CMRS Roundtable: “From Dualisms to Convergences”
Wednesday, January 16, 2008

Professor Ricardo Quinones' (Claremont McKenna) recently-published Dualisms: The Agons of the Modern World centered on differences, deeply-rooted, contentious and recurrent, and on enmities that were unending, not even abbreviated by death itself. In that book, aroused by the strange neglect of Erasmus and Voltaire, he promised a second study, now completed, that would focus on similarities, on the convergences across the centuries that bring two such preeminent intellectuals together in their fates and fashions. At this Roundtable, Prof. Quinones will read some snippets from Dualisms and answer questions before outlining the major convergences that make Erasmus and Voltaire, if not brothers under the skin, at least kindred spirits, who may be joined together in what has been heralded as the "second Reformation."