The politics of authenticity

"In this acclaimed exploration of the search for 'authentic' individual identity, Marshall Berman explores the historical experiences and needs out of which this new radicalism arose. Focussing on eighteenth-century Paris, a time and place in which a distinctively modern form of society was just coming into its own, Berman shows how the ideal of authenticity--of a self that could organize the individual's energy and direct it toward his own happiness--articulated eighteenth-century man's deepest responses to this brave new world, and his most ardent hope for a new life in it. Exploring in particular the ideas of Montesquieu and Rousseau, Berman shows how the ideal of authenticity was radically opposed to the bourgeois, capitalistic idea of 'self-interest'"--Page 4 of cover.

Year

2009

Language

English

Publisher

Verso

Editions

1

Pages

325

ISBN

9781844674411

Data source: Wikidata