The authority of experience : sensationist theory in the French Enlightenment /

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Bibliographic Details
Author / Creator:	O'Neal, John C.
Imprint:	University Park, Pa. : Pennsylvania State University Press, ©1996.
Description:	1 online resource (viii, 284 pages) : illustrations.
Language:	English
Series:	Literature & philosophy Literature and philosophy.
Subject:	Enlightenment -- France. Empiricism. Philosophy, French -- 18th century. French literature -- 18th century -- History and criticism. Empiricism. Enlightenment. French literature. Philosophy, French. France. Criticism, interpretation, etc.
Format:	E-Resource Book
URL for this record:	http://pi.lib.uchicago.edu/1001/cat/bib/11249060

Hidden Bibliographic Details
ISBN:	9780271071732 0271071737 9780271042671 0271042672 0271015152 9780271015156
Notes:	Includes bibliographical references (pages 251-265) and index. English. Print version record.
Summary:	Sensationism, a philosophy that gained momentum in the French Enlightenment as a response to Lockean empiricism, was acclaimed by Hippolyte Taine as "the doctrine of the most lucid, methodical, and French minds to have honored France." The first major general study in English of eighteenth-century French sensationism, The Authority of Experience presents the history of a complex set of ideas and explores their important ramifications for literature, education, and moral theory. The study begins by presenting the main ideas of sensationist philosophers Condillac, Bonnet, and Helvťius, who held that all of our ideas come to us through the senses. The experience of the body in seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, and touching enabled individuals, as John C. O'Neal points out, to challenge the sometimes arbitrary authority of institutions and people in positions of power. After a general introduction to sensationism, the author develops a theory of sensationist aesthetics that not only reveals the interconnections of the period's philosophy and literature but also enhances our awareness of the forces at work in the French novel. He goes on to examine the relations between sensationism and eighteenth-century French educational theory, materialism, and idǒlogie. Ultimately, O'Neal opens a discussion of the implications of sensationist thought for issues of particular concern to society today.
Other form:	Print version: O'Neal, John C. Authority of experience 0271015152

Table of Contents:

Intro
Title Page
Copyright
Contents
Dedication
Acknowledgments
A Note on the Selection and Translation of Texts
List of Abbreviations
Introduction
Part I: The Eighteenth-Century French History of an Idea
1. Condillac and the Meaning of Experience
2. Bonnet's Mind-Body Continuum in the Economy of Our Being
3. Helvétius's Seminal Concept of Physical Sensibility
Part II: Aesthetics
4. The Sensationist Aesthetics of the French Enlightenment
5. An Exemplary yet Divergent Text: Graffigny's Lettres d'une Péruvienne
6. The Perversion of Sensationism in Laclos and Sade
Part III: The Politics of Sensationism
7. Cultivating Talent and Virtue
8. Materialism's Extension of Sensationist Principles
9. The Adoption and Critique of Sensationism by the Idéologues
Conclusion
Notes
Bibliography
Index
Back Cover

The authority of experience : sensationist theory in the French Enlightenment /

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