Flesh in the Age of Reason: The Modern Foundations of Body and Soul [Paperback] Author: Roy Porter | Language: English | ISBN:
0393326969 | Format: PDF, EPUB
Flesh in the Age of Reason: The Modern Foundations of Body and Soul Download for free books Flesh in the Age of Reason: The Modern Foundations of Body and Soul [Paperback] from 4shared, mediafire, hotfile, and mirror link
"A heroic feat of scholarship."—New York Times Book Review
In this "readable and humane book" (
Los Angeles Times Book Review), the late historian Roy Porter traces the course of man's philosophical journey from the superstitious, spiritually obsessed Dark Ages to our modern perspective, based on reason and grounded in the body. He demonstrates how the explosion of rational thought and scientific innovation during the Enlightenment began to change our understanding of the flesh and its relation to the soul. No longer simply a "mortal coil," the body eventually became the location, and source, of our conscious selves. Porter examines this paradigm shift through the eyes of the great thinkers of history, from Descartes to Voltaire to Lord Byron, summarizing and explicating their beliefs "in a prose that leaps resplendently from the page" (
Harper's).
Download latest books on mediafire and other links compilation Flesh in the Age of Reason: The Modern Foundations of Body and Soul [Paperback]
- Paperback: 592 pages
- Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company; Reprint edition (August 17, 2005)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 0393326969
- ISBN-13: 978-0393326963
- Product Dimensions: 1.4 x 6 x 9.1 inches
- Shipping Weight: 1.8 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
- Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #980,364 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
At the tender age of 55, while enjoying early retirement in the county of Sussex, British historian Roy Porter fell of his bike and passed away. Apparently his overcrowded curriculum had gotten the better of him. He wanted to slow down and learn to play the saxophone. His output had been enormous, culminating in his two books on the British Enlightenment. He had just finished Flesh in the Age of Reason but not yet organized the notes. Simon Schama, who has written a moving preface, and the publisher decided to leave it at that instead of trying to untangle the rather disorderly annotations. There is, however, a massive bibliography. Maybe in part because there are no footnotes, the book has an even more literary feel to it and brims with uninterrupted narrative zest.
At the peak of his powers Porter was destined to thrill his readers for many years to come. "Thrill", because his style is filled with a warmth and wit seldom encountered in academia. His books shimmer with the pleasure of writing and this in combination with his vast erudition gave us something very special indeed. In his gargantuan appetite for life one sometimes gets the feeling that he wrote faster than we could read. Porter's writing on Laurence Sterne is hilarious and downright vertiginous; for a non-native reader a dictionary is probably advisory. Even though I haven't read The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman, it sounds as if it could have been taken right out of that novel.
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