Reading the French enlightenment

"Julie Candler Hayes offers an ambitious reinterpretation of a crucial aspect of Enlightment thought, the rationalizing and classfying impulse. Taking issue both with traditional liberal and contemporary critical accounts of the Enlightenment, she analyzes the writings of Denis Diderot, Emilie Du Chatelet, the abbe de Condillac, Buffon, d'Alembert, and numerous others, to argue for a new understanding of 'systematic reason' as complex, paradoxical, and ultimately liberating."--BOOK JACKET.

First sentence: Systeme comes from a Latin word whose Greek roots mean "to stand with" and which refers to a constituted group or organization.

Year

1999

Language

English

Publisher

Cambridge University Press

Editions

1

Pages

256

ISBN

9780521030960

Data source: Wikidata