Reading the French Enlightenment. System and Subversion. (book review)

Journal of European Studies, December, 1999 by TODD, CHRISTOPHER

Reading the French Enlightenment. System and Subversion. By Julies Chandler Hayes. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999. Pp. 243. [pounds]40.00.

The present closely-argued study draws extensively on the work of modern critical theorists and is aimed as much at explaining present-day attitudes as features of the French Enlightenment itself. After drawing a parallel between the forcible use of English in colonial Ireland and the attempt to make everybody adopt the liberal traditions of the Age of Reason, Hayes examines the ambiguities inherent in these traditions, while ultimately refusing to accept entirely the rather over-negative closed view of them as put forward by Horkheimer and Adorno. Foucault's exploration of modernity from Kant onwards...

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