About this episode

Joanna Stalnaker discusses how Enlightenment philosophers confronted mortality and the cultural context of their reflections on death.

Joanna Stalnaker is a professor of French at Columbia University and also the author of the books The Rest Is Silence: Enlightenment Philosophers Facing Death and The Unfinished Enlightenment: Description in the Age of the Encyclopedia. Greg and Joanna discuss how Enlightenment figures faced death amid disbelief or tempered religious belief. Joanna says scholars have emphasized 18th-century death rituals more than philosophers’ personal end-of-life writings, and she links her interest to growing up with atheist philosopher parents to her earlier work on Enlightenment description, and Rousseau’s late writings. Their conversation covers models like Socrates and Montaigne’s, public scrutiny of deaths, last rites, and burial, and tensions between posterity and accepting oblivion. They discuss Hume’s death and ambivalence about his reception, Diderot’s Seneca-inspired reflections and critique of Rousseau’s self-presentation, Voltaire’s editing of Meslier and correspondence with Madame du Deffand, Buffon’s gradual “ossification” view of dying, salons and letters’ role in Enlightenment networks and women’s participation, posthumous publication, and the value of literary form for…

People in this episode

Host: Greg La Blanc

Guest: Joanna Stalnaker

Topics covered

• Enlightenment philosophy
• mortality
• death rituals
• personal writings
• literary form
• philosophical reflections

Keywords

• Enlightenment
• philosophy
• mortality
• death
• rituals
• literature
• Hume
• Rousseau
• Diderot
• Voltaire

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: Columbia University

Books & works: The Rest Is Silence: Enlightenment Philosophers Facing Death, The Unfinished Enlightenment: Description in the Age of the Encyclopedia

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