Blindness and Enlightenment: An Essay : With a new translation of Diderot's 'Letter on the Blind' and La Mothe Le Vayer's 'Of a Man Born Blind'

"Blindness and Enlightenment "presents a reading and a new translation of Diderot's "Letter on the Blind". Diderot was the editor of the "Encyclopédie", that Trojan horse of Enlightenment ideas, as well as a novelist, playwright, art critic and philosopher. His "Letter on the Blind" of 1749 is essential reading for anyone interested in Enlightenment philosophy or eighteenth-century literature because it contradicts a central assumption of Western literature and philosophy, and of the Enlightenment in particular, namely that moral and philosophical insight is dependent on seeing. Kate Tunstall's essay guides the reader through the "Letter", its anecdotes, ideas and its conversational mode of presenting them, and it situates the "Letter "in relation both to the "Encyclopedie "and to a rich tradition of writing about and, most importantly, talking and listening to the blind. [Publisher's Text]

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