'Capitalist critique and proletarian reasoning fit for our time' - Peter Linebaugh Taking the Scottish Enlightenment philosopher David Hume as its subject, this book breaks new ground in focusing its lens on a little-studied aspect of Hume's thinking: his understanding of money. George Caffentzis makes both an intervention in the field of monetary philosophy and into Marxian conceptions of the relation between philosophy and capitalist development. He vividly charts the ways in which Hume's philosophy directly informed the project of 'civilizing' the people of the Scottish Highlands and pacifying the English proletariat in response to the revolts of both groups at the heart of the empire. Built on careful historical and philosophical detective work, Civilizing Money offers a stimulating and radical political reading of the ways in which Hume's fundamental philosophical claims performed concrete political functions.

Five Groundbreaking Moments in Heidegger's Thinking presents a fresh interpretation of some of Heidegger's most difficult but important works, including his second major work, Beitrage zur Philosophie (Vom Ereignis) [Contributions to Philosophy (From Enowning)]. The careful approach shows how, for Heidegger, the acts of reading, thinking, and saying all move beyond the theoretical/conceptual and become an ongoing experience. In new translations of central texts, Kenneth Maly invites the reader to think along the way by reading, contemplating, and translating Heidegger's ideas into this context. An introduction to the field of philosophy and more specifically to Heidegger's thought, Five Groundbreaking Moments in Heidegger's Thinking asks the reader, in some manner, to actively engage in thinking.

This fifth volume covers many of the most important philosophers and movements of the nineteenth century, including utilitarianism, positivism and pragmatism.

This collection of essays takes as its starting point Arthur Ripstein's Force and Freedom: Kant's Legal and Political Philosophy, a seminal work on Kant's thinking about law, which also treats many of the contemporary issues of legal and political philosophy. The essays offer readings and elucidations of Ripstein's thought, dispute some of his claims and extend some of his themes within broader philosophical contexts, thus developing the significance of Ripstein's ideas for contemporary legal and political philosophy. All of the essays are contributions to normative philosophy in a broadly Kantian spirit. Prominent themes include rights in the body, the relation between morality and law, the nature of coercion and its role in legal obligation, the role of indeterminacy in law, the nature and justification of political society and the theory of the state. This volume will be of interest to a wide audience, including legal scholars, Kant scholars, and philosophers with an interest in Kant or in legal and political philosophy.

In essays that examine particular non-canonical works and writers in their wider cultural context, this volume "repopulates" the German Enlightenment. German literature and thought flourished in the eighteenth century, when a culture considered a European backwater came to assert worldwide significance. This was an age in which repeated attempts to reform German literary and philosophical culture were made - often only to be overtaken within a few decades. It ushered in generations of exceptionally gifted poets and thinkers including Klopstock, Lessing, Goethe, Kant, and Schiller, whose names still dominate our understanding of the German Enlightenment. Yet the period also brought with it new means of accessing and disseminating culture and a rapid increase in cultural production. The leading lights of eighteenth-century German culture operated against the backdrop of a yet more diverse and vivid cast of literary and philosophical figures since consigned to the second tier of German culture. Through essays that examine particular non-canonical works and writers in their wider cultural context, this collection repopulates the German Enlightenment with these largely forgotten movements, writers, and literary circles. It offers new insights into the development of genres such as thenovel, the fable, and the historical drama, and assesses the dynamics that led to individual authors, circles, and schools of thought being left behind in their time and passed over or inadequately understood to this day. Contributors: Johannes Birgfeld, Stephanie Blum, Julia Bohnengel, Kristin Eichhorn, Sarah Vandegrift Eldridge, Jonathan Blake Fine, J. C. Lees, Leonard von Morze, Ellen Pilsworth, Joanna Raisbeck, Ritchie Robertson, Michael Wood. Michael Wood is British Academy Postdoctoral Fellow in German at the University of Edinburgh. Johannes Birgfeld teaches Modern German Literature at the University of the Saarland.

Dealing with a complex king, this edited collection elucidates a monarch's vision of Rome that deeply affected his political choices and cultural policy during the first half of the eighteenth-century. John V of Portugal became king in 1707 in a pivotal moment for the European balance of power. The Kingdom of Portugal was still demanding the same privileges as its powerful neighbours and the relation with Rome was considered a vehicle to obtain them. Arts and music had a special and unprecedented place in the king's plans and this book approaches that dynamic from several interdisciplinary perspectives. The unifying thread across this book's chapters remains the omnipresence of Rome as a paradigm on several levels: political, religious, intellectual, artistic, and musical. Rather than providing an exhaustive analysis of the period as a whole, this study offers a fresh approach for English readers to this classic, but little known, topic in Portuguese national historiography.

