The Marquis dArgens

The Marquis d’Argens: A Philosophical Life is an enthusiastically argued and much-needed contribution to eighteenth-century studies. With this biography, Gasper in effect creates a fresh beginning for scholarship on d’Argens’s thought and work. Beyond this important consideration, and because d’Argens’ talents, interests, and experiences ranged broadly, the book casts light on several aspects of Enlightenment intellectualism and culture, including the European idea of the East, art criticism, the reception of philosophers from Descartes to the Pre-Socratics, and the world of theatre and opera. D’Argens’s story also offers insight into figures such as Voltaire, the Berlin Academicians, and Frederick II, a practical joker, a scholar, and, in the bleakest moments of the Seven Years War, a man very close to committing suicide. And although he died before the moment of the American and French Revolutions, d’Argens may indeed, as Gasper claims, be 'a missing link between the Enlightenment and the Romantic generation' in part because 'while others talked of revolution, he practiced it'. For these reasons, and more, Gasper’s book belongs in the hands of readers interested in Continental philosophy and literature of the Long Eighteenth Century.