In Defence of the Enlightenment
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"'Hope and Memory is a book with wisdom on every page. If you want to understand the 20th century and be forewarned against the 21st, you must read it.' John Gray, Independent 'Graceful and gigantic...a fascinating tour through the subtlety, integrity, and brute honesty of Todorov's thought.' The New York Times Book Review 'Todorov invigorates the debate over morality with rigor and grace, Aristotelian fineness, fluid prose, and his own virtues of compassion, humility, and realism.' Washington Post"
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This brilliant and concise book from internationally renowned historian Tzvetan Todorov establishes the Enlightenment as the philosophical cornerstone of the modern world and argues that the wisdom of those times is just as relevant today. Although our liberal democracies are the offspring of the Enlightenment, they also illustrate the ways in which its ideas can be distorted and perverted. People living in these democracies today are often baffled by a host of phenomena which they don't know how to judge: globalisation and media omnipotence, state-sponsored torture and lies, moralism and the right of intervention, the domination of economics and the triumph of technology. Is it possible to distinguish between the Enlightenment' legitimate and illegitimate heirs? We cannot learn lessons from the past unless we know how to relate them to the present. In this brilliant and concise book, internationally renowned historian TT shows that what remains relevant to us today of the 18th-century debates is their spirit, as expressed in a number of crucial principles and values. 'It is by criticizing the Enlightenment that we remain faithful to it.'
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
Ok, you might need a biggish pocket but, at 161 pages (including references), where will you find such a clear description of the ideas of all the major thinkers of the enlightenment age? Moreover Todorov picks up most of the major critics of the enlightenment and deals them some lessons in reading the texts properly. Reading Todorov took me back to my teenage years and my delight at reading a whole range of books arguing for and against different religions and political philosophies and I was not surprised to be thrilled again. Todorov is so clear, crisp and relevant for issues facing humanity today - he inspires the long view - "the traditional adversaries of the Enlightenment - obscurantism, arbitrary authority and fanaticism are like the heads of the Hydra that keep growing back as they are cut..... This would be the vocation of our species: to pick up the task of enlightenment with each new day, knowing that it is interminable." The interminable is not despairing because: "The ability to integrate differences without erasing them distinguishes Europe from the world's other great political areas..."
6 of 11 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
I found that the problem with this book was that nothing in it seemed to be problematic. Essentially, it falls into two parts, distributed across a number of themes ("Truth", "Autonomy", "Universality" and so on.) The first part is a re-statement of the ideals of the Enlightenment in relation to the issue being discussed, and the second looks at some problems of today which are related to the issue (but doesn't attempt a general or synthetic statement of how that theme appears in the modern world,) and suggests how the re-statement or the re-application of the Enlightenment position might improve matters.
However, the argument proceeds as if the nature and meaning of the Enlightenment were both homogeneous and self-evident, and as if we simply needed reminding of its nature and meaning to recall ourselves to our better natures. While I was reading it, I kept feeling that things were not quite so simple, and wishing that Professor Todorov had taken the time to tackle head-on questions like: why is the Enlightenment project so much more in danger from false friends than from direct enemies? Is the scientific stance of the Enlightenment merely a matter of vocabulary and rhetorical stance, or does it represent a genuine refounding of the human sciences on the model of the physical sciences? If the latter, why is a consensus so much harder to find and maintain in the human sciences, and why are they so productive of perversions and caricatures?
I don't think I'm just looking for difficuties where none ought to exist. This book has something of the serene clarity of style which characterises Bruno Bettelheim's "The Informed Heart", but I never felt that Bettelheim's style was disguising or smoothing away the difficulties of his subject. With this book, there's a disquieting sense that the smooth surface of its argument might be affording safe passage to the monsters of the deep.
However, the argument proceeds as if the nature and meaning of the Enlightenment were both homogeneous and self-evident, and as if we simply needed reminding of its nature and meaning to recall ourselves to our better natures. While I was reading it, I kept feeling that things were not quite so simple, and wishing that Professor Todorov had taken the time to tackle head-on questions like: why is the Enlightenment project so much more in danger from false friends than from direct enemies? Is the scientific stance of the Enlightenment merely a matter of vocabulary and rhetorical stance, or does it represent a genuine refounding of the human sciences on the model of the physical sciences? If the latter, why is a consensus so much harder to find and maintain in the human sciences, and why are they so productive of perversions and caricatures?
I don't think I'm just looking for difficuties where none ought to exist. This book has something of the serene clarity of style which characterises Bruno Bettelheim's "The Informed Heart", but I never felt that Bettelheim's style was disguising or smoothing away the difficulties of his subject. With this book, there's a disquieting sense that the smooth surface of its argument might be affording safe passage to the monsters of the deep.
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