Research Catalog

Title

The era of the individual : a contribution to a history of subjectivity / Alain Renaut ; translated by M.B. DeBevoise and Franklin Philip ; with a foreword by Alexander Nehamas.

Author

Renaut, Alain

Publication

Princeton, N.J. : Princeton University Press, ©1997.

Items in the Library & Off-site

Details

Description

xxxii, 258 pages; 25 cm.

Summary

• The Era of the Individual, widely hailed as Renaut's magnum opus, the author explores the most salient feature of post-structuralism: the elimination of the human subject. At the root of this thinking lies the belief that humans cannot know or control their basic natures, a premise that led to Heidegger's distrust of an individualistic, capitalist modern society and that allied him briefly with Hitler's National Socialist Party. While acknowledging some of Heidegger's misgivings toward modernity as legitimate, Renaut argues that it is nevertheless wrong to equate modernity with the triumph of individualism. Here he distinguishes between individualism and subjectivity and, by offering a history of the two, powerfully redirects the course of current thinking away from potentially dangerous, reductionist views of humanity.
• Renaut argues that modern philosophy contains within itself two opposed ways of conceiving the human person. The first, which has its roots in Descartes and Kant, views human beings as subjects capable of arriving at universal moral judgments. The second, stemming from Leibniz, Hegel, and Nietzsche, presents human beings as independent individuals sharing nothing with others. In a careful recounting of this philosophical tradition, Renaut shows the resonances of these traditions in more recent philosophers such as Heidegger and in the social anthropology of Louis Dumont.

Series Statement

New French thought

Uniform Title

• Ere de l'individu. English
• New French thought

Alternative Title

Ere de l'individu.

Subject

• Individualism > History
• Philosophy, Modern
• Individualism
• Philosophy, Modern
• Individualismus
• Individuum
• Subjektivität
• Individualisme
• Subjectiviteit
• Moderniteit

Genre/Form

History

Bibliography (note)

• Includes bibliographical references (p. [241]-249) and index.

Contents

Heidegger: the reign of the subject -- Dumont: the triumph of the individual -- Leibniz: the monadological idea and the birth of the individual -- Berkeley and Hume: the empiricist monadologies and the dissolution of the subject -- Hegel and Nietzsche: development of the monadologies -- Lévinas: the rupture of immanence -- Kant: the horizon of transcendence.

ISBN

• 0691006377
• 9780691006376

LCCN

96045263

OCLC

• ocm35784383
• 35784383
• SCSB-9398017

Owning Institutions

Princeton University Library