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83 books match the query 'Enlightenment' and 2 start with r

cover of Rescuing the Enlightenment from the Europeans: Critical Theories of Decolonization

Rescuing the Enlightenment from the Europeans

Critical Theories of Decolonization

Nikita Dhawan

Duke University Press, 2026

In Rescuing the Enlightenment from the Europeans, Nikita Dhawan puts the critical project of decolonization into conversation with the Enlightenment. She explores the ethical-political challenges faced by postcolonial thought, which must be articulated using the very language of Enlightenment discourses on human rights, democracy, international law, sovereignty, and justice—even as these norms are subjects of postcolonial critique. Bridging postcolonial and Holocaust studies while also highlighting differences from decolonial approaches, she engages with thinkers ranging from Kant to the Frankfurt school to defend them against accusations of normative nihilism, antisemitism, and epistemic servitude to Europe. Dhawan argues that criticizing the Enlightenment and its legacies does not necessarily entail rejecting them, nor does engaging with Enlightenment principles mean endorsing them unconditionally. Instead, she makes a case for rescuing the best aspects of the Enlightenment in order to further the critical project of decolonization.
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cover of Rhetoric, Modality, Modernity

Rhetoric, Modality, Modernity

Nancy S. Struever

University of Chicago Press, 2009

Since antiquity, philosophy and rhetoric have traditionally been cast as rivals, with the former often lauded as a search for logical truth and the latter usually disparaged as empty speech. But in this erudite intellectual history, Nancy S. Struever stakes out a claim for rhetoric as the more productive form of inquiry.

Struever views rhetoric through the lens of modality, arguing that rhetoric’s guiding interest in what is possible—as opposed to philosophy’s concern with what is necessary—makes it an ideal tool for understanding politics. Innovative readings of Hobbes and Vico allow her to reexamine rhetoric’s role in the history of modernity and to make fascinating connections between thinkers from the classical, early modern, and modern periods. From there she turns to Walter Benjamin, reclaiming him as an exemplar of modernist rhetoric and a central figure in the long history of the form. Persuasive and perceptive, Rhetoric, Modality, Modernity is a novel rewriting of the history of rhetoric and a heady examination of the motives, issues, and flaws of contemporary inquiry.

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