From Perfectibility to Perversion

From Perfectibility to Perversion: Meliorism in Eighteenth-Century France traces the evolution of human perfectibility discourse during the second half of the eighteenth century and the early post-Revolutionary era in France. Examining key articulations of Enlightenment meliorism as it shifts between open-ended models of human perfectibility and «fixist» conceptions of the human body, this book will appeal to a range of specialists because it draws on a variety of primary sources, from Buffon and Rousseau to important medical theorists of the pre- and post-Revolutionary period, and juxtaposes seemingly disparate domains of inquiry in informative and provocative fashion.

The Author: Michael E. Winston is Assistant Professor of French at the University of Oklahoma. He received his Ph.D. from Emory University with a dissertation on the representation of sexuality in French Enlightenment medicine, literature, and philosophy. His research focuses on the intersections between medicine, literature, and philosophy in Enlightenment France.