This book offers new critical perspectives on the relationship between the notions of speculation, logic and reality in Hegel's thought as basis for his philosophical account of nature, history, spirit and human experience. The systematic functions of logic and pure thought are explored in their concrete forms and processual progression from subjective spirit to philosophy of right, society, the notion of habit, the idea of work, art, religion and science. Engaging the relation between the Logic and its realisations, this book shows the internal tension that inhabits Hegel's philosophy at the intersection of logical (conceptual) speculation and concrete (interpretative) analysis. The investigation of this tension allows for a hermeneutical approach that demystifies the common view of Hegel's idealism as a form of abstract thought, while allowing for a new assessment of the importance of speculation for a concrete understanding of the world.

An examination of how and why Scotland gained its reputation for the supernatural, and how belief continued to flourish in a supposed Age of Enlightenment. SHORTLISTED for the Katharine Briggs Award 2019 Scotland is famed for being a haunted nation, "whare ghaists and houlets nightly cry". Medieval Scots told stories of restless souls and walking corpses, but after the 1560Reformation, witches and demons became the focal point for explorations of the supernatural. Ghosts re-emerged in scholarly discussion in the late seventeenth century, often in the guise of religious propagandists. As time went on, physicians increasingly reframed ghosts as the conjurations of disturbed minds, but gothic and romantic literature revelled in the emotive power of the returning dead; they were placed against a backdrop of ancient monasteries,castles and mouldering ruins, and authors such as Robert Burns, James Hogg and Walter Scott drew on the macabre to colour their depictions of Scottish life. Meanwhile, folk culture used apparitions to talk about morality and mortality. Focusing on the period from 1685 to 1830, this book provides the first academic study of the history of Scottish ghosts. Drawing on a wide range of sources, and examining beliefs across the social spectrum, it shows howghost stories achieved a new prominence in a period that is more usually associated with the rise of rationalism. In exploring perceptions of ghosts, it also reflects on understandings of death and the afterlife; the constructionof national identity; and the impact of the Enlightenment. MARTHA MCGILL completed her PhD at the University of Edinburgh.

Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (1646-1716) was hailed by Bertrand Russell as 'one of the supreme intellects of all time'. A towering figure in seventeenth-century philosophy, he was the author of a complex system of thought that has been championed and satirized in equal measure, most famously in Voltaire's Candide. In this outstanding introduction to his philosophy, Nicholas Jolley examines and assesses the whole of Leibniz's philosophy. Beginning with an account of Leibniz's life and work, he carefully explains the core elements of Leibniz's metaphysics: his theories of substance, identity and individuation; his doctrine of monads; and his important debate over the nature of space and time with Newton's champion, Samuel Clarke. He then introduces Leibniz's theories of mind, knowledge, and innate ideas, showing how Leibniz anticipated the distinction between conscious and unconscious states, before examining his doctrine of free will and his solution to the problem of evil. An important feature of the book is its survey of Leibniz's moral and political philosophy, an overlooked aspect of his work. The final chapter assesses Leibniz's legacy and the impact of his philosophy on philosophy as a whole, particularly on the work of Immanuel Kant. Throughout, Jolley places Leibniz in relation to some of the other great philosophers, such as Descartes, Spinoza, and Locke, and discusses Leibniz's key works, such as the Monadology and Discourse on Metaphysics. This second edition has been revised throughout and includes a new chapter on Leibniz and philosophy of language.

