SummaryIn this article I react to dismissive remarks made about my Jacob Vernet, Geneva and the philosophes (1994) in a recent book by David Sorkin, The Religious Enlightenment (2008). Vernet, a distinguished Genevan pastor and theologian, who fell foul of d'Alembert, Voltaire and Rousseau, is one of six figures studied by Sorkin, who claims that the religious dimension of the Enlightenment has been much underestimated and that the philosophes were considerably less significant than has usually been (...) thought. Reacting to the accusation that my treatment of Vernet's theology was superficial and unreliable, I reconsider the latter's major theological works (including his Traité de la vérité de la religion chrétienne, Instruction chrétienne, and Pièces fugitives sur l'eucharistie) in an attempt to validate my previous interpretation, and illustrate that Vernet refused to acknowledge ideas that he had actually published. The second part of the article draws more general conclusions, pointing out spectacular errors in Sorkin's depiction of eighteenth-century Geneva and arguing that he has a clear agenda, which, in my opinion, is wrong-headed, easy to refute and—above all—often based on gratuitous accusations and statements lacking any evidence. (shrink)

Moses Mendelssohn (1729-1786) was the premier Jewish thinker of his day and one of the best-known figures of the German Enlightenment, earning the sobriquet 'the Socrates of Berlin'. He was thoroughly involved in the central issue of Enlightenment religious thinking: the inevitable conflict between reason and revelation in an age contending with individual rights and religious toleration. He did not aspire to a comprehensive philosophy of Judaism, since he thought human reason was limited, but he did (...) see Judaism as compatible with toleration and rights. David Sorkin offers a close study of Mendelssohn's complete writings, treating the German, and the often-neglected Hebrew writings, as a single corpus and arguing that Mendelssohn's two spheres of endeavour were entirely consistent. (shrink)

This article situates the work of East India Company servant Alexander Dow (1735–1779), principally his writings on the history and future state of India, in contemporary debates about empire, religion and enlightened government. To do so it offers a sustained analysis of his 1772 essay ‘A Dissertation Concerning the Origin and Nature of Despotism in Hindostan’, as well as his proposals for the restoration of Bengal, both of which played an influential part in shaping the preoccupations with Mughal history that (...) dominated the contemporary crisis in the Company’s legitimacy. By linking these texts to his earlier work on ‘Hindoo’ religion, it will argue that Dow’s analysis of the relationship between certain religious cultures and their civic qualities was rooted in a deist perspective. It doing so it restores the enlightenment components of Dow’s thought, and their impact on the ideology of empire, in a crucial period of British expansion in India. (shrink)

Benjamin Constant's On Religion was a major effort to include religion within liberal political thought, insisting on the possibility of religious progress and perfectibility. It was also a major critique of Catholicism and of clericalism in any form. And it was one of the most wide-ranging comparative studies of religion since it purported to cover all religions worldwide before Christianity. Constant worked on it for most of his adult life, more than 40 years. This article traces the rise of (...) the language of progress and perfectibility in Constant's milieu, finding roots in Rousseau, Scottish thinkers, Germans and Swiss such as Madame de Staël, Condorcet, William Godwin, and others. He also sprinkled some of his ideas about progress and perfectibility in his wide-ranging political writings. But it was in On Religion that he went into the idea of progress and perfectibility in depth, finding both a universal human need for religion and religious progress in every religion and over time. It may be true that he underestimated the possibility of regress and failure in human development, but nevertheless this work stands as a monument to liberal confidence in a better future. (shrink)

“Secular Buddhism and the Religious Dimension of Enlightenment” follows Stephen Batchelor’s impressive effort to articulate what Buddhist awakening might mean in the current secular culture. Assessing the issues that have prompted the creation of a new nonsectarian “secular Buddhism,” this chapter raises questions about whether this form of secularity nevertheless continues to carry religious meaning as its most fundamental motivation. Reflecting on the possibility of nontheistic forms of religious practice and experience, it links insights in contemporary (...) Western religious thought to the a-theism that runs throughout the Buddhist tradition in order to further inquiry into the qualities and character that Buddhist enlightenment might take under contemporary, secularized conditions. The chapter aspires to cultivate insight into the inevitable relationship between religiosity and any quest for enlightenment and aims to stimulate reflection on what religion might be in our time. (shrink)

Introduction: Religious experience in modernity : faith itself as the "unknown God" -- Fides qua creditur : the Enlightenment mind and the theology of the heart -- Within the bounds of reason alone : the subjective justification of religious belief in the thought of Immanuel Kant -- Schleiermacher's "higher order Pietism" : subjectivity and Protestant liberal thought -- Søren Kierkegaard and the paradox of faith : subjectivity in Christian existentialism -- Subjectivity and religious belief in Anglo-American (...) revivalism : Jonathan Edwards and John Wesley -- Subjectivity and religious belief in Anglo-American revivalism : George Whitefield and Charles G. Finney. (shrink)

This introduction elaborates how the relationship between religion and light can and should be addressed as a key theme for the critical study of religion. It synthesizes the principal arguments of the six articles collected in this special journal issue and locates them in a broader theoretical framework, focussing especially on the politics of knowledge production.

