In Defence of the Enlightenment

Description

In this profound and provocative new book internationally renowned thinker Tzvetan Todorov defends the role of the Enlightenment as the philosophical cornerstone of the modern world and argues that the wisdom of the Enlightment thinkers is as relevant today, as it was in the eighteenth century. Although our liberal democracies are the offspring of the Enlightenment, they also illustrate the ways in which its ideas have been distorted and perverted. People living in democracies today can be baffled by phenomena which resist easy judgement: globalisation and media omnipotence, state-sponsored torture and disinformation, moralism and the right of intervention, the dominance of economics and the triumph of technology. In this book, Todorov shows that we cannot learn lessons from the past unless we know how to relate them to the present. In The Defence of the Enlightenment, Tzvetan Todorov demonstrates that what remains relevant to people today is the spirit of that age, expressed in the core principles and values for which the Enlightenment stood.

Tzvetan Todorov is a Honorary Director of Research at the CNRS in Paris. Critic, philosopher and historian, he has written many books including Hope and Memory (Atlantic 2004), which has been translated into eleven languages. He has recently received the international Principe de Asturias prize for his achievements.

"'Hope and Memory is a book with wisdom on every page. If you want to understand the 20th century and be forewarned against the 21st, you must read it.' John Gray, Independent 'Graceful and gigantic...a fascinating tour through the subtlety, integrity, and brute honesty of Todorov's thought.' The New York Times Book Review 'Todorov invigorates the debate over morality with rigor and grace, Aristotelian fineness, fluid prose, and his own virtues of compassion, humility, and realism.' Washington Post"