The Time of Enlightenment
Constructing the Future in France, 1750 to Year One
Format:Hardback
Publisher:University of Toronto Press
Published:4th Jan '21
Should be back in stock very soon
A new idea of the future emerged in eighteenth-century France. With the development of modern biological, economic, and social engineering, the future transformed from being predetermined and beyond significant human intervention into something that could be dramatically affected through actions in the present.
The Time of Enlightenment argues that specific mechanisms for constructing the future first arose through the development of practices and instruments aimed at countering degeneration. In their attempts to regenerate a healthy natural state, Enlightenment philosophes created the means to exceed previously recognized limits and build a future that was not merely a recuperation of the past, but fundamentally different from it. A theoretically inflected work combining intellectual history and the history of science, this book will appeal to anyone interested in European history and the history of science, as well as the history of France, the Enlightenment, and the French Revolution.
“Scholars interested in the growing literature on the history of time, progress, and the future will find this book valuable reading. It is a careful but clear work on intellectual history, one with particular relevance for understanding the significance of the French Revolution.” -- Meghan K. Roberts, Bowdoin College * H-France Review *
“In this insightful, richly researched, and theoretically astute work, William Max Nelson views the Enlightenment not as era, movement, or project, but as ‘attempts to develop new ways of being in the world that could come to grips with the erosion of traditional notions of God and legitimating narratives of political authority and social hierarchy.’ … This book is a valuable and thought-provoking contribution to that process.” -- Daniel Brewer, University of Minnesota * French Studies *
“This wide-ranging book makes a valuable contribution to a still fragmentary field of historical time studies.” -- Sanja Perovic, King’s College London * American Historical Review *
ISBN: 9781487507701
Dimensions: 229mm x 155mm x 25mm
Weight: 480g
240 pages