Matytsin, Darrin M. McMahon, James Schmidt, Céline Spector, Jo Van Cauter.

Besides geographical boundlessness, the claim to totality that characterizes universal histories comprises a temporal horizon, which reaches from the Creation to the end of the world predestined to Christians. The article examines the role of religious approaches on the one hand and secular points of view on the other in the transformation of eschatology into the idea of an open future shapeable by humans. The analysis focusses first on works by Johann Gottfried Herder (1744–1803). While the above-mentioned transformation is (...) usually interpreted as a process of secularization, this article reveals a reliance on religious hopes for the afterlife, also and especially where progressistic expectations for the development of the individual as well as of humanity were articulated. A second step leads back into the early eighteenth century. A frontispiece of 1717 already expressed the idea of an “open future” conceived secularly as a “space of time” to be shaped by human beings according to their own interests and guided by the experiences of the past. The article closes with a discussion of the reasons for the return of religious ways of thinking in the late Enlightenment, which becomes particularly apparent in universal- historical expectations of the future. (shrink)

In 1783, as part of an exchange in the Berliner Monatsschrift, Johann Friedrich Zöllner’s “famous request for an answer to the question ‘What is Enlightenment?’ was prompted by his sense that the m...

This history of Russian thought was first published in Polish in 1973 and subsequently appeared 2005 in a revised and expanded publication. The current volume begins with Enlightenment thought and Westernization in Russia in the 17<SUP>th century and moves to the religious-philosophical renaissance of first decade of the 20<SUP>th century. This book provides readers with an exhaustive account of relationships between various Russian thinkers with an examination of how those thinkers relate to a number of figures and trends (...) in Western philosophy and in the broader history of ideas. (shrink)

The ArgumentMedicine is only a cultural system of its own. It also performs specific roles in the broader culture of society at large. This article examines the role of medical arguments in the critique of“enthusiasm” on the eve of the Enlightenment. The enthusiasts, who claimed to prophesy and to have direct divine inspiration, were increasingly see in the seventeenth century as melancholics. With the decline of humoral medicine, however, the account of melancholic disturbances – including enthusiasm – that was (...) offered tended to be chemical, mechanistic, and clearly corpuscular. Protestant ministers, in adopting such an account of enthusiasm, also adopted a strict distinction between the realm of the mind (to which true prophecy belonged) and that of the body (in which they located the phenomena of enthusiasm). Such a distinctions served in turn to demarcate more specifically the limits between the clerical and medical professions. Yet in relegating the treatment of enthusiasts to the physicians, rather than seeing the enthusiasts as heretics, the ministers stood in danger of relying too much on a secular profession and secular arguments, thus paving the way to a more general secularization of the ideological basis of the social order. (shrink)

Tolerance according to John Locke -- Voltaire and modern tolerance -- Tolerance in America -- Tolerance in the Ottoman Empire -- Tolerance in Venice -- On blasphemy -- Multicultural tolerance -- Of veils and unveiling -- New restrictions, new forms of tolerance -- Should we tolerate the enemies of tolerance? -- Tolerance in the age of terrorism.

It has already been noted that Jewish anti-Christian arguments, circulating clandestinely, were a notable inspiration of radical Enlightenment critiques of Christianity. Judaism itself, however, was simultaneously also a prime target of irreligious polemic, most prominently in the work of Voltaire. This paper explores the tension between these two strands of critique, through an examination of the highly ambiguous and unstable status of Judaism in the French clandestine philosophical literature of the early eighteenth century, which were an important source for (...) Voltaire. These texts highlight the intricate dynamics of fascination and hostility that characterized early Enlightenment attitudes towards Jewish difference. (shrink)

In the last half century, the image of the Enlightenment underwent many changes and no longer is monolithic, as was the case with Paul Hazard, Peter Gay, and Ernst Cassirer. It is usual nowadays to talk about national Enlightenments, moderate and radical Enlightenment, religious Enlightenments, counter-Enlightenment, and so on. In this process of widening the notion of Enlightenment, which the editors depict as a real "explosion," there is also room for a skeptical Enlightenment, which (...) not so long ago was limited to a few, supposedly fringe figures: Bayle, Hume, and Rousseau. The ubiquitous "specter" of skepticism that Burson and Matytsin see as present all along the eighteenth century comprises also the reactions... (shrink)

'An introduction to Hegel's lectures on the philosophy of religion' provides an account of the criticism of religion by key Enlightenment thinkers such as Voltaire, Lessing, Hume, and Kant. This is followed by an analysis of how the Romantic thinkers, such as Rousseau, Jacobi, and Schleiermacher, responded to these challenges. For Hegel, the views of these thinkers from both the Enlightenment and Romanticism tended to empty religion of its content. The goal that he sets for his own philosophy (...) of religion is to restore this lost content. (shrink)

