The Authority of Experience: Sensationist Theory in the French Enlightenment

Literature and Philosophy

by John C. O'Neal

Sensationism, a philosophy that gained momentum in the French Enlightenment as a response to Lockean empiricism, was acclaimed by Hippolyte Taine as "the doctrine of the most lucid, methodical, and French minds to have honored France." The first major general study in English of eighteenth-century French sensationism, The Authority of Experience presents the history of a complex set of ideas and explores their important ramifications for literature, education, and moral theory.The study begins by presenting the main ideas of sensationist philosophers Condillac, Bonnet, and Helvtius, who held that all of our ideas come to us through the senses. The experience of the body in seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, and touching enabled individuals, as John C. O'Neal points out, to challenge the sometimes arbitrary authority of institutions and people in positions of power. After a general introduction to sensationism, the author develops a theory of sensationist aesthetics that not only reveals the interconnections of the period's philosophy and literature but also enhances our awareness of the forces at work in the French novel. He goes on to examine the relations between sensationism and eighteenth-century French educational theory, materialism, and idologie. Ultimately, O'Neal opens a discussion of the implications of sensationist thought for issues of particular concern to society today.

284 pages, Hardcover

First published May 23, 1996

Reviews

[Ed · Rating 3 out of 5]

I found part one of this book, which discusses three sensationists Condillac, Bonnet and Helvétius, and part three, which discusses the successors to sensationism very helpful in clarifying my understanding the evolution of ideas about mind and body in 18th and 19th century France. My studies of Janet led me back to Maine de Biran and my studies of Pinel led me to Condillac. I now have a clearer idea of the thread that runs through these thinkers ideas. I'm not going to try to spell that out here. This book got me to restart Jan Goldstein's The post-revolutionary self: politics and psyche in France, 1750-1850, which I hope to finish soon.