From Perfectibility to Perversion: Meliorism in Eighteenth-century FranceFrom Perfectibility to Perversion: Meliorism in Eighteenth-Century France traces the evolution of human perfectibility discourse during the second half of the eighteenth century and the early post-Revolutionary era in France. Examining key articulations of Enlightenment meliorism as it shifts between open-ended models of human perfectibility and «fixist» conceptions of the human body, this book will appeal to a range of specialists because it draws on a variety of primary sources, from Buffon and Rousseau to important medical theorists of the pre- and post-Revolutionary period, and juxtaposes seemingly disparate domains of inquiry in informative and provocative fashion. |
Contents
Introduction | 1 |
Framing Perfectibility | 20 |
Progress and Decline | 38 |
Copyright | |
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