Intellectual Origins of the French Enlightenment / / Ira O. Wade.

• Superior document: Title is part of eBook package: De Gruyter Princeton Legacy Lib. eBook Package 1931-1979
• VerfasserIn: Wade, Ira O.,
• Place / Publishing House: Princeton, NJ : : Princeton University Press, , [2015]; ©1971
• Year of Publication: 2015
• Language: English
• Series: Princeton Legacy Library ; 1713
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (702 p.)

With the same sense of historical responsibility and veracity he has exemplified in his studies on Voltaire, Ira O. Wade turns now to Voltaire's milieu and begins an account of the French Enlightenment which will explain its genesis, its nature and coherence, and its diffusion in the modern world. To understand the movement of ideas that produced the spirit of the Enlightenment, Mr. Wade identifies and examines the people, events, and rich development of philosophy in the Renaissance and seventeenth century. He considers, in turn, the challenges of the Renaissance and the responses of its leading writers (Rabelais, Bacon, and Montaigne); Baroque thought (Descartes, Hobbes, Pascal, the Freethinkers); and Classicism (Moliere, Spinoza, Locke, Leibniz, Newton). Mr. Wade begins his discussion by examining the critical literature on the Enlightenment and concludes with a theoretical chapter, "The Making of a Spirit." As the history of an intellectual culture, his study makes vivid the power of thought in the making of a civilization.Originally published in 1971.The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

Table of Contents

Frontmatter -- Contents -- Introduction -- Part I. Enlightenments We Have Known -- 1. The Changing Picture of the Enlightenment -- 2. Some Attempts at Definition -- 3. Theories on the Origins of the Enlightenment -- Tart II. The Renaissance Enlightenment -- 4. The Challenge of the Renaissance -- 5. The Response of Renaissance Man -- Part III. Enlightenment And Baroque -- 6. The Conditions of Baroque Thought -- 7. The Intellectual Response of Baroque Man -- Part IV. Enlightenment and Classicism -- 8. The Conditions of French Classicism -- 9. Travel Fiction and the Drive for Continuity -- 10. Two Classical Free-Thinkers -- 11. The Structuring of Enlightenment Attitudes -- Conclusion: The Making of a Spirit -- Bibliography -- Index