Let There Be Enlightenment

The Religious and Mystical Sources of Rationality

Dan Edelstein editor Anton M Matytsin editor

Format:Hardback

Publisher:Johns Hopkins University Press

Published:12th Oct '18

Currently unavailable, and unfortunately no date known when it will be back

Let There Be Enlightenment cover

Challenging the triumphalist narrative of Enlightenment secularism.

According to most scholars, the Enlightenment was a rational awakening, a radical break from a past dominated by religion and superstition. But in Let There Be Enlightenment, Anton M. Matytsin, Dan Edelstein, and the contributors they have assembled deftly undermine this simplistic narrative. Emphasizing the ways in which religious beliefs and motivations shaped philosophical perspectives, essays in this book highlight figures and topics often overlooked in standard genealogies of the Enlightenment. The volume underscores the prominent role that religious discourses continued to play in major aspects of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century thought.

The essays probe a wide range of subjects, from reformer Jan Amos Comenius’s quest for universal enlightenment to the changing meanings of the light metaphor, Quaker influences on Baruch Spinoza’s theology, and the unexpected persistence of Aristotle in the Enlightenment. Exploring the emergence of historical consciousness among Enlightenment thinkers while examining their repeated insistence on living in an enlightened age, the collection also investigates the origins and the long-term dynamics of the relationship between faith and reason.

Providing an overview of the rich spectrum of eighteenth-century culture, the authors demonstrate that religion was central to Enlightenment thought. The term “enlightenment” itself had a deeply religious connotation. Rather than revisiting the celebrated breaks between the eighteenth century and the period that preceded it, Let There Be Enlightenment reveals the unacknowledged continuities that connect the Enlightenment to its various antecedents.

Contributors: Philippe Buc, William J. Bulman, Jeffrey D. Burson, Charly Coleman, Dan Edelstein, Matthew T. Gaetano, Howard Hotson, Anton M. Matytsin, Darrin M. McMahon, James Schmidt, Céline Spector, Jo Van Cauter

This book has many merits. All of its chapters are very original and even groundbreaking in several respects. By employing interdisciplinary approaches that pay due attention to both texts and contexts, the contributors to this volume rediscover and revalue several intellectual currents and figures traditionally neglected by historiography . . . [Let There Be Enlightenment] provides excellent food for thought for both specialists in the field and educated lay readers willing to acquire a deeper insight into this fascinating and complex period of human history.
—Diego Lucci, American University in Bulgaria, Journal of Jesuit Studies
I am delighted to have this collection in my library . . . [Let There Be Enlightenment] asserts stronger and more complex continuities between medieval thought and the Enlightenment, making it worth noting for not only specialists in early modern history, but more broadly scholars of religion and ideas in pre-nineteenth-century Europe.
—Chad Denton, H-France Review

ISBN: 9781421426013

Dimensions: 229mm x 152mm x 26mm

Weight: 544g

312 pages