Beyond Enlightenment: Occultism, Politics, and Culture in Modern France

FAIN: FT-51272-03

David Harvey
New College of Florida (Sarasota, FL 34243-2146)

This project examines the political significance of the French occult revivals of the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, with a focus on the discursive forms of speculative metahistory and political prophecy. It seeks to enrich and broaden the scope of French intellectual and cultural history and to contribute to the reevaluation of the legacy of the Enlightenment and of Positivism on French thought and society. It will attempt to demonstrate that French esoteric thinkers, alarmed at the instability and conflict brought to French society as a result of political revolution and socioeconomic modernization, sought in supposedly secret, ancient wisdom the key to a more stable and harmonious social order.

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