Human Nature, Cultural Diversity, and the French Enlightenment

Summary: Foremost among eighteenth-century European thinkers are the French philosophers Montesquieu, Voltaire, and Diderot who have left indelible marks on the pattern of modern intellectual history. Their crowning collaborative achievement was the Encyclopedie, a vast work which influenced generations of educated Europeans. Vyverberg's work reassesses several ideas long considered to be the central tenets of Enlightenment p...hilosophy and challenges the prevailing view of theEnlightenment's supposedly rigid conception of human nature. [read more]