Event Description
What would the Enlightenment look like if we viewed it through the eyes of the philosophers as they were facing death? Joanna Stalnaker discusses works written at the end of the Old Regime and at the end of their authors’ lives. These works, all written before the French Revolution, cast a retrospective glance over the intellectual movement their authors participated in, and over the authors’ own lives and works.
Stalnaker shows that the beauty of these works stem from their authors’ efforts to give literary form to the fragility of their dying bodies. As they reflected on writing as a means of reaching posterity, Enlightenment philosophers embraced the possibility that neither their names nor their writings would survive long beyond the decomposition of their bodies. They inscribed the silence and nothingness of death into their last works, capturing their sense of an ending rather than the confidence in a glowing future so often attributed to them.
Event Speaker
Joanna Stalnaker, Professor of French at Columbia University
Event Information
Free and open to the public; registration required. For more information, please visit the event webpage or email [email protected].
Hosted by Maison Francaise at Columbia University.
