Blindness and Enlightenment: An Essay: With a New Translation of Diderot's 'Letter on the Blind' and La Mothe Le Vayer's 'of a Man Born Blind'

ISBN-13: 9781441158031 / Angielski / Twarda / 2011 / 256 str.

Kate E Tunstall

Opis

Blindness and Enlightenment presents a reading and a new translation of Diderot's Letter on the Blind. Diderot was the editor of the Encyclopedie, that Trojan horse of Enlightenment ideas, as well as a novelist, playwright, art critic and philosopher. His Letter on the Blind of 1749 is essential reading for anyone interested in Enlightenment philosophy or eighteenth-century literature because it contradicts a central assumption of Western literature and philosophy, and of the Enlightenment in particular, namely that moral and philosophical insight is dependent on seeing. Kate Tunstall's essay guides the reader through the Letter, its anecdotes, ideas and its conversational mode of presenting them, and it situates the Letter in relation both to the Encyclopedie and to a rich tradition of writing about and, most importantly, talking and listening to the blind.

Spis treści

List of Figures appearing in the Essay
Acknowledgements
Note on the References
   
Prologue, or Operation Enlightenment
Introduction: Optics and Tactics
One: Reading is Believing?
Two: The Blind Leading the Blind Leading the Blind Leading the Blind Leading the Blind ...
Three: Point of View and Point de Vue
Four: Groping Around in the Light
Five: A Supplement to Saunderson's Memoirs
Six: Dis/Solving Molyneux's Problem
Conclusion, or Two Hours Later ...

Bibliography
Index

Appendices
I. Denis Diderot, The Letter on the Blind for the Use of Those Who Can See (1749)
Note on the Translation
Translation

II. François de La Mothe Le Vayer, ‘Of a Man-Born-Blind' (1653)
Note on the Translation
Translation