Jamais, dans aucune autre periode de l'histoire, le probleme penal n'a ete aussi debattu qu'au siecle des Lumieres. Or, l'evenement declencheur de ces debats est la publication des Delits et des peines, le petit livre de Cesare Beccaria dont la premiere edition parait a Livourne en 1764. On assiste, apres cette date et durant un demi-siecle, a une profusion impressionnante de reactions et de prolongements directement lies a cet ouvrage. A tel point que, pour designer cette periode, on a pu parler d'un 'moment Beccaria'. Les recherches rassemblees dans ce volume explorent differents foyers thematiques et geographiques (Allemagne, Angleterre, France, Italie) de cette phase inedite et fondatrice de l'histoire europeenne du droit de punir. Pourquoi cette soudaine publicite du probleme penal? Comment s'est-elle manifestee, par quels canaux, sous quelles formes theoriques et materielles? Comme le montre cet ouvrage, le droit penal moderne est ne d'un livre, mais aussi de ses interpretations: il est ne des idees de Beccaria et des debats qu'elles ont provoques. Ces deux sources se sont croisees et ne peuvent se comprendre l'une sans l'autre. --- Throughout history, criminal law was never more discussed than during the Age of Enlightenment. The debates started after the publication of a small book by Cesare Beccaria, On Crimes and Punishments, in Livorno in 1764. For fifty years from that date, reactions and additions to the book proliferated so much that this period is called by some "the Beccaria moment". The contributions in this volume explore different thematic and geographical areas (Germany, England, France, Italy) to explore that innovative and foundational moment in the European history of criminal law. Why was the criminal problem suddenly publicised? How did those interrogations manifest? Which theoretical and material forms did they take? This volume shows that modern criminal law originates in a book, and also in its interpretations - in Beccaria's ideas and the debates they started. Those two sources interacted and now cannot be understood separately.

If we are to vindicate moral reasoning in politics, Elisabeth Ellis argues in this original and provocative work, we must focus on the conditions of political discourse rather than the contents of any particular ethical system. Written in an engaging, direct style, "Provisional Politics "builds on Ellis's prize-winning interpretation of Kant's theory of provisional right to construct a new theory of justice under conditions of agency and plurality. She develops this new perspective through a series of cases ranging from the treatment of AIDS widows in Kenya to the rights of non-citizens everywhere, as well as the clash between democratic decision-making and the politics of species conservation. The book concludes with a sobering discussion of the probable limits of political agency.

S'il est desormais etabli que le legs textuel des rencontres coloniales en revele autant sur les observateurs que sur ce qu'ils observent, le passage de l'acte d'observation a l'acte d'ecriture et le devenir des documents produits n'ont pas recu l'attention qu'ils meritent. C'est ce que proposent les auteurs des neuf etudes composant cet ouvrage, qui reviennent aux sources archivistiques du discours colonial: les inscriptions d'expression francaise sur l'Amerique, entre le milieu du XVIIe siecle et la fin du XVIIIe. Cette periode peut etre consideree comme un laboratoire des representations francaises de l'Amerique, au moment ou s'accelere le projet de decouverte et de domination politique et symbolique de la Nouvelle-France, puis des Antilles. Dans les contradictions des textes, dans les breches du recit colonial, se met progressivement en place un systeme de representation plus mouvant et evolutif que le savoir domine par les volontes institutionnelles, normatives, communautaires. Les auteurs analysent ici les contingences et les imprevus de l'experience americaine des colonisateurs et de l'ecriture de l'Amerique dans ses differentes inscriptions: ecrits, cartes, gravures. En etudiant les divers accidents lies au deplacement des textes (pertes, formatage, reecriture, reception), les auteurs montrent comment la sphere de la circulation devient lieu de creation du savoir. L'inscription de l'observation consiste a transcrire mais surtout a transformer l'experience existentielle americaine des observateurs en un evenement exemplaire. Elle contribue a constituer une memoire et un savoir qui pretendent retenir la realite vecue et la transmettre a des publics differents. Les auteurs de ce volume envisagent ainsi l'inscription comme un phenomene d'integration. Comment l'Amerique devient-elle partie du monde connu des Europeens? Et, reciproquement, comment l'assimilation de l'Amerique redessine-t-elle les contours de la conscience de soi des observateurs europeens? Tels sont les enjeux de ce livre, qui renouvelle l'approche du discours colonial sur l'Amerique au XVIIIe siecle.

In this reissue, originally published in English in 1973, French philosopher Lucien Goldmann turns his attention to the Enlightenment of the eighteenth century, the great age of liberalism and individualism and analyses the 'mental structures' of the outlook of the philosophes, who showed that the ancien regime and the privileges of the Church were irrational anachronisms.

In assessing the strengths and limitations of individualism, Goldmann considers the achievements and limitations of the Enlightenment. He discusses the views of Hegel and Marx and examines the relation between liberal scepticism and traditional Christianity to point the way to the possible reconciliation of the two seemingly incompatible 'world visions' of East and West today.

