A lively examination of the life and work of one of the great Enlightenment intellectuals
Philosopher, translator, novelist, art critic, and editor of the Encyclopedie, Denis Diderot was one of the liveliest figures of the Enlightenment. But how might we delineate the contours of his diverse oeuvre, which, unlike the works of his contemporaries, Voltaire, Rousseau, Schiller, Kant, or Hume, is clearly characterized by a centrifugal dynamic?
Taking Hegel's fascinated irritation with Diderot's work as a starting point, Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht explores the question of this extraordinary intellectual's place in the legacy of the eighteenth century. While Diderot shared most of the concerns typically attributed to his time, the ways in which he coped with them do not fully correspond to what we consider Enlightenment thought. Conjuring scenes from Diderot's by turns turbulent and quiet life, offering close readings of several key books, and probing the motif of a tension between physical perception and conceptual experience, Gumbrecht demonstrates how Diderot belonged to a vivid intellectual periphery that included protagonists such as Lichtenberg, Goya, and Mozart. With this provocative and elegant work, he elaborates the existential preoccupations of this periphery, revealing the way they speak to us today.
Show moreA lively examination of the life and work of one of the great Enlightenment intellectuals
Philosopher, translator, novelist, art critic, and editor of the Encyclopedie, Denis Diderot was one of the liveliest figures of the Enlightenment. But how might we delineate the contours of his diverse oeuvre, which, unlike the works of his contemporaries, Voltaire, Rousseau, Schiller, Kant, or Hume, is clearly characterized by a centrifugal dynamic?
Taking Hegel's fascinated irritation with Diderot's work as a starting point, Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht explores the question of this extraordinary intellectual's place in the legacy of the eighteenth century. While Diderot shared most of the concerns typically attributed to his time, the ways in which he coped with them do not fully correspond to what we consider Enlightenment thought. Conjuring scenes from Diderot's by turns turbulent and quiet life, offering close readings of several key books, and probing the motif of a tension between physical perception and conceptual experience, Gumbrecht demonstrates how Diderot belonged to a vivid intellectual periphery that included protagonists such as Lichtenberg, Goya, and Mozart. With this provocative and elegant work, he elaborates the existential preoccupations of this periphery, revealing the way they speak to us today.
Show moreHans Ulrich Gumbrecht is the Albert Guérard Professor in Literature Emeritus at Stanford University. His books written in English include In 1926 (1998), Production of Presence (Stanford, 2004), In Praise of Athletic Beauty (2006), Atmosphere, Mood, Stimmung (Stanford, 2012), After 1945 (Stanford, 2013), and Our Broad Present (2014).
"Innovative, lively, and full of ideas and insights, Prose of the
World is a major contribution to our understanding and appreciation
of Diderot's thought."—Thomas Pavel, author of The Lives of the
Novel: A History
"This book represents a significant contribution by one of the
world's leading literary scholars and public intellectuals, whose
deep familiarity with the history of ideas and philosophy display a
rare ingenuity."—Markus Gabriel, author of Why the World Does Not
Exist
"Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht, Literature Professor Emeritus at Stanford
University, brings to bear his 50-year intellectual love affair
with Diderot to give us this magisterial study."—Dr. Cliff
Cunningham, Sun New Austin
"Does Diderot (1713–84) have a particular affinity with the present
time? Could the 21st century become, in terms of reception and
resonance, the Age of Diderot, as the 19th was the Age of Voltaire
and the 20th the Age of Rousseau? These questions drive this
ambitious, erudite work by one of today's leading cultural
historians and literary critics...Essential." CHOICE
"Gumbrecht's readings of these texts are astute, rigorous, and
thought-provoking, and resist any straightforward or reductive
explanation of Diderot's ideas.... By turns effortlessly readable
and intriguingly opaque, intellectually provocative in its
reflections and yet hard to pin down to one thesis, this study
encapsulates something of its genial yet complex subject matter in
its very approach."—Joseph Harris, Lessing Yearbook
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