The Devil Wins (ebook)

Argumento de The Devil Wins (ebook)

"[A] fascinating and convincing argument."--Michaela Valente, Journal of Early Modern Studies

"In this exquisitely written book, Denery draws on centuries of rumination on the moral issues surrounding lying to address the question of how we should live in a fallen world. The serpent in the Garden of Eden led humankind astray with lies. The Devil is the father of lies. Premodern sources agonized constantly over the act of lying. Denery not only superbly narrates the long history of this obsession, but also locates the conditions that reveal an Enlightenment shift toward a not entirely comfortable modernity."--William Chester Jordan, Princeton University

"Can God lie? Are women ‘born liars’? These are just two of the questions Denery asks--and answers--in his wide-ranging, erudite study. Written in an engaging and accessible style, The Devil Wins sheds a new and fascinating light on a mendacious world stretching from the Book of Genesis to the dawn of the Enlightenment."--Renate Blumenfeld-Kosinski, author of Poets, Saints, and Visionaries of the Great Schism, 1378–1417

"This is a wonderful and beautifully written book. The fruit of extensive research, The Devil Wins traces the history of lying and deception through the medieval and early modern periods. Denery offers compelling and immensely significant arguments."--Ian P. Wei, author of Intellectual Culture in Medieval Paris

"This is a marvelous book. Denery uses a fundamental question--when, if ever, is it acceptable to lie?--to explore a vast intellectual and historical terrain. In doing so, he gives us one of the most subtle and penetrating briefs I have read for the importance of medieval thought for modern efforts to understand ethics, politics, and conscience. I read this book with enormous delight."--Jonathan Sheehan, author of The Enlightenment Bible

"Denery . . . has written an impressively clear account of a difficult group of subjects, cleaving mostly to familiar figures but taking the time to get to know them properly."--Anthony Ossa-Richardson, Intellectual History Review

"The Devil Wins is an enjoyable and well-written book, a serious contribution to what might constitute a history of the complicated elements of culture and society that enable people to tell lies."--Andrew Hadfield, Textual Practice

"The Devil Wins sets forth lucidly the arguments of texts that grapple with how human beings should live in a world full of deception. . . . This important book’s reach and ambition is amply vindicated in this conclusion in which the old alternatives--spanning Christian antiquity, the Middle Ages, the Renaissance, and the early eighteenth century--of rejecting or accepting a mendacious world yield to a third way: being true to one’s sentiments, even when one lies, as a natural solution to a natural problem."--Edwin D. Craun, The Medieval Review

"The Devil Wins is a learned and accessible introduction to a fascinating subject."--Biancamaria Fontana, Times Higher Education

"[The Devil Wins is] an informative, sophisticated, and thought-provoking account of the efforts of theologians and philosophers from the early Christian era to the Enlightenment to define lies and understand their ethical, social, and political implications."--Glenn Altschuler, Psychology Today

"Denery explores analyses of an enormous variety of deceptions, and does so with an erudition that is never pedantic or monotonous. He is an entertaining writer, with a healthy skepticism about the dogmatic condemnation of lying as always, or even mostly, morally blameworthy. . . . I think Nietzsche would have loved this book."--Clancy Martin, Chronicle of Higher Education

"What emerges through all five chapters is a fascinating trajectory that takes us from a time when lies were considered by some theologians to be absolutely and categorically sinful, to an age when it was widely accepted that modern society depended on them . . . well researched, fluidly written, and persuasively argued."--Hans Rollman, PopMatters

"Asking whether it is ever acceptable to lie, The Devil Wins offers the reader a fascinating historical account of apodictic as well as iconoclastic answers."--Lewis Fried, Key Reporter

"A splendid book. . . . The best among the many virtues of the book is its successful combination of history and philosophy."--Jeffrey Burton Russell, Catholic Historical Review0Acknowledgments ix
Introduction: Is It Ever Acceptable to Lie? 1
Part One: Theologians Ask the Question
Chapter One. The Devil 21
Six Days and Two Sentences Later 21
The Devil and the Lie 22
Making Sense of Genesis 1, 2, and 3 28
The Devil's Lie from Late Antiquity to the Middle Ages 35
The Devil's Lie from the Middle Ages to the Reformation 47
The Prince of This World 52
From Satan's Stratagems to Human Nature 55
Chapter Two. God 62
Can God Lie? 62
On Lions, Fishhooks, and Mousetraps 67
Divine Deception and the Sacrament of Truth 77
Luther, Calvin, and the Hidden God 88
René Descartes, Pierre Bayle, and the End of Divine Deception 94
Chapter Three. Human Beings 105
Every Lie Is a Sin 105
Every Sin Is a Lie 110
Biblical Liars 116
Augustine among the Scholastics 119
Institutional Transformations 131
Equivocation, Mental Reservation, and Amphibology 135
From Pascal to Augustine and Beyond 145
Part Two: Courtiers and Women Ask the Question
Chapter Four. Courtiers 153
Flatterers, Wheedlers, and Gossipmongers 153
Early Modern Uncertainty and Deception 158
Uncertainty and Skepticism in the Medieval Court 163
Entangled in Leviathan's Loins 169
Christine de Pizan and Just Hypocrisy 175
From Lies to Civility 181
Bernard Mandeville and the World Lies Built 190
Chapter Five. Women 199
Lessons about Lies 199
All about Eve, All about Women 205
The Biology of Feminine Deceit 211
Christine de Pizan, Misogyny, and Self-Knowledge 216
All Men Are Liars 226
Madeleine de Scudéry, the Salon, and the Pleasant Lie 237
Conclusion: The Lie Becomes Modern 247
Notes 257
Bibliography 303
Index 327