This study examines the leading early nineteenth-century Scottish moral philosopher Dugald Stewart’s discussion of the origin and development of religion. Stewart developed his account in his final work, The Philosophy of the Active and Moral Powers of Man (1828), in an effort to show that the fact that polytheism was the first religion of humankind does not undermine the truth of monotheism. He wrote in response to similar discussions presented in David Hume’s “Natural History of Religion” (1757), which argued for (...) the primacy of polytheism, and Stewart’s old moral philosophy tutor Adam Ferguson’s Principles of Moral and Political Science (1792), which argued for the primacy of monotheism. Stewart accepted the conclusions of the Scots’ enlightened study of religion, which argued for truth of Hume’s account, but aimed to reassert many of the natural theological arguments about the naturalness of religion that the “Natural History” had challenged. Stewart’s discussion acts as a useful way by which we can assess the achievement of the literati’s study of religion. (shrink)

“Radical Enlightenment” and “moderate Enlightenment” are general categories which, it has become evident in recent decades, are unavoidable and essential for any valid discussion of the Enlightenment broadly conceived (1650-1850) and of the revolutionary era (1775-1848). Any discussion of the Enlightenment or revolutions that does not revolve around these general categories, first introduced in Germany in the 1920s and taken up in the United States since the 1970s, cannot have any validity or depth either historically or (...) philosophically. “Radical Enlightenment” was neither peripheral to the Enlightenment as a whole, nor dominant, but rather the “other side of the coin” an inherent and absolute opposite, always present and always basic to the Enlightenment as a whole. Several different constructions of “Radical Enlightenment” have been proposed by the main innovators on the topic – Leo Strauss, Henry May, Günter Mühlpfordt, Margaret Jacob, Gianni Paganini, Martin Mulsow, and Jonathan Israel – but, it is argued here, the most essential element in the definition is the coupling, or linkage, of philosophical rejection of religious authority (and secularism - the elimination of theology from law, institutions, education and public affairs) with theoretical advocacy of democracy and basic human rights. (shrink)

It is usually acknowledged that the core contribution of the Enlightenment is primarily twofold: the first being the introduction of reason and science as judgmental principles, and the second being the belief in the future progress of humankind as a shared destiny for humanity. This ‘modern’ reason—an exclusively human prerogative among creatures—could be applied to create a better society from the political, civil, educational, scientific, and religious points of view. What is usually less known is that for most (...) of the Enlightenment thinkers, this philosophical and cultural step was the prerogative of European or Western-educated thinkers, which implied a gradual exclusion of extra-European civilizations from human progress as a natural phenomenon. Thus, with the exception of a few French libertines, the creation of a better society was due to reason and critical thinking absent in other civilizations, who could, at most, inherit this ‘rational power’ from Western education. This exclusion, which is usually attributed to the violence of the colonialist period, is already implied in the arguments of several Enlightenment thinkers. Our investigation will follow three steps: an exposition of the three Western historical paradigms in which Eastern civilizations were inserted between the 17th and 18th century; a comparison between the attitude toward China and Buddhism of two very distant philosophers of the Enlightenment—i.e. Pierre Bayle (1647–1706) and Johann Jacob Brucker (1696–1770)—and a brief reflection on the Enlightenment from an ‘external/exotic’ point of view that will suggest the necessity of a ‘new skeptical Enlightenment’ for inducing actual intercultural dialogue. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:An Introduction to Hegel’s Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion: The Issue of Religious Content in the Enlightenment and Romanticism by Jon StewartMichael RohlfAn Introduction to Hegel’s Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion: The Issue of Religious Content in the Enlightenment and Romanticism. By Jon Stewart. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2022. Pp. xi + 304. $100.00 (hardcover). ISBN: 978-0-19-284293-0.The interpretation of Hegel’s philosophy of (...) religion is notoriously controversial for several reasons. One such reason, indicated by Jon Stewart at the outset of his new introduction to the subject, is that while Hegel’s views on religion are intricately interwoven with the rest of his philosophical system, the political climate in Prussia at the time was such that “Hegel was guarded with respect to issues of religion and took some care to dissemble his true views” (2). A second reason is that although the texts Hegel published during his lifetime contain scattered discussions of religion, his only systematic treatment of religion occurs in his Berlin Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion (LPR), which were published after his death in several editions, each of which drew upon different selections from student lecture notes and [End Page 688] Hegel’s own notes (he lectured on the philosophy of religion or proofs of God’s existence in five different semesters between 1821 and 1831), and each of which has been criticized for presenting only a partial picture of Hegel’s views on the subject. Stewart explains that the first edition of these lectures in particular, published in 1832 as part of the first complete edition of Hegel’s works, “was in many ways the key text that caused the split among... the schools of right and left Hegelianism” (15). Critics complained that this edition made Hegel look more orthodox than he actually was (16), but so-called right Hegelians defended Hegel’s philosophy as in fact consistent with orthodox Christian doctrines, while left Hegelians argued that Hegel’s philosophy “undermined or demystified Christianity” (202).Stewart’s book is an accessible and admirably neutral introduction to the philosophical context, content, and reception of Hegel’s LPR. Its scope and Stewart’s pellucid prose make it an excellent overview for readers coming to this material for the first time, while its detailed discussions of the publication history and reception of Hegel’s LPR and its thorough references make the book a valuable resource for more advanced students and scholars as well. Stewart’s approach is to frame Hegel’s philosophy of religion as a response to criticisms of religion in the Enlightenment and to Romanticism in Hegel’s own day. Accordingly, the book’s first two chapters provide context by discussing Enlightenment debates about religion in Voltaire, Reimarus, Lessing, Hume, and Kant, along with Hegel’s critical response to the Enlightenment. Chapter 3 then presents Rousseau as a forerunner, and Jacobi and Schleiermacher as representatives, of the Romantic approach to religion in Hegel’s own day. After discussing Hegel’s general method in LPR and the relation between philosophy and religion in chapter 4, Stewart turns to Hegel’s philosophical accounts of pre-Christian religions in chapter 5, of Christianity in chapter 6, and of Islam in chapter 7. Since Hegel’s account in LPR ends before the rise of Islam, Stewart draws primarily on Hegel’s Lectures on the Philosophy of History in chapter 7. Chapter 8 is, in this reviewer’s opinion, the most valuable part of the book, where Stewart summarizes and weighs in on debates in the 1830s and 1840s about the consistency or inconsistency of Hegel’s views with Christian doctrines of immortality, the personhood of God, and the divinity of Christ. The book then closes with a final chapter about the relevance of Hegel’s philosophy of religion today.Stewart indicates two distinctive features of his interpretation in the book’s introduction, where he references the tendency of scholars to assume that Hegel “kept secret his true views about religion” (13). On Stewart’s reading, there are really two related secrets concealed within Hegel’s texts about religion. First, while Hegel is quite explicit that “his... (shrink)

