Sepp Gumbrecht on Diderot, Voltaire, and Rousseau

Hans Ulrich ("Sepp") Gumbrecht is an internationally renowned scholar who is the Albert Guérard Professor of Literature at Stanford University.

In his scholarship, he focuses on the histories of the national literatures in Romance language (especially French, Spanish, and Brazilian), but also on German literature while, at the same time teaching and writing on the Western philosophical tradition with an emphasis on French and German nineteenth- and twentieth-century texts. 

Over the past forty years, he has published more than two thousand texts, including books, translated into more than twenty languages. 

In Europe and in South America, Gumbrecht has a presence as a public intellectual; whereas, in the academic world, he has been acknowledged by eight honorary doctorates in Canada, Denmark, Germany, Hungary, Portugal, and Russia. 

He has also held a large number of visiting professorships, at the Collège de France, the University of Lisbon, the University of Manchester, and the Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro, among others.

A book project tentatively entitled “Prose of the World: Diderot, Goya, Lichtenberg, and Mozart and an End of Enlightenment” is in preparation, for publication in 2016.