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Savages, Romans, and Despots - Thinking about Others from Montaigne to Herder (Paperback)
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Savages, Romans, and Despots - Thinking about Others from Montaigne to Herder (Paperback)
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From the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries, Europeans struggled
to understand their identity in the same way we do as individuals:
by comparing themselves to others. In Savages, Romans, and Despots,
Robert Launay takes us on a fascinating tour of early modern and
modern history in an attempt to untangle how various depictions of
"foreign" cultures and civilizations saturated debates about
religion, morality, politics, and art. Beginning with Mandeville
and Montaigne, and working through Montesquieu, Diderot, Gibbon,
Herder, and others, Launay traces how Europeans both admired and
disdained unfamiliar societies in their attempts to work through
the inner conflicts of their own social worlds. Some of these
writers drew caricatures of "savages," "Oriental despots," and
"ancient" Greeks and Romans. Others earnestly attempted to
understand them. But, throughout this history, comparative thinking
opened a space for critical reflection. At its worst, such space
could give rise to a sense of European superiority. At its best,
however, it could prompt awareness of the value of other ways of
being in the world. Launay's masterful survey of some of the
Western tradition's finest minds offers a keen exploration of the
genesis of the notion of "civilization," as well as an engaging
portrait of the promises and perils of cross-cultural comparison.
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