Online supplement, "Mulsow: Additions to Notes drawn from the 2002 edition of Moderne aus dem Untergrund" full versions of nearly 300 notes that were truncated in the print edition. Hosted on H. C. Erik Midelfort's website. Martin Mulsow's seismic reinterpretation of the origins of the Enlightenment in Germany won awards and renown in its original German edition, and now H. C. Erik Midelfort's translation makes this sensational book available to English-speaking readers. In Enlightenment Underground, Mulsow shows that even (...) in the late seventeenth century some thinkers in Germany ventured to express extremely dangerous ideas, but did so as part of a secret underground. Scouring manuscript collections across northern Europe, Mulsow studied the writings of countless hitherto unknown radical jurists, theologians, historians, and dissident students who pushed for the secularization of legal, political, social, and religious knowledge. Often their works circulated in manuscript, anonymously, or as clandestinely published books. Working as a philosophical microhistorian, Mulsow has discovered the identities of several covert radicals and linked them to circles of young German scholars, many of whom were connected with the vibrant radical cultures of the Netherlands, England, and Denmark. The author reveals how radical ideas and contributions to intellectual doubt came from Socinians and Jews, church historians and biblical scholars, political theorists, and unemployed university students. He shows that misreadings of humorous or ironic works sometimes gave rise to unintended skeptical thoughts or corrosively political interpretations of Christianity. This landmark book overturns stereotypical views of the early Enlightenment in Germany as cautious, conservative, and moderate, and replaces them with a new portrait that reveals a movement far more radical, unintended, and puzzling than previously suspected. (shrink)

Review of Stewart, J. (2022). An Introduction to Hegel's Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion: The Issue of Religious Content in the Enlightenment and Romanticism. Oxford: Oxford UP.

The Benedictine Dom Léger-Marie Deschamps and the philosophical Abbé Claude Yvon may indeed be minor eighteenth-century figures, and they both may be considered to have emerged from the Catholic side of something Helena Rosenblatt has dubbed the Christian Enlightenment, but neither of these figures is neatly “conservative” (as Mark Curran defines it), nor are they fully “radical” (in the sense of having contributed to the Radical Enlightenment). Rather, Deschamps and Yvon are among a number of eighteenth-century figures who (...) do not fit neatly into the expected parameters of Catholic, Christian, Religious or Radical Enlightenment. This article argues that the entanglement of both heterodoxy and orthodoxy, and of sociopolitical progressivism and conservatism, is characteristic of Yvon’s and Deschamps’s particular engagement with what Vincenzo Ferrone describes as the cultural revolution of the eighteenth century. This study of these under-examined Catholic scholars further suggests that conventional and tidy scholarly narratives of the history of Enlightenment should be further problematized. (shrink)

