In Defence of the Enlightenment

Resumen del libro

Tzvetan Todorov argues that although our liberal democracies are the offspring of the Enlightenment, they also illustrate the ways in which its ideas have been distorted and perverted. People living in contemporary democracies are often baffled by phenomena which resist easy judgement: globalisation and media omnipotence; disinformation and state-sponsored torture; moralism and the right of intervention; the dominance of economics and the triumph of technology. In this book, Todorov shows that we cannot learn lessons from the past unless we know how to relate them to the present.

He demonstrates that what remains relevant to today is the spirit expressed in the core principles and values for which the Enlightenment stood. In a period of great uncertainty, In Defence of the Enlightenment could not be more timely.

Biografía del autor

x{0026}lt;b Tzvetan Todorovx{0026}lt;/b (Sofía, 1939 x{0026} x02013; París, 2017) es una de las principales figuras de la filosofía y los estudios literarios del siglo XX. Fue director del Centre de recherches sur les arts et le langage y el Centre national de la recherche scientifique, y ha recibido premios como el Princesa de Asturias, el Premio La Bruyère de la Academia Francesa y el Premio de la Crítica de la Academia Francesa. Entre sus obras cabe destacar x{0026}lt;i El hombre desplazado, Memoria del malx{0026}lt;/i y x{0026}lt;i El jardín imperfectox{0026}lt;/i .