‘Love is harder to explain than hunger, for a piece of fruit does not feel the desire to be eaten’: Denis Diderot’s Éléments de physiologie presents a world in flux, turning on the relationship between man, matter and mind. In this late work, Diderot delves playfully into the relationship between bodily sensation, emotion and perception, and asks his readers what it means to be human in…
This is a century of political and cultural imperialism, of wars about borders and control of resources, of world-wide trade and profit based on worldwide exploitation. It is also a century of revolution, and of fierce debate about rights and laws, about the right to follow a religion or to reject it, about policing and its limits. It is a century of violence, and it provokes violent reactions.…