Atheism from the Reformation to the Enlightenment

by Hunter, Michael; Wootton, David

• ISBN13: 9780198227366
• ISBN10: 0198227361
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 1992-10-15
• Publisher: Clarendon Press

Summary

The rise of atheism and unbelief is a key feature in the development of the modern world, yet it is a topic which has been little explored by historians. This book presents a series of studies of irreligious ideas in various parts of Europe during the two centuries following the Reformation. Atheism was illegal everywhere. The word itself first entered the vernacular languages soon after the Reformation, but it was not until the eighteenth century that the first systematic defences of unbelief began to appear in print. Its history in the intervening two centuries is significant but hitherto obscure. The leading scholars who have contributed to this volume offer a range of approaches and draw on a wide variety of sources to produce a scholarly, original, and fascinating book. Atheism from the Reformation to the Enlightenment will be essential reading for all concerned with the religious, intellectual, and social history of early modern Europe.

Table of Contents

Notes on Contributors

Introduction

New Histories of Atheism

Unbelief and Atheism in Italy 1500-1700

Pierre Charron's 'Scandalous Book'

The 'Christian Atheism' of Thomas Hobbes

The Charge of Atheism and the Language of Radical Speculation 1640-1660

Jewish Anti-Christian Arguments as a Source of Irreligion from the Seventeenth to the Early Nineteenth Century

The First edition of the Traite des trois imposteurs and its Debt to Spinoza's Ethics

'Aikenhead the Atheist': The Context and Consequences of Articulate Irreligion in the Late Seventeenth Century

Disclaimers as Offence Mechanicms in Charles Blount and John Toland

The Atheism of d'Holbach and Naigeon

Index

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