The meaning of enlightenment -- Enlightenment in a European setting -- Religious enlightenment and enlightenment in Russia -- Enlightenment in Russian Orthodoxy -- Christian enlightenment and enlightenment learning -- Spiritual and sensual wisdom -- Enlightenment and the oneness of God's creation -- Divine providence and human history -- The spiritual feat of everyday life: celebration of tsarevich Dimitrii -- Absolute monarchy as Christian rulership -- Enlightenment and historical consciousness -- Free (...) will and the human person -- Free will as moral choice -- Free will and religious toleration -- From toleration to equality -- Toward a definition of the Russian enlightenment -- From state building to government by moral means -- Unity and reconciliation in the Russian enlightenment -- Limits to (the) enlightenment in Russia. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:482 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY disorder was reLigious men's tendency to find in the Scriptures and their consciences justifications for rebelling against their sovereign. The last half of Leviathan is designed to refute these claims in detail, and this refutation is not merely tacked onto the first parts but is a logical extension of them. The argument for escaping the state of nature is that only through obedience to (...) a common power can man escape the likelihood of an early death. Once that common power is established, and so long as it can carry out its protective function, obedience to it is obligatory. When a man enters civil society, the only right he retains is to defend himself against physical death, and consequently, the only time he is entitled to disobey the sovereign is when the sovereign directly threatens him. Thus excuses for rebellion are reduced to an absolute minimum. In McNeiily's formalization however, the concept of a man's death must be replaced by the formal concept of the frustration of all one's desires. And so "whatevvr [a man] regards as the complete frustration of all his desires... he will be entitled to resist, even if such resistance puts him at war with others, including lawful authority" (p. 193). Now the incredible range of things men have believed essential to avoiding the frustration of all their desires is amply testified to in the history of religious warfare. And clearly, under this formalized interpretation, men would be entitled to rebel over the form of baptism, church government, ministerial costume, prayer, or anything else if they are convinced it is essential to their salvation. It takes little knowledge of history to see that Hobbes's espousing of a theory with such consequences has a low degree of probability indeed. Hobbes complains in Leviathan of Scriptural exegetes who "by casting atoms of Scripture, as dust before men's eyes, make everything more obscure than it is." Rather, he claims, it is "not bare words, but the scope of the writer, that giveth the true light by which any writing is to be interpreted; and they that insist upon single texts, without considering the main design, can derive nothing from them clearly'" (E. W., III, 602). This last would be too harsh to apply to McNeiity's work generally, for his "atoms" are for the most part of considerable worth in themselves. But with regard to our understanding of Hobbes's Leviathan he raises a lot of dust. PAUL J. JOHNSON CalifornM State College, San Bernardino The Enlightenment: An Interpretation. By Peter Gay. VoL I, The Rise ol Modern Paganism. (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1966. Pp. xviii+SSS+xv); VoL II, The Science ot Freedom. (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1969. Pp. xx+70S+xviii) Le grand int~rSt port~ aux ~tudcs du xvm* si~cle au cours des deux derni~res d6cades et la remise en question des principes critiques encore en vigueur it y a une dizaine d'ann~,s ont fray~ la voie h de nouveaux efforts de synth~se dent la derni~re en date, et non la moins int~ressante, est celle de Peter Gay. Ses deux substantiels volumes sent destines ~ servir de guides ~ une nouvelle g~n~ration d'~tudiants et de chercheurs, ne ffit-ce que pour la bibliographie tr~s d6taill~e et accompagn~ d'obserrations personneUes qui forme un supplement tr~s pr6cieux ~ la Bibliographie de D. C. Cabeen de 1951 et de 1968. Lo travail de Peter Gay inspire confianc~ par BOOK REVIEWS 483 Fampleur des lectures auxquelles il s'est astreint et. (shrink)

_A provocative reassessment of the concept of an American golden age of European-born reason and intellectual curiosity in the years following the Revolutionary War_ The accepted myth of the “American Enlightenment” suggests that the rejection of monarchy and establishment of a new republic in the United States in the eighteenth century was the realization of utopian philosophies born in the intellectual salons of Europe and radiating outward to the New World. In this revelatory work, Stanford historian Caroline Winterer argues (...) that a national mythology of a unitary, patriotic era of enlightenment in America was created during the Cold War to act as a shield against the threat of totalitarianism, and that Americans followed many paths toward political, religious, scientific, and artistic enlightenment in the 1700s that were influenced by European models in more complex ways than commonly thought. Winterer’s book strips away our modern inventions of the American national past, exploring which of our ideas and ideals are truly rooted in the eighteenth century and which are inventions and mystifications of more recent times. (shrink)

Written in honor of Dale K. Van Kley, leading specialist on religion and politics in the Old Regime and the French Revolution, these essays examine how Jansenist belief shaped enlightenment ideas, cultural identities, social relations and politics in France throughout the long eighteenth century. Van Kley's work has invited scholars to think beyond the traditional parameters of the Enlightenment and to consider how religious faith functioned in the broader context of Old Regime, Revolutionary, and post-Revolutionary France. In (...) different ways, each essay challenges the idea of an inherent opposition between faith and Enlightenment, which likewise equates modernity with secularization. The authors within this volume address two main questions. Firstly, how did religious belief continue to shape identities and experiences in the long eighteenth century? Secondly, how does this narrative of enduring religious belief in eighteenth-century France help historians rethink the Enlightenment and the French Revolution? The various methodologies used by the contributors illustrate how belief, Enlightenment, and Revolution coexisted and indeed co-mingled in different contexts: politics and political culture, the social and cultural history of ideas, and the history of material culture. (shrink)