A renowned philosopher's final work, illuminating how the logical empiricist tradition has failed to appreciate the role of actual experiments in forming its philosophy of science. The logical empiricist treatment of physics dominated twentieth-century philosophy of science. But the logical empiricist tradition, for all it accomplished, does not do justice to the way in which empirical evidence functions in modern physics. In his final work, the late philosopher of science William Demopoulos contends that philosophers have failed to provide an adequate epistemology of science because they have failed to appreciate the tightly woven character of theory and evidence. As a consequence, theory comes apart from evidence. This trouble is nowhere more evident than in theorizing about particle and quantum physics. Arguing that we must consider actual experiments as they have unfolded across history, Demopoulos provides a new epistemology of theories and evidence, albeit one that stands on the shoulders of giants. On Theories finds clarity in Isaac Newton's suspicion of mere "hypotheses." Newton's methodology lies in the background of Jean Perrin's experimental investigations of molecular reality and of the subatomic investigations of J. J. Thomson and Robert Millikan. Demopoulos extends this account to offer novel insights into the distinctive nature of quantum reality, where a logico-mathematical reconstruction of Bohrian complementarity meets John Stewart Bell's empirical analysis of Einstein's "local realism." On Theories ultimately provides a new interpretation of quantum probabilities as themselves objectively representing empirical reality.

Fenelon is arguably one of the most neglected major philosophers of early modernity. His political masterwork was the most-read book in eighteenth-century France after the Bible, and yet today even specialists rarely engage his work directly. This problem is particularly acute in the Anglophone world, where only a small fraction of Fenelon's vast and influential corpus has appeared in modern English translation. This collection of new translations of Fenelon's moral and political writings renders one of the leading voices of early modern philosophy accessible to English-language audiences. Reflecting the impressive breadth of Fenelon's thought, the volume includes work on topics ranging from education to literature to religion and statecraft. In the realm of political philosophy and ethics, Fenelon was an uncompromising critic of Louis XIV and absolutism, committed to reforming France's social, political and economic institutions. In the Enlightenment, he came to be celebrated as a pioneering theorist of education and rhetoric, a prescient student of economics and international relations, and a key voice in the philosophical debates among the heirs of Descartes - not to mention his fame as one of the seventeenth-century's most preeminent theologians and spiritualists and masters of French prose. With an extensive introduction to Fenelon's life and work, this volume is a critical resource for students and scholars of French history, political philosophy, economics, education, literature, and religion.

The unlikely story of how Americans canonized Adam Smith as the patron saint of free markets Originally published in 1776, Adam Smith's The Wealth of Nations was lauded by America's founders as a landmark work of Enlightenment thinking about national wealth, statecraft, and moral virtue. Today, Smith is one of the most influential icons of economic thought in America. Glory Liu traces how generations of Americans have read, reinterpreted, and weaponized Smith's ideas, revealing how his popular image as a champion of American-style capitalism and free markets is a historical invention. Drawing on a trove of illuminating archival materials, Liu tells the story of how an unassuming Scottish philosopher captured the American imagination and played a leading role in shaping American economic and political ideas. She shows how Smith became known as the father of political economy in the nineteenth century and was firmly associated with free trade, and how, in the aftermath of the Great Depression, the Chicago School of Economics transformed him into the preeminent theorist of self-interest and the miracle of free markets. Liu explores how a new generation of political theorists and public intellectuals has sought to recover Smith's original intentions and restore his reputation as a moral philosopher. Charting the enduring fascination that this humble philosopher from Scotland has held for American readers over more than two centuries, Adam Smith's America shows how Smith continues to be a vehicle for articulating perennial moral and political anxieties about modern capitalism.

This is a comprehensive examination of the ideas of the early modern philosophers on the nature of mind. Taking Descartes, Spinoza, Leibniz, Locke, Berkeley, and Hume in turn, Janice Thomas presents an authoritative and critical assessment of each of these canonical thinkers' views of the notion of mind. The book examines each philosopher's position on five key topics: the metaphysical character of minds and mental states; the nature and scope of introspection and self-knowledge; the nature of consciousness; the problem of mental causation and the nature of representation and intentionality. The exposition and examination of their positions is informed by present-day debates in the philosophy of mind and the philosophy of psychology so that students get a clear sense of the importance of these philosophers' ideas, many of which continue to define our current notions of the mental.Again and again, philosophers and students alike come back to the great early modern rationalist and empiricist philosophers for instruction and inspiration. Their views on the philosophy of mind are no exception and as Janice Thomas shows they have much to offer contemporary debates. The book is suitable for undergraduate courses in the philosophy of mind and the many new courses in philosophy of psychology.

