A new idea of the future emerged in eighteenth-century France. With the development of modern biological, economic, and social engineering, the future transformed from being predetermined and beyond significant human intervention into something that could be dramatically affected through actions in the present.
The Time of Enlightenment
created the means to exceed previously recognized limits and build a future that was not merely a recuperation of the past, but fundamentally different from it. A theoretically inflected work combining intellectual history and the history of science, this book will appeal to anyone interested in European history and the history of science, as well as the history of France, the Enlightenment, and the French Revolution.
By:
William Max Nelson
Imprint: University of Toronto Press
Country of Publication: Canada
Dimensions:
Height: 229mm,
Width: 155mm,
Spine: 25mm
Weight: 480g
ISBN: 9781487507701
ISBN 10: 1487507704
Pages: 240
Publication Date: 04 January 2021
Audience:
College/higher education
,
Professional and scholarly
,
Primary
,
Undergraduate
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Active
Acknowledgments Introduction 1. Making Time Different: Historical Change and the Laws of Nature 2. Living the Future: Ideas of Progress and Uncanny Temporality 3. “The Explosion of Light”: The Economic Order and the Scientific Revelation of the Future 4. Generating Time: Buffon and the Biological Instruments of Futurity 5. The Time of Regeneration: Renewal, Rupture, and Beginning Anew in the French Revolution Conclusion: Colonizing the Future Notes Index
William Max Nelson is an associate professor of History at the University of Toronto and a co-editor of The French Revolution in Global Perspective.
Reviews for The Time of Enlightenment: Constructing the Future in France, 1750 to Year One
“Scholars interested in the growing literature on the history of time, progress, and the future will find this book valuable reading. It is a careful but clear work on intellectual history, one with particular relevance for understanding the significance of the French Revolution.” -- Meghan K. Roberts, Bowdoin College * <em>H-France Review</em> * “In this insightful, richly researched, and theoretically astute work, William Max Nelson views the Enlightenment not as era, movement, or project, but as ‘attempts to develop new ways of being in the world that could come to grips with the erosion of traditional notions of God and legitimating narratives of political authority and social hierarchy.’ … This book is a valuable and thought-provoking contribution to that process.” -- Daniel Brewer, University of Minnesota * <em>French Studies</em> * “This wide-ranging book makes a valuable contribution to a still fragmentary field of historical time studies.” -- Sanja Perovic, King’s College London * <em>American Historical Review</em> *
