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This book explores the French Enlightenment's use of cross-cultural comparisons - particularly the figures of the Chinese mandarin and American and Polynesian savage - to praise of critique aspects of European society and to draw general conclusions regarding human nature, natural law, and the rise and decline of civilizations.
About the Book
This book examines the French Enlightenment's engagement with the cultural and racial diversity of humankind, considering both the major thinkers usually associated with the Enlightenment and the travelers, officials, missionaries, explorers, and antiquarians whose writings and reports provided the raw materials for their philosophical syntheses. It argues that there was no single 'Enlightenment project' with regard to the non-Western world; on the contrary, eighteenth-century French authors took part in contentious debates on the causes and significance of racial difference, the relative merits of civilization and primitivism, the universality of religious belief, the legitimacy of slavery and colonialism, and the meaning of (and possibility for) human progress."
Review Quotes
1.
"a ]the best overview of the French Enlightenment's engagement with diversity . . . This comprehensive and clear book should be read by everyone as a primer on the role of the Enlightenment in articulating the contours of many of the debates about diversity that still preoccupy us in the workplace, in law, and in the academy." - "AHR"
"Highly recommended." - "CHOICE"
2.
"a the best overview of the French Enlightenment's engagement with diversity . . . This comprehensive and clear book should be read by everyone as a primer on the role of the Enlightenment in articulating the contours of many of the debates about diversity that still preoccupy us in the workplace, in law, and in the academy." - "AHR"
"Highly recommended." - "CHOICE""
3. " the best overview of the French Enlightenment's engagement with diversity . . . This comprehensive and clear book should be read by everyone as a primer on the role of the Enlightenment in articulating the contours of many of the debates about diversity that still preoccupy us in the workplace, in law, and in the academy." - AHR "Highly recommended." - CHOICE
4.
" the best overview of the French Enlightenment's engagement with diversity . . . This comprehensive and clear book should be read by everyone as a primer on the role of the Enlightenment in articulating the contours of many of the debates about diversity that still preoccupy us in the workplace, in law, and in the academy." - AHR
"Highly recommended." - CHOICE
5.
" the best overview of the French Enlightenment's engagement with diversity . . . This comprehensive and clear book should be read by everyone as a primer on the role of the Enlightenment in articulating the contours of many of the debates about diversity that still preoccupy us in the workplace, in law, and in the academy." - AHR
"Highly recommended." - CHOICE
