About the Book
Is it ever acceptable to lie? This question plays a surprisingly important role in the story of Europe's transition from medieval to modern society. According to many historians, Europe became modern when Europeans began to lie--that is, when they began to argue that it is sometimes acceptable to lie. This popular account offers a clear trajectory of historical progression from a medieval world of faith, in which every lie is sinful, to a more worldly early modern society in which lying becomes a permissible strategy for self-defense and self-advancement. Unfortunately, this story is wrong. For medieval and early modern Christians, the problem of the lie was the problem of human existence itself. To ask "Is it ever acceptable to lie?" was to ask how we, as sinners, should live in a fallen world. As it turns out, the answer to that question depended on who did the asking. The Devil Wins uncovers the complicated history of lying from the early days of the Catholic Church to the Enlightenment, revealing the diversity of attitudes about lying by considering the question from the perspectives of five representative voices--the Devil, God, theologians, courtiers, and women.Examining works by Augustine, Bonaventure, Martin Luther, Madeleine de Scudery, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and a host of others, Dallas G. Denery II shows how the lie, long thought to be the source of worldly corruption, eventually became the very basis of social cohesion and peace.
Table of Contents:
Acknowledgments 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 Rene 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 Scudery, the Salon, and the Pleasant Lie 237 Conclusion: The Lie Becomes Modern 247 Notes 257 Bibliography 303 Index 327
About the Author :
Dallas G. Denery II is associate professor of history at Bowdoin College. He is the author of Seeing and Being Seen in the Later Medieval World: Optics, Theology, and Religious Life and the coeditor of Uncertain Knowledge: Scepticism, Relativism, and Doubt in the Middle Ages.
Review :
"[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 "The Devil Wins is a learned and accessible introduction to a fascinating subject."--Biancamaria Fontana, Times 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 "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 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 "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 "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 Review "[A] fascinating and convincing argument."--Michaela Valente, Journal of Early Modern Studies
