Description
Book SynopsisChallenging widespread misunderstandings, this book shows that central to key enlightenment texts was the practice of estranging taken-for-granted prejudices by adopting the perspective of Others.
The enlightenment’s key progenitors, led by Montesquieu, Voltaire and Diderot, were more empiricist than rationalist, and more critical than utopian. Moreover, each was an artful exponent of the ‘proto-postmodernist’ practice of asking Europeans to review what they considered unquestionable through the eyes of Others: Persians, women, Tahitians, Londoners, natives and naïves, the blind, and even imaginary extra-terrestrials. This book aims to show that this self-estrangement, as a means to gain critical distance from one’s taken-for-granted assumptions, was central to the enlightenment, and remains vital for critical and constructive sociopolitical thinking today.
Table of ContentsPreface: Argument
Introduction: The Enlightenment Beleaguered
Chapter 1: Locke, Bayle, Critique and Toleration
Chapter 2: Paris-Persia: Othering (and Sexing) the Enlightenment
Chapter 3: Voltaire’s Smiling Philosophy
Chapter 4: Eyesight from the Blind: Diderot, Saunderson, and Humans Born Blind
Chapter 5: Enlightenment, Race, Slavery, and Anti-colonialism
Chapter 6: The Enlightenment, Sexuality, and Gender
Conclusion: What was Enlightenment?
Bibliography
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