Super-Enlightenment

Dan Edelstein is the William H. Bonsall Professor of French and, by courtesy, History at Stanford University. He is the author, most recently, of 'On the Spirit of Rights' (Chicago, 2018). He is also active in the field of digital humanities, notably through the "Mapping the Republic of Letters" project.

'By turning their attention to figures sometimes pejoratively referred to as ‘illuminés’, the essays of this volume shed a new light on eighteenth-century thought, revalorizing often marginalized thinkers, revealing the complementarity of Super-Enlightenment and Enlightenment, and thus enhancing our understanding of the particular complexity of this period in the history of ideas.'- French Studies

• Dan Edelstein, Introduction to the Super-EnlightenmentI. What limits of understanding?Peter Reill, The hermetic imagination in the high and late EnlightenmentDavid Bates, Super-epistemologyJessica Riskin, Mr Machine and the imperial meII. The arts of knowingLiana Vardi, Physiocratic visionsAnthony Vidler, For the love of architecture: Claude-Nicolas Ledoux and the HypnerotomachiaFabienne Moore, The poetry of the Super-Enlightenment: the theories and practices of Cazotte, Chassaignon, Mercier, Saint-Martin and BonnevilleIII. Sacred societiesNatalie Bayer, What do you seek from us? Wisdom? Virtue? Enlightenment? Inventing a Masonic science of man in RussiaKris Pangburn, Bonnet’s theory of palingenesis: an ‘Enlightened’ account of personal resurrection?Dan Edelstein, The Egyptian French Revolution: antiquarianism, Freemasonry and the mythology of natureTili Boon Cuillé, From myth to religion in Ossian’s FranceSummariesBibliographyIndex