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V. Ferrone, The Enlightenment and the Rights of Man

V. Ferrone, The Enlightenment and the Rights of Man

Publié le par Université de Lausanne (Source : Emma Burridge)

The Enlightenment and the rights of man
By Vincenzo Ferrone
Oxford University Studies in the Enlightenment, 2019
ISBN : 9781789620368, 576 pages, £65.00

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The first comparative history of the rights of man in Europe to deal not only with France and England but Italy and Germany as well, including the role of freemasonry. This is also the first study on this subject written by a historian of the Enlightenment.

- Shows how the Enlightenment devised a new political language that has shaped our own times.

- Addresses key issues, such as the relationship between human rights and the economy, politics and justice, and the rights of the individual and the rights of the community.

- Describes the struggle between state and religious despotism and freedom of conscience.

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Table of Contents :

Preface to the English translation

Introduction: why did the Enlightenment in the Western world discover the rights of man, and what are those rights?                                               

I. From natural law to the natural rights of the individual
Chapter 1: The historiographical debate and the discontinuity of the Enlightenment
Chapter 2: The metamorphosis of ancient natural law
Chapter 3: Modern natural law as the ‘science of morality’
Chapter 4: Natural law and ‘the crisis of the European mind’: Jean Barbeyrac
Chapter 5: The return of Antigone: freedom of conscience and the limits of sovereignty
Chapter 6: The person as autonomous and conscious individual: John Locke
Chapter 7: From duties to rights: the Enlightenment discovery of the natural right to the pursuit of happiness

II. From natural rights to the rights of man as moral and political rights
Chapter 8: The epistemological break: Diderot and Hume
Chapter 9: The question of Rousseau
Chapter 10: The politicisation of natural rights: legislation and reform in Montesquieu, Helvétius and Beccaria
Chapter 11: The political neutralisation of rights: Wolff, Hume, Ferguson, Smith, Blackstone
Chapter 12: The Neapolitan school of natural law and the rights of man: Vico and Genovesi
Chapter 13: The new ‘science of legislation’ of the rights of man: Filangieri and Pagano

III. The Late Enlightenment: the rights of man and the political struggle against the Ancien regime
Chapter 14: Public opinion and the defence of man: Voltaire, Diderot and physiocracy
Chapter 15: The ‘performance’ of the rights of man in France between art and politics
Chapter 16: The politicisation of the Republic of Letters in Germany: freemasonry and the rights of man
Chapter 17: The Bavaria Illuminati, the rights of man and the end of the Late Enlightenment

Conclusion: towards a history of the Enlightenment and the rights of man as an unfinished project and a laboratory of modernity

Bibliography

Index

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Vincenzo Ferrone has written extensively on the Enlightenment and Ancien régime Europe. He has taught and held fellowships at the Princeton Institute for Advanced Study, Ca’ Foscari University in Venice, and the Collège de France in Paris. He is currently Professor of Modern History at the University of Turin.

The Oxford University Studies in the Enlightenment series, previously known as SVEC (Studies on Voltaire and the Eighteenth Century), has published over 500 peer-reviewed scholarly volumes since 1955 as part of the Voltaire Foundation at the University of Oxford. International in focus, Oxford University Studies in the Enlightenment volumes cover wide-ranging aspects of the eighteenth century and the Enlightenment, from gender studies to political theory, and from economics to visual arts and music, and are published in English or French.