The Age of Enlightenment has been highly suspicious of the notions of sacrifice and self-sacrifice, which were deemed to be intrinsically linked to a ‘religious’ or ‘superstitious’ way of thinking. A major paradox of modern Western cultural history is the strong revival of those notions at the very end of the XVIIIth century, in the wake of the French Revolution. While the French Revolution appears, on many grounds, as an ideological heir to the Enlightenment, it also provided a favourable context for reactivating and rephrasing the discourses of sacrifice and self-sacrifice as political discourses, thus creating a new link between politics and sacralisation. In many respects, we still live with this ambiguous heritage.

In addition to the lecture, there will be a workshop with Philippe Roger in the afternoon:

Reshaping ‘Sacrifice’ in the Encyclopédie 

Friday, May 27, 2016; 2 - 4 pm

This workshop will focus on the treatment of the notion of sacrifice in Diderot’s Encyclopédie. Two articles in particular, "Sacrifice" and "Dévouement", will allow us to analyze the strategies put at work by the Encyclopedists to question, dismiss, reshape and secularize the religious notion of sacrifice. If time allows, we might want to evoke Rousseau’s contrasting views and personal claim on sacrifice.

To attend the workshop, please register: pcd@fu-berlin.de.