Since the time of the Enlightenment in Western Europe, discussions of faith and reason have often pitted the believer against the skeptic, the theist against the atheist, and the person of one faith against the person of no professed faith. But the relation of reason to faith has been a matter of debate among believers as well. There are those who hold that religious faith can be proven or supported by rational argument. Others say that to try to (...) give reasons and arguments does violence to religious faith, or opens it to misunderstanding and doubt, or trivializes it. Responses to the Enlightenment: An Exchange on Foundations, Faith, and Community is a dialogue between Hendrik Hart and William Sweet, two philosophers who identify themselves as Christians, and who seek to respond to the challenges of the Enlightenment and its legacy. The authors approach the relation of faith to reason, however, in very different ways: Hart from the perspective of the Calvinian tradition and postmodern philosophy, Sweet from the Catholic tradition and analytic philosophy. Among the topics discussed are the nature of religious faith and of reason, liberalism and orthodoxy in religion, the relation of religious experience and rationality, and building community in a religiously and culturally pluralistic world. This exchange presents two distinctive perspectives to some of the major challenges of the reason to religious belief, but seeks to find common ground between them. (shrink)

William James called his classic work, The Varieties of Religious Experience, "a study in human nature." This volume recognizes that a fundamental feature of human nature for James is that we have a conscious and a subconscious mind and that the subconscious mind is deeply implicated in the religious life, especially in conversion and other experiences of spiritual enlightenment. In this volume, Capps addresses religious melancholy, the divided self and discordant personality, religious conversion, the saintly (...) character, and the prayerful consciousness. In addition, the cases of two clergymen--one deeply troubled, the other exemplary of the spiritual person--are also presented. A brief discussion of James's view of religion as the generator of hope concludes this introduction to his insights into the religious life. Given that James was a popular writer in his own day, this book is intended to make his insights accessible to general readers. (shrink)

“Enlightenment and the Experience of Karma” analyzes this traditional Indian and Buddhist moral/ethical concept in order to assess the role that it might play in a contemporary culture of enlightenment. Elucidating five dimensions of this moral principle where questions can be raised by means of critical inquiry, the chapter strives to articulate a naturalized conception of karma that could conceivably play an important role in future global society. In order to do that, it reflects on the traditional connection (...) between karma as a moral principle and rebirth as a religious concept and asks what it might mean to develop a karma-based morality without a necessary link to any traditional understanding of afterlife. The chapter aspires to develop elements implicit in the traditional Indian idea of karma that could provide a basic structure for the human moral practice that is essential to any society and any quest for enlightenment. (shrink)

Jonathan Israel presents the first major reassessment of the Western Enlightenment for a generation. Continuing the story he began in the best-selling Radical Enlightenment, and now focusing his attention on the first half of the eighteenth century, he returns to the original sources to offer a groundbreaking new perspective on the nature and development of the most important currents in modern thought. Israel traces many of the core principles of Western modernity to their roots in the social, political, (...) and philosophical ferment of this period: the primacy of reason, democracy, racial equality, feminism, religious toleration, sexual emancipation, and freedom of expression. He emphasizes the dual character of the Enlightenment, and the bitter struggle between on the one hand a generally dominant, anti-democratic mainstream, supporting the monarchy, aristocracy, and ecclesiastical authority, and on the other a largely repressed democratic, republican, and 'materialist' radical fringe. He also contends that the supposedly separate French, British, German, Dutch, and Italian enlightenments interacted to such a degree that their study in isolation gives a hopelessly distorted picture.A work of dazzling and highly accessible scholarship, Enlightenment Contested will be the definitive reference point for historians, philosophers, and anyone engaged with this fascinating period of human development. (shrink)

Traditional accounts of the Scottish Enlightenment present the half-century or so before 1750 as, at best, a not-yet fully realised precursor to the era of Hume and Smith, at worst, a period of superstition and religious bigotry. This is the first book-length study to systematically challenge that notion. Instead, it argues that the era between approximately 1680 and 1745 was a 'First' Scottish Enlightenment, part of the continent-wide phenomenon of early Enlightenment and led by the Jacobites, (...) Episcopalians, and Catholics of north-eastern Scotland. It makes this argument through an intensive study of the dramatic changes in historiographical practice which took place in Scotland during this era, showing how the documentary scholarship of Jean Mabillon and the Maurists was eagerly received and rapidly developed in Scottish historical circles, resulting in the wholesale demolition of the older, Humanist myths of Scottish origins and their replacement with the foundations of our modern understanding of early Scottish history. This volume accordingly challenges many of the truisms surrounding seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Scottish history, pushing back against notions of pre-Enlightenment Scotland as backward, insular, and intellectually impoverished and mapping a richly polymathic, erudite, and transnational web of scholars, readers, and polemicists. It highlights the enduring cultural links with France and argues for the central importance of Scotland's two principal religious minorities--Episcopalians and Catholics--in the growth of Enlightenment thinking. As such, it makes a major intervention in the intellectual and cultural histories of Scotland, early modern Europe, and the Enlightenment itself. (shrink)

