The Heavenly City of the Eighteenth Century Philosophers

Four lectures on The Enlightenment delivered at Yale University. His assertion that philosophies, in the "Age of Reason," relied far more upon Christian assumptions than they cared to admit, has been influential, but has also been much attacked, notably by Peter Gay. Interest in the book is partly explained by this key passage (p. 47): In the thirteenth century the key words would no doubt be God, sin, grace, salvation, heaven and the like; in the nineteenth century, matter, fact, matter-of-fact, evolution, progress; in the twentieth century, relativity, process, adjustment, function, complex. In the eighteenth century the words without which no enlightened person could reach a restful conclusion were nature, natural law, first cause, reason, sentiment, humanity, perfectibility.... This isolation of vocabularies of the epoch chimes with much later work. Johnson Kent Wright writes: "Becker wrote as a principled liberal.... Yet in some respects The Heavenly City presents an almost uncanny anticipation of the "postmodern" reading of the eighteenth century." [— "The Pre-Postmodernism of Carl Becker", p. 162, in Postmodernism and the Enlightenment (2001), Daniel Gordon editor] Nevertheless, Becker supported the Spanish Republicans. Lectures Delivered In The School Of Law In Yale University On The Storrs Foundation ... April, 1931.--pref.published On The Mary Cady Tew Memorial Fund.--1st Prelim. Leaf. Climates Of Opinion -- The Laws Of Nature And Of Nature's God -- The New History : Philosophy Teaching By Example -- The Uses Of Posterity. By Carl L. Becker. Lectures Delivered In The School Of Law In Yale University On The Storrs Foundation ... April, 1931.--pref. Published On The Mary Cady Tew Memorial Fund.--1st Prelim. Leaf. Includes Bibliographical Footnotes. These essays disclose the fallacy of believing that the eighteenth century was essentially modern in its temper. The author demonstrates that the period commonly described as the Ages of Reason was, in fact, very far from that; that Voltaire, Hume, Diderot and Locke were living in a medieval world, and that the philosophers "demolished the Heavenly City of St. Augustine only to rebuild it with more up-to-date materials