Critics of the enlightenment

the long version

"Critics of the Enlightenment makes available new translations of representative selections from some of the leading French conservative thinkers of the nineteenth century: Francois de Chateaubriand, Louis de Bonald, Joseph de Maistre, Frederic Le Play, Emile Keller, and Rene de La Tour du Pin. The selections span much of the nineteenth century, from Chateaubriand's 1814 pamphlet against Bonaparte to La Tour du Pin's 1883 essay on the theory of the corporate state. Thus, the volume not only includes responses of French conservatives to the French Revolution 1789 through 1815, but also testifies to the continuing elaboration of this critique against the background of the troubled decades that followed. Blum's introduction sets these selections within their historic contexts and provides brief synopses of their authors' lives." "Blum's translations of texts heretofore difficult or impossible to find in English will allow Anglophone readers to evaluate the counter-revolutionaries' ideas about social and cultural matters of perennial importance, including the relationships between religion and politics, economic growth and family integrity, and local freedoms and centralized political power - matters that continue to concern the counter-revolutionaries of our own time."--BOOK JACKET.