth century. One of the central themes of the book is a defense of the Enlightenment against the common charge that it bears responsibility for the Terror of the French Revolution, the totalitarian regimes of the twentieth-century and the Holocaust.

Sexual Politics in the Enlightenment

Sexual Politics in the Enlightenment PDF Author: Mary Seidman Trouille
Publisher: State University of New York Press
ISBN: 1438422342
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 426

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Book Description
Sexual Politics in the Enlightenment constitutes the first book-length feminist study of Rousseau's sexual politics and the reception of his works by women readers. By today's standards, Rousseau's sexual politics appear reactionary, paternalistic, even blatantly misogynist; yet, among his female contemporaries, his works often met with enthusiastic approval and had tremendous impact on their values and behavior. To probe Rousseau's paradoxical appeal to eighteenth-century readers, Mary Trouille examines how seven women authors responded to his writings and sexual politics and traces his influence on their lives and works. The writers include six Frenchwomen (Roland, d'Epinay, Stael, Genlis, Gouges, and an anonymous woman correspondent who called herself Henriette) and the English feminist Mary Wollstonecraft. The book constitutes an important contribution to French literature, women's studies, and eighteenth-century cultural studies. While a great deal has already been written on the individual women whom Trouille treats, what distinguishes this book is that it places multiple female subjects directly opposite Rousseau, and succeeds in showing that the relationship between mentor and student(s) is both multi-layered and fascinatingly complex.

Family Feuds

Family Feuds PDF Author: Eileen Hunt Botting
Publisher: State University of New York Press
ISBN: 0791482030
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 268

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Book Description
Family Feuds is the first sustained comparative study of the place of the family in the political thought of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Edmund Burke, and Mary Wollstonecraft. Eileen Hunt Botting argues that Wollstonecraft recognized both Rousseau's and Burke's influential stature in late eighteenth-century debates about the family. Wollstonecraft critically identified them as philosophical and political partners in the defense of the patriarchal structure of the family, yet she used Rousseau's conceptions of childhood education and maternal empowerment and Burke's understanding of the family as the affective basis for political socialization as a theoretical foundation for her own egalitarian vision of the family. It is this ideal of the egalitarian family, Botting contends, that is one of the most important yet least appreciated legacies of Enlightenment political thought.

Rousseau and "L'Infame"

Rousseau and Author: Ourida Mostefai
Publisher: Rodopi
ISBN: 9042025050
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 310

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Book Description
Ecrasez l'infâme! Voltaire's rallying cry against fanaticism resonates with new force today. Nothing suggests the complex legacy of the Enlightenment more than the struggle of superstition, prejudice, and intolerance advocated by most of the Enlightenment philosophers, regardless of their ideological differences. The aim of this book is to undertake a reconsideration of the controversies surrounding the questions of religion, toleration, and fanaticism in the eighteenth century through an examination of Rousseau's dialogue with Voltaire. What come to light from this confrontation are two leading and at times competing world views and conceptions of the place of the engaged writer in society.