This is a comprehensive examination of the ideas of the early modern philosophers on the nature of mind. Taking Descartes, Spinoza, Leibniz, Locke, Berkeley, and Hume in turn, Janice Thomas presents an authoritative and critical assessment of each of these canonical thinkers' views of the notion of mind. The book examines each philosopher's position on five key topics: the metaphysical character of minds and mental states; the nature and scope of introspection and self-knowledge; the nature of consciousness; the problem of mental causation and the nature of representation and intentionality. The exposition and examination of their positions is informed by present-day debates in the philosophy of mind and the philosophy of psychology so that students get a clear sense of the importance of these philosophers' ideas, many of which continue to define our current notions of the mental.Again and again, philosophers and students alike come back to the great early modern rationalist and empiricist philosophers for instruction and inspiration. Their views on the philosophy of mind are no exception and as Janice Thomas shows they have much to offer contemporary debates. The book is suitable for undergraduate courses in the philosophy of mind and the many new courses in philosophy of psychology.

Les oeuvres de Voltaire, et particulierement sa correspondance, recelent une thematique inattendue peu analysee par la critique: l'expression de ses degouts. Voltaire y devoile ses depits et deboires devant l'oppression politique et religieuse, ses exigences d'homme de lettres et d'historien, ses desillusions, exprimant ainsi sa vision pessimiste de la condition humaine. La revelation par Marie-Helene Cotoni de l'importance que donnait Voltaire a ses degouts, de la vie a l'oeuvre, a fait naitre un nouveau champ de recherche: comment apprehender, si longtemps apres, la sincerite d'une emotion a partir de traces ecrites, laissees par un maitre dans l'art d'ecrire, mais aussi dans l'art de feindre? Dans ce livre, l'auteur evalue la diversite des degouts de Voltaire, dans ses rapports au monde et a soi-meme, selon les situations qui les ont provoques: degouts exageres dans les jugements severes que l'ecrivain porte sur le monde des Lettres; sarcastiques ou hargneux devant qui s'ecarte de la verite; obsedants dans certaines polemiques; a peine chuchotes lors des desillusions de sa vie privee; allant jusqu'a l'horreur face a la 'barbarie' de son siecle. Marie-Helene Cotoni analyse les motivations qui poussent Voltaire a exprimer ainsi ses degouts. Elle trace la frontiere entre impressions reellement eprouvees et expression, afin de mesurer, autant que possible, la sincerite de l'homme tout comme l'habilete de l'ecrivain. S'il plonge bien souvent ses lecteurs dans un monde de laideur, en employant un vocabulaire grossier et des metaphores brutales, il souhaite cependant les amener a epouser ses combats pour le Juste, le Beau et le Vrai. L'expression de sa repulsion devant les croyances erronees est pour Voltaire une autre maniere de defendre le classicisme et la civilisation.

Emilie du Chatelet was one of the most influential woman philosophers of the Enlightenment. Her writings on natural philosophy, physics, and mechanics had a decisive impact on important scientific debates of the 18th century. Particularly, she took an innovative and outstanding position in the controversy between Newton and Leibniz, one of the fundamental scientific discourses of that time. The contributions in this volume focus on this "Leibnitian turn". They analyze the nature and motivation of Emilie du Chatelet's synthesis of Newtonian and Leibnitian philosophy. Apart from the Institutions Physiques they deal with Emilie du Chatelet's annotated translation of Isaac Newton's Principia. The chapters presented here collectively demonstrate that her work was an essential contribution to the mediation between empiricist and rationalist positions in the history of science.

Au XXIe siecle, l'Europe ne fait plus rever: son modele est conteste, tant sur le plan economique qu'intellectuel et politique. Face a ces desillusions, il est urgent d'interroger les origines de l'idee d'Europe: quand et comment la notion d'Europe s'est-elle definie? L'ouvrage dirige par Antoine Lilti et Celine Spector propose un detour par les Lumieres. Si l'Europe peut s'enorgueillir d'une longue histoire, c'est bien au XVIIIe siecle qu'elle est devenue un enjeu philosophique, historique et politique majeur. De Montesquieu a Kant, de Voltaire a Burke ou a Robertson, l'idee d'Europe est au coeur des controverses sur le droit international comme sur l'economie politique, sur la legitimite de l'expansion coloniale comme sur les espoirs d'un monde pacifie. Veritable enquete collective conduite par des historiens et des philosophes, Penser l'Europe au XVIIIe siecle aborde trois elements majeurs autour desquels gravite le concept naissant d'Europe: l'empire, le commerce et la civilisation. Apres avoir decrit la maniere dont l'ordre europeen a ete concu, les auteurs examinent la question de l'expansion commerciale et coloniale de l'Europe, ainsi que les theories de la civilisation, qui permettent d'interroger le statut de l'exceptionnalisme europeen. Le siecle des Lumieres ne nous presente pas un ideal europeen a ressusciter, mais un champ d'interrogations dont nous ne sommes jamais veritablement sortis.

