Enlightenment and Modernity:
The English Deists and Reform
Wayne Hudson
The Enlightenment World
978 1 85196 635 6: 234x156mm: £60.00/$99.00
978 1 85196 678 3
The writers known as the English deists were not simply religious controversialists, but agents of reform who contributed to the emergence of modernity. The existing literature claims that these writers advocated a failed ideology which itself declined after 1730.
Hudson, however, argues for an evolution of their ideas into a more modern form, one less indebted to classical antiquity and the Renaissance. He further claims that these writers promoted political, social and cultural reforms over a wide area. Indeed, so far from merely writing minor pamphlets, they provoked shifts of public philosophy and practice of European significance.
Sample pages
Readership
Eighteenth-Century Studies, Philosophy of Enlightenment and Religious Studies
Contents
Introduction: Deism, Enlightenment and Modernity
Part I: Problematizing Revealed Religion
1 Christianity Challenged
2 Two Clerical Critics
3 The Diffusion of Disbelief
Part II: Agents of Reform
4 ‘Philosophy’ and Reform
5 ‘Religion’ and Modernity
Conclusion
Appendix: Shaftesbury and Bolingbroke
Reviews
'...an important contribution to our understanding of not only deism but also the religious climate of eighteenth-century England ... essential reading.'
– Jeffrey R Wigelsworth, English Historical Review
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