The Devil Wins: A History of Lying from the Garden of Eden to the Enlightenment

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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

Reviews

"[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

Author Bio

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.