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  3. Naturalism and Unbelief in France, 1650–1729
  • Cited by 15
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    • Publisher:
      Cambridge University Press
      Publication date:
      05 June 2016
      20 June 2016
      ISBN:
      9781316227121
      9781107106635
      9781107514348
      DOI:
      https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781316227121
      Dimensions:
      (228 x 152 mm)
      Weight & Pages:
      0.61kg, 340 Pages
      Dimensions:
      (229 x 152 mm)
      Weight & Pages:
      0.6kg, 340 Pages
      • Subjects:
      Area Studies, European History after 1450, History, European Studies, History of Ideas and Intellectual History
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    Subjects:
    Area Studies, European History after 1450, History, European Studies, History of Ideas and Intellectual History
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    Book description

    Atheism was the most fundamental challenge to early-modern French certainties. Leading educators, theologians and philosophers labelled such atheism as manifestly absurd, confident that neither the fact nor behaviour of nature was explicable without reference to God. The alternative was a categorical naturalism. This book demonstrates that the Christian learned world had always contained the naturalistic 'atheist' as an interlocutor and a polemical foil, and its early-modern engagement and use of the hypothetical atheist were major parts of its intellectual life. In the considerations and polemics of an increasingly fractious orthodox culture, the early-modern French learned world gave real voice and eventually life to that atheistic presence. Without understanding the actual context and convergence of the inheritance, scholarship, fierce disputes, and polemical modes of orthodox culture, the early-modern generation and dissemination of absolute naturalism are inexplicable. This book brings to life that Christian learned culture, its dilemmas, and its unintended consequences.

    Reviews

    '… indispensable … sure to fruitfully inspire many historians for years to come.'

    Jeffrey D. Burson Source: American Historical Review

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