Order and chance : the pattern of Diderot's thought
Author(s)
Bibliographic Information
Order and chance : the pattern of Diderot's thought
Cambridge University Press, 1983
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Note
"Study began as a Ph. D. thesis at the University of Reading"--P. vii
Bibliography: p. 255-261
Includes index
Description and Table of Contents
Description
This study discovers a pattern to Diderot's thinking, a fundamental dualism attributable largely to the attitudes and assumptions of the time and giving a common structure to his ideas and writing. Geoffrey Bremner draws widely on Diderot's works in studying his ideas on perception and action, aesthetics, ethics and politics, as well as his plays and fiction. The subtlety of the textual analysis and the analogies Dr Bremner draws provide a convincing and illuminating argument for his interpretation. He supports this but emphasising the intellectual circumstances in which Diderot wrote and demonstrating his links to other eighteenth- and seventeenth-century writers. His study will therefore make a valuable contribution to the reassessment of the period that is currently underway, as well as to the central, elusive problem presented by Diderot's thought itself.
Table of Contents
- Introduction
- Order and the Ancien Regime
- Part I. Perception and Action: 1. Perception
- 2. Action
- Part II. Systems of Order: 3. The concept of 'fullness'
- 4. A political system
- 5. A system of aesthetics
- Part III. Social and Individual Values: 6. Public order and private disorder in Diderot's works
- 7. Chance and the moral order
- Originals of French passages quoted in the text
- Bibliography
- Index.
by "Nielsen BookData"
