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Tang Chun-I Visiting Professorship Public Lecture: Voltaire and Rousseau on Optimism

Joining the Face-to-Face Talks (Please register by 6 September 2023): https://cloud.itsc.cuhk.edu.hk/webform/view.php?id=13672431

Joining the Talks Online (No registration is needed):
Zoom Meeting ID: 962 7437 7535
Link: https://cuhk.zoom.us/j/96274377535?pwd=cWI0WkhXa3p6Z1RIL3hBcVY5YWtFZz09

For inquiries, please email to philosophy@cuhk.edu.hk

Abstract:

Voltaire’s poem on the Lisbon earthquake of 1755 marks the beginning of Voltaire’s attacks on optimism, the idea that everything is well, or that this is the best possible world, ideas that Voltaire and most of his contemporaries associated with Leibniz and Pope. In a short letter of 1756 Rousseau rejected Voltaire’s rejection of optimism and in fact he argued for a kind of optimism. In the lecture I shall discuss Voltaire’s and Rousseau’s positions.

Delivered in English
All are welcome

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