Other Enlightenment - (Off the Fence: Morality, Politics and Society) by Matthew Sharpe (Paperback)

About the Book

This post-colonial and feminist reading of the Enlightenment explores the proto-postmodernist practice of examining one's conclusions through the eyes of the Other. Self-estrangement to gain critical distance from one's taken-for-granted assumptions, was central to the Enlightenment, and remains vital for critical sociopolitical thinking today.

Book Synopsis

This post-colonial and feminist reading of the Enlightenment explores the proto-postmodernist practice of examining one's conclusions through the eyes of the Other. Self-estrangement to gain critical distance from one's taken-for-granted assumptions, was central to the Enlightenment, and remains vital for critical sociopolitical thinking today.

Review Quotes

A wonderfully lucid and engaging study that brings back to life key figures of the European enlightenment. Sharpe convincingly presents the philosophes and their practices of epistemic humility and cultural openness as an alternative to the various forms of identity politics dominating our times.

Among the many sins that are regularly laid at the Enlightenmentrsquo;s doorstep, unthinking racism, sexism, and Eurocentrism are some of the most common, and most damning. Matthew Sharpersquo;s bold new book contests these accusations by showing that the thinkers of this period were in fact unusually insistent on viewing the world through the eyes of the other.

As liberal, pluralistic societies feel increasingly under challenge, we need to remember our roots in the Enlightenment. The Other Enlightenment is a timely plea to re-read the French philosophes ndash; we will be surprised by what they have to say.

Centered on insightful readings of key French Enlightenment texts, this book articulates a dynamic version of enlightenment thinking, and brings it to bear on contemporary practices of othering. Engagingly written, and persuasively argued, it offers a nuanced critique of some current ways of misconstruing the upshot of the Enlightenment.

Matthew Sharpersquo;s wonderful and original The Other Enlightenment: Self-Estrangement, Race, and Gender shines a new light on the Enlightenment. He presents it as a period of intellectual ferment that opened a critical space in which forms of power became contested and opened to different possibilities through critical self-othering and self-distancing.

About the Author

Matthew Sharpe is associate professor of philosophy at Deakin University. He is the coauthor of Philosophy as a Way of Life: History, Dimensions, Directions (with M. Ure) and author of Camus, Philosophe: To Return to Our Beginnings as well as articles on the history of philosophy, and political, critical and psychoanalytic theory.