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Imperfect Garden
The Legacy of Humanism
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by Tzvetan Todorov
Princeton University Press
Due/Published
May 2002, 272 pages,
cloth
ISBN
0691010471
Available in English for the first time, Imperfect Garden is both an intellectual history and a treatise on how we should understand and experience our lives. In it, Todorov explores the foundations, limits, and possibilities of humanist thinking. Through his critical but sympathetic excavation of humanism, he seeks an answer to modernity's fundamental challenge: how to maintain our hard-won liberty without paying too dearly in social ties, common values, and a coherent and responsible sense of self. Todorov reads afresh the works of major humanists--primarily Montaigne, Rousseau, and Constant, but also Descartes, Montesquieu, and Toqueville. Each chapter considers humanism's approach to one major theme of human existence: liberty, social life, love, self, morality, and expression. Discussing humanism in dialogue with other systems, Todorov finds a response to the predicament of modernity that is far more instructive than any offered by conservatism, scientific determinism, existential individualism, or humanism's other contemporary competitors. Humanism suggests that we are members of an intelligent and sociable species who can act according to our will while connecting the well-being of other members with our own. It is through this understanding of free will, Todorov argues, that we can use humanism to rescue universality and reconcile human liberty with solidarity and personal integrity. "Tzvetan Todorov's timely book centers on examinations of French thinkers of the sixteenth through nineteenth centuries--Montaigne, Montesquieu, Rousseau, and Constatn--but its importance extends well beyond these canny analyses and the particular culture they probe. Imperfect Garden is a moving defense of humanism, an eloquent articulation of its central values of freedom, responsibility, and decency. There is nothing facile about this defense: Todorov enables us to see the fragility, fault lines, and complexity of secular, democratic thought. But by the close of theis richly thoughtful study, the whole project of modernity has been clarified and powerfully reaffirmed."--Stephen Greenblatt |
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Review
During the Renaissance modern man entered into a Faustian pact in which free will was gained at the cost of a relationship with God, a sense of community, and, ultimately, a sense of identity. At this time, modern man broke away from the intellectual, political, and social traditions of the past, established new systems of knowledge, and began to choose his own leaders. Though we cherish the freedoms we gained, we also worry about "living in a world without ideals or common values, a mass society populated by solitary individuals unfamiliar with love." There have been a variety of responses to the condition of modernity -- conservatism, scientism, existentialism, etc -- but, Todorov argues, humanism offers the best path for achieving a balance between the freedom of the individual and the sharing of common values and ideals. Todorov returns to the writings of Montaigne, Rousseau, Montesquieu, Constant, and other French humanist thinkers to articulate an understanding of how our freedom can be reconciled with community, solidarity, and respect for the Other. Todorov's imaginative readings offer refreshing and accessible new perspectives on the humanist tradition and demonstrates how it can continue to inform our understanding of liberty, social life, love, self, morality, and expression. Stephen Greenblatt writes, "Imperfect Garden is a moving defense of humanism, an eloquent articulation of its central values of freedom, responsibility, and decency. There is nothing facile about this defense: Todorov enables us to see the fragility, fault lines, and complexity of secular, democratic thought. But by the close of this richly thoughtful study, the whole project of modernity has been clarified and powerfully reaffirmed."
Other recent titles by Tzvetan Todorov: |
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