The Intellectual Consequences of Religious Heterodoxy, 1600-1750 (Brill's Studies in Intellectual History)

It is too often assumed that religious heterodoxy before the Enlightenment led inexorably to intellectual secularisation. Challenging that assumption, this book expands the scope of the enquiry, hitherto concentrated on the relation between heterodoxy and natural philosophy, to include political thought, moral philosophy and the writing of history. Individual chapters are devoted to Grotius, the Dutch Remonstrants and Socinianism, to Hobbes, Robert Boyle, Robert Hooke, Dutch Collegiants and English Unitarians, Giambattista Vico, Conyers Middleton, and David Hume. In their opening essay the editors argue that the critical problems for both Protestants and Catholics arose from destabilising the relation between the spheres of Nature and Revelation, and the adoption of an increasingly historical approach both to natural religion and to the Scriptual basis of Revelation. Contributors include: Hans Blom, Justin Champion, Jonathan Israel, Martin Mulsow, Enrico Nuzzo, William Poole, Sami-Juhani Savonius, Richard Serjeantson, and Brian Young. Contents......Page 5 Preface......Page 7 Notes on Contributors......Page 9 Nature, Revelation, History: Intellectual Consequences of Religious Heterodoxy c. 1600–1750......Page 13 Styles of Heterodoxy and Intellectual Achievement:Grotius and Arminianism......Page 59 Human and Divine Justice in the Works of Grotius and the Socinians......Page 87 ‘The Kingdom of Darkness’: Hobbes and Heterodoxy......Page 107 Henry Stubbe, Robert Boyle and the Idolatry of Nature......Page 133 Heterodoxy and Sinology: Isaac Vossius, Robert Hooke, and the Early Royal Society’s Use of Sinology......Page 147 ‘Lovers of Truth’ in Pierre Bayle’s and John Locke’s Thought......Page 167 Spinoza and the Religious Radical Enlightenment......Page 193 Between Orthodoxy and Heterodoxy in Italian Culture in the Early 1700s: Giambattista Vico and Paolo Mattia Doria......Page 217 Conyers Middleton: The Historical Consequences of Heterodoxy......Page 247 David Hume’s Natural History of Religion (1757) and the End of Modern Eusebianism......Page 279 Bibliography......Page 309 Index......Page 337 It is too often assumed that religious heterodoxy before the Enlightenment led inexorably to intellectual secularisation. Challenging that assumption, this book expands the scope of the enquiry, hitherto concentrated on the relation between heterodoxy and natural philosophy, to include political thought, moral philosophy and the writing of history. Individual chapters are devoted to Grotius, the Dutch Remonstrant and Socinianism, to Hobbes, Robert Boyle, Robert Hooke, Dutch Collegiants and English Unitarians, Giambattista Vico, Conyers Middleton, and David Hume. In their opening essay the editors argue that the critical problems for both Protestants and Catholics arose from destabilizing the relation between the spheres of Nature and Revelation, and the adoption of an increasingly historical approach both to natural religion and to the Scriptual basis of Revelation. Contributors include: Hans Blom, Justin Champion, Jonathan Israel, Martin Mulsow, Enrico Nuzzo, William Poole, Sami-Juhani Savonius, Richard Serjeantson, and Brian Young. "It is too often assumed that religious heterodoxy before the Enlightenment led inexorably to intellectual secularisation. Challenging this assumption, this book expands the scope of the enquiry, hitherto concentrated on the relation between heterodoxy and natural philosophy, to include political thought, moral philosophy and the writing of history. Individual chapters are devoted to Grotius, the Dutch Remonstrants and Socinianism, to Hobbes, Robert Boyle, Robert Hooke, Dutch Collegiants and English Unitarians, Giambattista Vico, Conyers Middleton, and David Hume. In their opening essay the editors argue that the critical problems for both Protestants and Catholics arose from destabilising the relation between the spheres of Nature and Revelation, and the adoption of an increasingly historical approach both to natural religion and the Scriptural basis of Revelation."--Back cover Challenging The Common Assumption That Religious Heterodoxy Was A Prelude To The Secularisation Of Thought, This Volume Explores The Variety Of Relations Between Heterodox Theology, Political Thought, Moral And Natural Philosophy And Historical Writing In Both Protestant And Catholic Europe From 1600 To The Enlightenment.