Religion and the Enlightenment (s)

We still ask the question 'What is Enlightenment?' Every generation seems to offer new and contradictory answers to the question. In the last thirty or so years, the most interesting characterisations of Enlightenment have been by historians. They have told us that there is one Enlightenment, that there are two Enlightenments, that there are many Enlightenments. This has thrown up a second question, 'How Many Enlightenments?' In the spirit of collaboration and criticism, I answer both questions by arguing in this article that there are in fact three Enlightenments: Radical, Sceptical and Liberal. These are abstracted from the rival theories of Enlightenment found in the writings of the historians Jonathan Israel, John Robertson and J.G.A. Pocock. Each form of Enlightenment is political; each involves an attitude to history; each takes a view of religion. They are arranged in a sequence of increasing sensitivity to history, as it is this which makes it possible to relate them to each other and indeed propose a composite definition of Enlightenment. The argument should be of 1 This article, originally written in 2018, is indebted to John Robertson-whom I met by chance at a conference about another subject-for a suggestion about the writings of J.G.A. Pocock which though slight (the suggestion, not the writings) was fundamental and led me to redraft the second half of the article in 2019 and thus to sharpen the eventual argument. interest to anyone concerned with 'the Enlightenment' as a historical phenomenon or with 'Enlightenment' as a philosophical abstraction.

European Review of History: Revue europeenne d'histoire, 2006

The essays gathered in this issue explore possibilities for re-conceptualising the historical topography of the European Enlightenment through an examination of its communicative practices. By what means did the Enlightenment emerge, how did it take root in particular places, and how did it unfold in time and space-as local experience, as a Europe-wide movement and as a global phenomenon? It is an adventure in a new form of cultural geography; it rejects a simple mapping of cultural forms and movements on to purportedly deeper economic, social and political structures and instead proposes that culture be understood as a historical force in its own right, which, through the elaboration of a series of institutions, practices and systems of signification played a constitutive role in the reshaping of economic, social and political structures along new lines. Arguably, no cultural movement, at least since the advent of Christianity, presents a more compelling case for the constitutive claims of culture than the European Enlightenment of the eighteenth century. For much of the twentieth century the Enlightenment was studied almost exclusively as a chapter in the history of ideas, a story of great thinkers, of philosophical systems and debates that unfolded among a cosmopolitan elite of European men of letters. The historical question was posed (paraphrasing Kant) as follows: 'What was the Enlightenment?' 1 In this historiography the questions of where or how the Enlightenment made itself manifest mattered little or their answers seemed self-evident-it occurred in the minds of a few men who were well positioned to be in dialogue with one another. But a generation ago, a group of scholars of the European eighteenth century, notably Robert Darnton, Daniel Roche, Roger Chartier, Roy Porter and Jürgen Habermas, began posing a different series of questions: How did the

Scholarship continues to identify the Enlightenment with secularization, despite the theological tenor of much of the movement's canonical literature. This article proposes an explanation for such a dissonance, before addressing the matter more directly through the work of Baruch Spinoza and Pierre Bayle. The claim is that scholars have been unduly dependent upon theological commentary in reaching the fixed verdict of secularization, inferring ‘atheism’ and disenchantment from the polemical utterances of a privileged orthodoxy rather than the primary sources themselves. Seen apart from such controlling anathemas, icons of the radical Enlightenment such as Spinoza and Bayle emerge as deeply spiritual thinkers, challenging the theocratic assumptions of their age with theological certainties of their own, interrogating orthodoxy with a resolutely biblical rationality. The final section suggests the continuity of the eighteenth-century Enlightenment of Voltaire, Kant and Mary Wollstonecraft with the spiritual rationalism of the seventeenth century. If so many of the Enlightenment's landmark thinkers were inspired by religious ideas, the concept of a secular modernity must be open to revision.

História da Historiografia: International Journal of Theory and History of Historiography

This article, through a review of a portion of the relevant literature, problematizes the way in which the connection between the Enlightenment and religion has traditionally been explained, principally by a historiography excessively focused on the 18th century French experience. Alternatively, this article argues that “continuity,” rather than “rupture,” more adequately describes this relationship. However, continuity, as understood here, excludes neither tension nor transformation. If, on the one hand, the Enlightenment is much more akin to religion than has been previously recognized, on the other hand, it has to a great extent shaped modern understanding of religion. This revision of the relationship between the Enlightenment and religion suggests the need to rethink the very identity of the Enlightenment and the issue of secularization. The article uses as a guide the German debate surrounding the question, “What is the Enlightenment?” It concludes with an analysis of Kant’s f...

