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The Conversion of Imagination : From Pascal through Rousseau to Tocqueville / Matthew W. Maguire.

By: Material type: TextTextSeries: Harvard Historical Studies ; 151Publisher: Cambridge, MA : Harvard University Press, [2006]Copyright date: 2006Description: 1 online resource (298 p.)Content type:
Media type:
Carrier type:
ISBN:
  • 9780674274969
Subject(s): DDC classification:
  • 128/.3 22
Other classification:
  • online - DeGruyter
Online resources:
Contents:
Frontmatter -- Contents -- Acknowledgments -- Introduction -- 1. Pascal: Imagining Memory -- 2. The Imagination of Reason -- 3. Rousseau and the Revolution of Enlightenment -- 4. Illusion’s Reflection: Rousseau’s Julie -- 5. The Consuming Infinite -- 6. Rousseau and Restoration: Imagination and Memory -- 7. The Gravity of Illusion: Alexis de Tocqueville -- Conclusion -- Notes -- Index
Summary: From romanticism through postmodernism, the imagination has become an indispensable reference point for thinking about the self, culture, philosophy, and politics. How has imagination so thoroughly influenced our understanding of experience and its possibilities? In a bold reinterpretation of a crucial development in modern European intellectual history, Matthew W. Maguire uncovers a history of French thought that casts the imagination as a dominant faculty in our experience of the world. Pascal, turning Augustinianism inside out, radically expanded the powers of imagination implicit in the work of Montaigne and Descartes, and made imagination the determinative faculty of everything from meaning and beauty to political legitimacy and happiness. Maguire traces the ways that others, including Montesquieu and Voltaire, developed and assigned limits to this exalted imagination. But it is above all Rousseau's diverse writings that engage with an expansive imagination. And in the writings of Rousseau's careful readers, particularly Alexis de Tocqueville, imagination is increasingly understood as the medium for an ineffable human freedom against the constrictive power of a new order in politics and culture. Original and thought-provoking, The Conversion of Imagination will interest a range of readers across intellectual history, political theory, literary and cultural studies, and the history of religious thought.
Holdings
Item type Current library Call number URL Status Notes Barcode
eBook eBook Biblioteca "Angelicum" Pont. Univ. S.Tommaso d'Aquino Nuvola online online - DeGruyter (Browse shelf(Opens below)) Online access Not for loan (Accesso limitato) Accesso per gli utenti autorizzati / Access for authorized users (dgr)9780674274969

Frontmatter -- Contents -- Acknowledgments -- Introduction -- 1. Pascal: Imagining Memory -- 2. The Imagination of Reason -- 3. Rousseau and the Revolution of Enlightenment -- 4. Illusion’s Reflection: Rousseau’s Julie -- 5. The Consuming Infinite -- 6. Rousseau and Restoration: Imagination and Memory -- 7. The Gravity of Illusion: Alexis de Tocqueville -- Conclusion -- Notes -- Index

restricted access online access with authorization star

http://purl.org/coar/access_right/c_16ec

From romanticism through postmodernism, the imagination has become an indispensable reference point for thinking about the self, culture, philosophy, and politics. How has imagination so thoroughly influenced our understanding of experience and its possibilities? In a bold reinterpretation of a crucial development in modern European intellectual history, Matthew W. Maguire uncovers a history of French thought that casts the imagination as a dominant faculty in our experience of the world. Pascal, turning Augustinianism inside out, radically expanded the powers of imagination implicit in the work of Montaigne and Descartes, and made imagination the determinative faculty of everything from meaning and beauty to political legitimacy and happiness. Maguire traces the ways that others, including Montesquieu and Voltaire, developed and assigned limits to this exalted imagination. But it is above all Rousseau's diverse writings that engage with an expansive imagination. And in the writings of Rousseau's careful readers, particularly Alexis de Tocqueville, imagination is increasingly understood as the medium for an ineffable human freedom against the constrictive power of a new order in politics and culture. Original and thought-provoking, The Conversion of Imagination will interest a range of readers across intellectual history, political theory, literary and cultural studies, and the history of religious thought.

Mode of access: Internet via World Wide Web.

In English.

Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 26. Aug 2024)