Limits of Optimism: Thomas Jefferson's Dualistic Enlightenment

Bücher

Angebote / Angebote:

The Limits of Optimism" worksto dispel persistent notions about Jefferson's allegedly paradoxical and sphinx-likequality. Maurizio Valsania shows that Jefferson's multifaceted character andpersonality are to a large extent the logical outcome of an anti-metaphysical, enlightened, and humility-oriented approach to reality. That Jefferson's mind andpriorities changed over time and in response to changing circumstances indicatesneither incoherence, hypocrisy, nor pathology.Valsania's reading ofJefferson, the Enlightenment, and negativity helps to make sense of the manyparadoxes typically associated with that eighteenth-century thinker. At the sametime, it provides a corrective to the common though erroneous equation ofEnlightenment thinking with rationalism and shallow optimism."Jeffersonian America