Imperfect Garden: The Legacy of Humanism

by Tzvetan Todorov

Available in English for the first time, Imperfect Garden is both an approachable intellectual history and a bracing treatise on how we should understand and experience our lives. In it, one of France's most prominent intellectuals explores the foundations, limits, and possibilities of humanist thinking. Through his critical but sympathetic excavation of humanism, Tzvetan Todorov seeks an answer to modernity's fundamental how to maintain our hard-won liberty without paying too dearly in social ties, common values, and a coherent and responsible sense of self.


Todorov reads afresh the works of major humanists--primarily Montaigne, Rousseau, and Constant, but also Descartes, Montesquieu, and Toqueville. Each chapter considers humanism's approach to one major theme of human liberty, social life, love, self, morality, and expression. Discussing humanism in dialogue with other systems, Todorov finds a response to the predicament of modernity that is far more instructive than any offered by conservatism, scientific determinism, existential individualism, or humanism's other contemporary competitors. Humanism suggests that we are members of an intelligent and sociable species who can act according to our will while connecting the well-being of other members with our own. It is through this understanding of free will, Todorov argues, that we can use humanism to rescue universality and reconcile human liberty with solidarity and personal integrity.


Placing the history of ideas at the service of a quest for moral and political wisdom, Todorov's compelling and no doubt controversial rethinking of humanist ideas testifies to the enduring capacity of those ideas to meditate on--and, if we are fortunate, cultivate--the imperfect garden in which we live.

Genres: Philosophy, Nonfiction, History

264 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1998

About the author

In Bulgarian Цветан Тодоров. Todorov was a Franco-Bulgarian historian, philosopher and literary theoretician. Among his most influential works is his theory on the fantastic, the uncanny and marvellous.

Reviews

[Meg]

Read this for my theological ethics class - it's in the "to reread" list because I think it really merits going back through before I give it a rating.
However, I just want to say that this is may be the most beautiful cover out of all those on the books I own. Shelling out the cash for the hardcover was worth it just to be able to stare at the hardcover all the time.

[Mirela · Rating 3 out of 5]

Man… this was hard to read… yet good at the same time. Got lots of quotes out of it. I recommend reading a couple of Rousseau, Montaigne and Montesquieu

I take from this book that we tend to change when we need to but in a selfish way… there is no helping others and evolution unless it helps us first.That is our human nature

[Ramona Fisher · Rating 5 out of 5]

What a great but challenging read! Before reading this book, it was helpful to have read Rousseau, Descartes Tocqueville, and Montaigne. I have not read Constant, who was the most compelling. Using the concept of the wager, similar to Pascal's wager, made the book's format easy to follow.

[Hristiana Demireva · Rating 5 out of 5]

Прекрасна книга! Научна, конкретна, критична, стегната, същевременно топла и нежна. Идеална и за "нефилософи", интересуващи се от материята.

[Pau Romeu Miguel · Rating 3 out of 5]

Libro que expone la cosmovisión humanista desde sus virtudes y límites. Aún así, hay sombras que no están del todo desarrolladas en el libro.

[Trina]

Tzvetan Todorov's 1988 work appeared in lecture slides of 'Bilingualism and Emotion: Different Language, Different Selves', conducted 02/11/2011.