Based on the 1758 edition, this translation strives for fidelity and retains Montesquieu's paragraphing. George R. Healy's Introduction discusses The Persian Letters as a kind of overture to the Enlightenment, a work of remarkable diversity designed more to explore a problem of great urgency for eighteenth century thought than to resolve it: that of discovering universals, or at least the pragmatic constants, amid the diversity of human culture and society, and of confronting the proposition that there are no values in human relationships except those imposed by force or agreed upon in self-interested conventions.
- ISBN13 9780872204911
- Publish Date 15 September 1999 (first published 1 December 1964)
- Publish Status Active
- Publish Country US
- Imprint Hackett Publishing Co, Inc
- Format Hardcover (Library Binding)
- Pages 320
- Language English