Literature and Philosophy. The Authority of Experience : : Sensationist Theory in the French Enlightenment / / John C. O'Neal.

• Superior document: Title is part of eBook package: De Gruyter Penn State University Press Complete eBook-Package Pre-2014
• VerfasserIn: O'Neal, John C.,
• MitwirkendeR: Cascardi, A. J.,
• Place / Publishing House: University Park, PA : : Penn State University Press, , [1996]; ©1996
• Year of Publication: 1996
• Language: English
• Series: Literature and Philosophy
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (296 p.)

Sensationism, a philosophy that gained momentum in the French Enlightenment as a response to Lockean empiricism, was acclaimed by Hippolyte Taine as ";the doctrine of the most lucid, methodical, and French minds to have honored France."; The first major general study in English of eighteenth-century French sensationism, The Authority of Experience presents the history of a complex set of ideas and explores their important ramifications for literature, education, and moral theory.The study begins by presenting the main ideas of sensationist philosophers Condillac, Bonnet, and Helvétius, who held that all of our ideas come to us through the senses. The experience of the body in seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, and touching enabled individuals, as John C. O'Neal points out, to challenge the sometimes arbitrary authority of institutions and people in positions of power. After a general introduction to sensationism, the author develops a theory of sensationist aesthetics that not only reveals the interconnections of the period's philosophy and literature but also enhances our awareness of the forces at work in the French novel. He goes on to examine the relations between sensationism and eighteenth-century French educational theory, materialism, and idéologie. Ultimately, O'Neal opens a discussion of the implications of sensationist thought for issues of particular concern to society today.

Table of Contents

Frontmatter -- Literature & Philosophy -- Contents -- Acknowledgments -- A Note on the Selection and Translation of Texts -- List of Abbreviations -- Introduction -- Part I: The Eighteenth-Century French History of an Idea -- 1 Condillac and the Meaning of Experience -- 2 Bonnet's Mind-Body Continuum in the Economy of Our Being -- 3 Helvetius's Seminal Concept of Physical Sensibility -- Part II: Aesthetics -- 4 The Sensationist Aesthetics of the French Enlightenment -- 5 An Exemplary yet Divergent Text: Graffigny's Lettres d'une Phvienne -- 6 The Perversion of Sensationism in Laclos and Sade -- Part III: The Politics of Sensationism -- 7 Cultivating Talent and Virtue -- 8 Materialism's Extension of Sensationist Principles -- 9 The Adoption and Critique of Sensationism by the Ideologues -- Conclusion -- Bibliography -- Index