Enlightened War investigates the multiple and complex interactions between warfare and Enlightenment thought. Although the Enlightenment is traditionally identified with the ideals of progress, eternal peace, reason, and self-determination, Enlightenment discourse unfolded during a period of prolonged European warfare from the Seven Years' War to the Napoleonic conquest of Europe. The essays in this volume explore the palpable influence of war on eighteenth-century thought and argue for an ideological affinity among war, Enlightenment thought, and its legacy. The essays are interdisciplinary, engaging with history, art history, philosophy, military theory, gender studies, and literature and with historical events and cultural contexts from the early Enlightenment through German Classicism and Romanticism. The volume enriches our understanding of warfare in the eighteenth century and shows how theories and practices of war impacted concepts of subjectivity, national identity, gender, and art. It also sheds light on the contemporary discussion of the legitimacy of violence by juxtaposing theories of war, concepts of revolution, and human rights discourses. Contributors: Johannes Birgfeld, David Colclasure, Sara Eigen Figal, Ute Frevert, Wolf Kittler, Elisabeth Krimmer, Waltraud Maierhofer, Arndt Niebisch, Felix Saure, Galili Shahar, Patricia Anne Simpson, Inge Stephan. Elisabeth Krimmer is Professor of German at the University of California, Davis, and Patricia Anne Simpson is Associate Professor of German Studies at Montana State University.

The emergence of a theatrical science of man in France, 1660-1740 highlights a radical departure from discussions of dramatic literature and its undergirding rules to a new, relational discourse on the emotional power of theater. Through a diverse cast of religious theaterphobes, government officials, playwrights, art theorists and proto-philosophes, Connors shows the concerted effort in early Enlightenment France to use texts about theater to establish broader theories on emotion, on the enduring psychological and social ramifications of affective moments, and more generally, on human interaction, motivation, and social behavior. This fundamentally anthropological assessment of theater emerged in the works of anti-theatrical religious writers, who argued that emotional response was theater's raison d'etre and that it was an efficient venue to learn more about the depravity of human nature. A new generation of pro-theatrical writers shared the anti-theatricalists' intense focus on the emotions of theater, but unlike religious theaterphobes, they did not view emotion as a conduit of sin or as a dangerous, uncontrollable process; but rather, as cognitive-affective moments of feeling and learning. Connors' study explores this reassessment of the theatrical experience which empowered writers to use plays, critiques, and other cultural materials about the stage to establish a theatrical science of man-an early Enlightenment project with aims to study and 'improve' the emotional, social, and political 'health' of eighteenth-century France.

Si l'education, theme phare du XVIIIe siecle, a fait l'objet d'importantes etudes historiques et litteraires, de nombreux textes d'auteurs feminins sont restes dans l'ombre. Meconnus ou incompris, ils ont ete consideres comme une production mineure, etrangere a l'edification d'une pensee pedagogique. En se fondant sur un corpus d'une vingtaine d'ouvrages, Sonia Cherrad demontre le role determinant joue par le discours de ces femmes dans la reflexion sur l'education au XVIIIe siecle. Ce discours est forme des voix d'auteurs connues comme Mmes Le Prince de Beaumont, d'Epinay et de Genlis; mais egalement de celles d'auteurs a decouvrir ou redecouvrir telles Mmes de La Fite, de Monbart, de Miremont ainsi que Mlles d'Espinassy et Le Masson Le Golft. Sonia Cherrad met en lumiere le caractere philosophique nouveau de leurs theories pedagogiques et expose les savoirs - parmi lesquels des disciplines comme l'histoire, la geographie et les sciences - qui, pour ces educatrices, constituent le socle d'une bonne formation. Ce livre demontre en outre qu'au sein des parties fictionnelles de leurs livres, les auteurs prolongent leur reflexion au-dela des questions educatives et proposent des analyses des situations sociale, politique et economique de leur epoque.