Blindness and Enlightenment: An Essay: With a new translation of Diderot’s ‘Letter on the Blind’ and La Mothe Le Vayer’s ‘Of a Man Born Blind’

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<span style=”font-style: italic;”>Blindness and Enlightenment </span>presents a reading and a new translation of Diderot’s <span style=”font-style: italic;”>Letter on the Blind</span>. Diderot was the editor of the <span style=”font-style: italic;”>Encyclopédie</span>, that Trojan horse of Enlightenment ideas, as well as a novelist, playwright, art critic and philosopher. His <span style=”font-style: italic;”>Letter on the Blind</span> of 1749 is essential reading for anyone interested in Enlightenment philosophy or eighteenth-century literature because it contradicts a central assumption of Western literature and philosophy, and of the Enlightenment in particular, namely that moral and philosophical insight is dependent on seeing. Kate Tunstall’s essay guides the reader through the <span style=”font-style: italic;”>Letter</span>, its anecdotes, ideas and its conversational mode of presenting them, and it situates the <span style=”font-style: italic;”>Letter </span>in relation both to the <span style=”font-style: italic;”>Encyclopedie </span>and to a rich tradition of writing about and, most importantly, talking and listening to the blind.

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