The Diplomat in Spain

Author: Antoine Lilti.

The book The Inheritance of the Enlightenment. Ambivalences of modernity, by Antoine Lilti, is a sharp essay that aims to recover the historical complexity of this cultural and intellectual movement, recalling that it did not propose a completely coherent philosophical doctrine or a common political project.

The Enlightenment is often invoked as a univocal struggle against obscurantism, which only needs to be updated to remain valid. Totalising readings associate it with the cult of Progress, political liberalism and a disembodied universalism. However, as Antoine Lilti, Director of Studies at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales in Paris (EHESS) shows in this book, the Enlightenment did not propose a coherent philosophical doctrine or a common political project.

By confronting emblematic and lesser-known authors, the author proposes to restore the movement’s historical complexity and to rethink what we owe it: a set of questions and problems.

The Enlightenment appears as a collective response to the emergence of modernity, whose ambivalences still shape our horizon today. From Voltaire’s questions about colonial trade and slavery to the latest thinking of Michel Foucault, via post-colonial criticism and the dilemmas of the philosopher in the face of the public, The Inheritance of the Enlightenment thus offers a profoundly renewed image of a movement that must be rediscovered because it never ceases to speak.

Pages: 480
Publisher: GEDISA
Binding: Soft cover
ISBN: 9788419406453
RPP: 36,95 euros