Equally interesting is the History of British Deism (1995), edited by J. V. Price. 34 The eight volumes of reproduced texts which constitute the History appear, ostensibly, impressive and a testament to the term 'English deist movement' ...
Author: S. J. Barnett
Publisher: Manchester University Press
ISBN: 9781847795939
Category: History
Page: 256
View: 895
This electronic version has been made available under a Creative Commons (BY-NC-ND) open access license. This book offers a critical survey of religious change and its causes in eighteenth-century Europe, and constitutes a challenge to the accepted views in traditional Enlightenment studies. Focusing on Enlightenment Italy, France and England, it illustrates how the canonical view of eighteenth-century religious change has in reality been constructed upon scant evidence and assumption, in particular the idea that the thought of the enlightened led to modernity. For, despite a lack of evidence, one of the fundamental assumptions of Enlightenment studies has been the assertion that there was a vibrant Deist movement which formed the “intellectual solvent” of the eighteenth century. The central claim of this book is that the immense ideological appeal of the traditional birth-of-modernity myth has meant that the actual lack of Deists has been glossed over, and a quite misleading historical view has become entrenched.