Author : S. J. Barnett
Publisher : Manchester University Press
ISBN 13 : 1847795935
Total Pages : 260 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (477 download)
Book Synopsis The Enlightenment and religion by : S. J. Barnett
Download or read book The Enlightenment and religion written by S. J. Barnett and published by Manchester University Press. This book was released on 2013-07-19 with total page 260 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This electronic version has been made available under a Creative Commons (BY-NC-ND) open access license. This book offers a critical survey of religious change and its causes in eighteenth-century Europe, and constitutes a challenge to the accepted views in traditional Enlightenment studies. Focusing on Enlightenment Italy, France and England, it illustrates how the canonical view of eighteenth-century religious change has in reality been constructed upon scant evidence and assumption, in particular the idea that the thought of the enlightened led to modernity. For, despite a lack of evidence, one of the fundamental assumptions of Enlightenment studies has been the assertion that there was a vibrant Deist movement which formed the “intellectual solvent” of the eighteenth century. The central claim of this book is that the immense ideological appeal of the traditional birth-of-modernity myth has meant that the actual lack of Deists has been glossed over, and a quite misleading historical view has become entrenched.