Dilemmas of Enlightenment
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17th century
18th century
A01=Oscar Kenshur
Author_Oscar Kenshur
bayle
Category=DSA
Category=DSB
Category=JBCC9
Category=QD
conflicting intellectual
contemporary debates
contemporary theory
critical theory
cultural studies
dilemmas
dryden
early modern texts
enlightenment
eq_bestseller
eq_biography-true-stories
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
eq_society-politics
historical landscape
intellectual co-optation
johnson
political commitments
postmodern theories of ideology
powerful critique
very different claims
voltaire
Product details
- ISBN 9780520081550
- Weight: 635g
- Publication Date: 01 Nov 1993
- Publisher: University of California Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Hardback
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Oscar Kenshur combines trenchant analyses of important early-modern texts with a powerful critique of postmodern theories of ideology. He thereby contributes both to our understanding of Enlightenment thought and to contemporary debates about cultural studies and critical theory. While striving to resolve "dilemmas" occasioned by conflicting intellectual and political commitments, seventeenth- and eighteenth-century writers often relied upon ideas originally used by their enemies to support very different claims. Thus, they engaged in what Kenshur calls "intellectual co-optation." In exploring the ways in which Dryden, Bayle, Voltaire, Johnson, and others used this technique, Kenshur presents a historical landscape distinctly different from the one constructed by much contemporary theory.
Oscar Kenshur is Professor of Comparative Literature and Adjunct Professor of Philosophy and of English at Indiana University. He is the author of Open Form and the Shape of Ideas (1986).