The author puts forward a set of assumptions and possible context for examining the connection between the concepts of enlightenment and taste. Kant?s definition of enlightenment is accepted, with special emphasis on the sphere of religion. Applying this criterion, we may discern a powerful and influential religious current stemming from strictly speaking Church circles that denies the systematic and historical significance of the opus of Dositej Obradovic, who in his time was a protagonist of the European (...) class='Hi'>enlightenment. Such a revaluation has been accepted by the greater portion of the younger generation, which relies predominantly on the St. Sava Myth. With a change of worldview, undoubtedly, tastes change as well. The next section of the paper discusses the approach to taste of the Scottish philosopher David Hume representative of dispositional aesthetic. Finally it is argued that music as one of the arts, might be exemplary for appraising the condition of enlightenment in a society. U ovom radu autor je izlozio nekoliko pretpostavki, te moguci kontekst za ispitivanje veze izmedju pojmova prosvecenost i ukus. Prihvaceno je Kantovo odredjenje prosvecenosti, a s narocitim naglaskom na sferu religioznosti. Na osnovu takvog kriterijuma, moze se uociti da je u igri jedna vrlo snazna i uticajna verska struja - i to iz crkvenih krugova u najuzem smislu - koja porice sistematski i istorijski znacaj dela Dositeja Obradovica, svojevremeno protagoniste evropske prosvecenosti. Takvo prevrednovanje prihvatio je i veci deo mladje generacije insistirajuci prevashodno na Svetosavskom Predanju. S promenom pogleda na svet, nesumnjivo je da se menjaju i ukusi. Izlozeno je i shvatanje o ukusu skotskog filozofa Dejvida Hjuma, zatocnika dispozicionalne estetike. Kao jedna od umetnosti, muzika bi mogla biti egzemplarna za procenjivanje stanja prosvecenosti u nekom drustvu. (shrink)

Montesquieu, Hume, Voltaire, Diderot, Smith, Gibbon, Bentham... These are among the great thinkers who contributed to the dramatic developments in religion, science, and philosophy that we now call the Enlightenment. Written by a world authority, this brief history of the Enlightenment concludes with a perceptive assessment of the cultural, religious, ethical, and political dimensions of its legacy.

Controlling defects in educational policies established by the state is a formidable challenge. The state invariably believes that the solution lies in developing and improving educational outcomes. However, evaluating and monitoring these outcomes is not a straightforward process that unfolds over a year or two; it requires a span of 14–16 years, encompassing two years of preschool, 12 years of basic and secondary education, and four years of university education. Despite this extensive period, the discovery of “the quality of educational (...) policies” and subsequently “the quality of education” often proves elusive, amounting to mere rhetoric without tangible impact. In the realm of educational philosophy, drawing upon Immanuel Kant’s Enlightenment principles from December 1784 emerges as both necessary and urgent. This approach could guide us back to the foundational infrastructure and core principles of learning design, where reason and critical thought commence a critique of current educational policies in any context. With greater freedom, this enables the innovation of new concepts. Traditional education policies rendered obsolete across generations, bear striking resemblance to the religious institutions that Kant, along with scholars before him during the Dark Ages, found constraining. The critique of existing educational frameworks and the advocacy for freedom and autonomy in learning draw on the foundational work of Heckman, James and Carneiro, Pedro, (2003), who delve into human capital policy, suggesting that education systems need to be more responsive to individual needs and potential (Heckman & Carneiro, 2003). The paramount question arises: Have traditional education policies succeeded in making students subservient to their systems, structures, and models, burdened with theories of educational reform and development? It is evident that from early childhood through the stages of basic and secondary education, students are deprived of the choice in systems, structures, and curricula that suit them best. This limitation extends to university education, which is contingent upon high school grades and reliant on inadequately designed, intimidating examinations. Furthermore, it is ineffectively tethered to public policies, socio-economic conditions, and linguistic competencies (as determined by TOEFL, IELTS, etc.), or international assessments (e.g., PISA). The focus on the individual — his or her abilities, skills, aspirations, hobbies, and concerns — remains conspicuously absent from the calculus of all educational policy considerations. This research endeavors to revisit foundational questions: Why do societies necessitate education initially, followed by policies governing it? It then delves deeper into examining the relationships between educational policies and the future job market, which remains ambiguous and unknown. Keywords : Enlightenment, Educational Policies, Kantian Philosophy, Critical Thinking, Human Capital, Strategic Insight, Artificial Intelligence, Educational Reform, Lifelong Learning, Global Citizenship, Technological Revolution, Equity in Education, Educational Philosophy, Intellectual Freedom, Skill Development, Inclusive Education. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Early Religious Freedom The Eve of Revolution Luther and Liberalism John Knox and the Scottish Enlightenment Natural Law Toward Religious Freedom Conclusion Discussion.

