The Marquis dArgens A Philosophical Life [Hardcover]

The Marquis dArgens: A Philosophical Life is an enthusiastically argued and much-needed contribution to eighteenth-century studies. With this biography, Gasper in effect creates a fresh beginning for scholarship on dArgenss thought and work. Beyond this important consideration, and because dArgens talents, interests, and experiences ranged broadly, the book casts light on several aspects of Enlightenment intellectualism and culture, including the European idea of the East, art criticism, the reception of philosophers from Descartes to the Pre-Socratics, and the world of theatre and opera. DArgenss story also offers insight into figures such as Voltaire, the Berlin Academicians, and Frederick II, a practical joker, a scholar, and, in the bleakest moments of the Seven Years War, a man very close to committing suicide. And although he died before the moment of the American and French Revolutions, dArgens may indeed, as Gasper claims, be 'a missing link between the Enlightenment and the Romantic generation' in part because 'while others talked of revolution, he practiced it'. For these reasons, and more, Gaspers book belongs in the hands of readers interested in Continental philosophy and literature of the Long Eighteenth Century.Gaspers book is a quite solidly crafted and very readable monograph about an author whose life and work indeed deserve greater attention.This is by far the best study available on a major but unjustly neglected Enlightenment writer who ought to be as famous for his intellectual contribution as he once was for his wit and amusing storytelling. This book fills a considerable gap in the standard literature on the Enlightenment.An accessible and interesting account of a man who, as Julia Gasper says, situated himself at the nerve-centre of the Enlightenment.In The Marquis dArgens: A Philosophical Life Julia Gasper analyzes the life and works of an influential Enlightenment writer and philosopher. Through meticulous research, Gasper provl°