Human nature, cultural diversity, and the French enlightenment / Henry Vyverberg.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Vyverberg, Henry.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Enlightenment.

Ethnopsychology--History--18th century.

Ethnopsychology.

History.

France--Intellectual life--18th century.

France.

Intellectual life.

Physical Description:

xii, 223 pages ; 22 cm

Place of Publication:

New York : Oxford University Press, 1989.

Summary:

In this work, Henry Vyverberg traces the evolution and consequences of a crucial idea in French Enlightenment thought--the idea of human nature. Human nature was commonly seen as a broadly universal, unchanging entity, though perhaps modifiable by geographical, social, and historical factors. Enlightenment empiricism suggested a degree of cultural diversity that has often been underestimated in studies of the age. Evidence here is drawn from Diderot's celebrated Encyclopedia and from a vast range of writing by such Enlightenment notables as Voltaire, Rousseau, and d'Holbach. Vyverberg explains not only the age's undoubted fascination with uniformity in human nature, but also its acknowledgment of significant limitations on that uniformity. He shows that although the Enlightenment's historical sense was often blinkered by its notions of a uniform human nature, there were also cracks in this concept that developed during the Enlightenment itself.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references.

ISBN:

019505864X

OCLC:

19221009