Central European History, 1997

The Scriblerian and the Kit-Cats, 2024

Enlightenment Past and Present is an impressive collection of essays, most of them previously published during the author's prolific career as a (self-described) "contextual intellectual historian." Although its chapters range from academic essays to extensive book reviews to pieces blending confessional prose with bibliographical details, they come together as a surprisingly unified argument about the Enlightenment's extraordinary ideological force in its time and impact on our culture today. Its coherence is given by an eloquent introduction that delivers on the promise of the title: that is, to delve into how the Enlightenment thought shaped the very tenets of modernity while, at the same time, reflecting on the author's intellectual and professional choices, his disciplinary methods, and his formative influences as a historian of the Enlightenment. The Preface and Introduction to this volume are purposely reflective on the author's approaches to his field of study, which makes for delightfully engaging prose. As the author candidly states, "I wanted to come at eighteenth-century constructs not through the lenses of later political ideologies, but by recovering their positional meaning in relation to what preceded them." This candor is counterpoised by a remarkable erudition and an uncanny ability to bring various sources into conversation with each other and delve deeply into their arguments.

História da Historiografia: International Journal of Theory and History of Historiography, 2020

This article, through a review of a portion of the relevant literature, problematizes the way in which the connection between the Enlightenment and religion has traditionally been explained, principally by a historiography excessively focused on the 18th century French experience. Alternatively, this article argues that “continuity,” rather than “rupture,” more adequately describes this relationship. However, continuity, as understood here, excludes neither tension nor transformation. If, on the one hand, the Enlightenment is much more akin to religion than has been previously recognized, on the other hand, it has to a great extent shaped modern understanding of religion. This revision of the relationship between the Enlightenment and religion suggests the need to rethink the very identity of the Enlightenment and the issue of secularization. The article uses as a guide the German debate surrounding the question, “What is the Enlightenment?” It concludes with an analysis of Kant’s famous contribution to this debate.

História da Historiografia: International Journal of Theory and History of Historiography, 2020

This article, through a review of a portion of the relevant literature, problematizes the way in which the connection between the Enlightenment and religion has traditionally been explained, principally by a historiography excessively focused on the 18th century French experience. Alternatively, this article argues that "continuity," rather than "rupture," more adequately describes this relationship. However, continuity, as understood here, excludes neither tension nor transformation. If, on the one hand, the Enlightenment is much more akin to religion than has been previously recognized, on the other hand, it has to a great extent shaped modern understanding of religion. This revision of the relationship between the Enlightenment and religion suggests the need to rethink the very identity of the Enlightenment and the issue of secularization. The article uses as a guide the German debate surrounding the question, "What is the Enlightenment?" It concludes with an analysis of Kant's famous contribution to this debate.

Chapter [preprint version, do not cite] for upcoming collection on Rethinking the Enlightenment, edited by M. Lloyd and G. Boucher [draft form]. Part 1 reframes the enlightenment, looking forwards from the early modern context (in light of the scientific revolution, reformation, renaissance, and discovery of the new worlds), rather than backwards, in light of the enlightenment's alleged effects in the short 20th century. Part 2 looks at Montesquieu's Persian Letters, Diderot's Letter on the Blind, and Candide, as bearing out Peter Gay's depiction of the enlightenment as a "revolt against rationalism" as much as an "age of reason". The chapter contends that these classic enlightenment texts-a million miles from postmodern endoxa about "the Enilghtenment project"-- involve artful exercises in confronting and working through the loss of Europe’s providential sense of its own uniqueness and cosmic centrality, central to the Christian epos: philosophical exercises prompting their readers to relook at their beliefs, customs and society critically, comparatively and ironically, as if from the outside: or as we might say today, “cross-cultural dialogues” pointing the way towards “a world united by its celebration of diversity, a cosmopolitan harmony orchestrated in free individuality; an open world, not of absolutes or of persecution, but of pacific and continuous dialogue".