Reading the French Enlightenment: System and Subversion (Revised)

Author/Contributor(s):	Hayes, Julie Candler
Publisher:	Cambridge University Press
Date:	11/02/2006
Binding:	Paperback
Condition:	NEW

Reading the French Enlightenment offers an ambitious reinterpretation of a crucial aspect of eighteenth-century thought, the rationalizing and classifying impulse or systematic spirit. Julie Candler Hayes surveys the past fifty years of philosophical reflection on the Enlightenment, and takes issue both with traditional liberal and with contemporary critical accounts, arguing instead for a new understanding of systematic reason as complex, paradoxical, and ultimately liberating. Through close analysis of philosophical, scientific, and literary texts, she emphasizes the urgency of maintaining a dialogue between past and present, Enlightenment and modernity.