The Radical Enlightenment has been much discussed and its original meaning somewhat distorted. In 1981 my concept of the storm that unleashed a new, transnational intellectual movement possessed a strong contextual and political element that I believed, and still believe, to be critically important. Idealist accounts of enlightened ideas that divorce them from politics leave out the lived quality of the new radicalism born in reaction to monarchical and clerical absolutism. Taking the religious impulse seriously and working to (...) defang it of bellicosity would require years of labor. First all the world’s religions had to be surveyed, see Picart’s seven folio volumes; and Rousseau’s Savoyard vicar had to both preach and live religion simply as true virtue; and finally Jefferson editing the Bible so as to get the irrational parts simply removed, thus making people more fit to grant a complete religious toleration. Throughout the century all these approaches to revealed religion may be legitimately described as radical. Each produced a different recommendation for its replacement. As I have now come to see, the pantheism I identified in 1981 would lead in many directions, among them lay the search to understand all human religiosity and to articulate a universal natural religion. (shrink)

The idea of enlightenment entails liberty, equality, rationalism, secularism, and the connection between knowledge and human well being. In spite of the setbacks of revolutionary violence, political mass murder, and two world wars, the spread of enlightenment values has become the yardstick by which moral, political, and even scientific advances are measured. Indeed, most critiques of the enlightenment ideal point to failure in implementation rather than principle. By contrast, David Stove, in On Enlightenment, attacks the intellectual (...) roots of enlightenment thought, to define the limitations of its successes and the areas of its likely failures. Stove is not insensitive to the many valuable aspects of enlightenment thought. He champions the use of reason and rationality, and recognizes the falsity of religious claims as well as the importance of individual liberty. What he rejects is the enlightenment's uncritical optimism regarding social progress and its willingness to embrace revolutionary change. What evidence is there that the elimination of superstition will lead to happiness? Or that it is possible to accept Darwinism without Social Darwinism? Or that the enlightenment's liberal, rationalistic outlook will ever lead to the kind of social progress envisioned by its advocates. Despite their best intentions, social reformers who attempt to improve the world as a whole inevitably make things worse. He advocates a conservative "go slow" approach to change, pointing out that today's social structures are so large and complex that any widespread social reform will have innumerable unforeseen consequences. For example, the welfare state may diminish individual initiative, the use of pesticides may increase the food supply while polluting the water supply, the popularizing of university education may lead to a decline in academic standards. Since government has a virtual monopoly on large-scale change, it follows, in Stove's view, that its powers must be limited in order to prevent large-scale damage. Instead, he argues that reforms, when they are to be made at all, must be realistic, local, necessary and never coercive. Writing in the conservative tradition of Edmund Burke with the same passion for clarity and intellectual honesty as George Orwell, David Stove was one of the most precise, articulate, and insightful philosophers of his day. "Never just an academic, Stove was also a prominent, often crotchety, public intellectual of a conservative and, all too often, reactionary bent, many of whose views were extremist on any account, and his targets were many.... For Stove the important question about a belief is not whether it is extreme or mainstream, but whether it is true, or probable, or has sound evidentiary and/or rational credentials. In this he was surely right." -D. D. Todd, Philosophy in Review David Stove taught philosophy at the University of New South Wales and the University of Sydney. He is the author of Against the Idols of the Age and Scientific Irrationalism, both available from Transaction. Andrew Irvine is professor of philosophy at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver. Roger Kimball is managing editor of the New Criterion. (shrink)

Against the contemporary view which portrays the roots of modern political philosophy as fundamentally areligious, Peddle's essay shows how Puritanism and Enlightenment converge in the U.S. Constitution. In light of reflections on the logic of this convergence, an interpretation of the religious clauses of the first amendment is advanced.

In recent years, historians have rediscovered the religious dimensions of the Enlightenment. This volume offers a thorough reappraisal of the so-called “Catholic Enlightenment” as a transnational Enlightenment movement. This Catholic Enlightenment was at once ultramontane and conciliarist, sometimes moderate but often surprisingly radical, with participants active throughout Europe in universities, seminaries, salons, and the periodical press._ In _Enlightenment and Catholicism in Europe: A Transnational History_, the contributors, primarily European scholars, provide intellectual biographies of twenty Catholic (...) Enlightenment figures across eighteenth-century Europe, many of them little known in English-language scholarship on the Enlightenment and pre-revolutionary eras. These figures represent not only familiar French intellectuals of the Catholic Enlightenment but also Iberian, Italian, English, Polish, and German thinkers. The essays focus on the intellectual and cultural factors influencing the lives and works of their subjects, revealing the often global networks of intellectual sociability and reading that united them both to the Catholic Enlightenment and to eighteenth-century policies and projects. The volume, whose purpose is to advance the understanding of a transnational "Catholic Enlightenment," will be a reliable reference for historians, theologians, and scholars working in religious studies. "This is a compelling collection on an important subject. Its transnational and biographical approach helps one to see eighteenth-century Catholicism and the Enlightenment itself in fresh and interesting ways." — Darrin M. McMahon, Florida State University_. (shrink)