Martin Mulsow's seismic reinterpretation of the origins of the Enlightenment in Germany won awards and renown in its original German edition, and now H.C. Erik Midelfort's translation makes this sensational book available to English-speaking readers. In Enlightenment Underground, Muslow shows that even in the late seventeenth century some thinkers in Germany ventured to express extremely dangerous ideas, but did so as part of a secret underground. Scouring manuscript collections across northern Europe, Muslow studied the writings of countless hitherto-unknown radical jurists, theologians, historians, and dissident students who pushed for the secularization of legal, political, social, and religious knowledge. Often their works circulated in manuscript, anonymously, or as clandestinely published books. Working as a philosophical microhistorian, Mulsow has discovered the identities of several covert radicals and linked them to circles of young German scholars, many of whom were connected with the vibrant radical cultures of the Netherlands, England, and Denmark. The author reveals how radical ideas and contributions to intellectual doubt came from Socinians and Jews, church historians and biblical scholars, political theorists, and unemployed university students. He shows that misreadings of humorous or ironic works sometimes gave rise to unintended skeptical thoughts or corresively political interpretations of Christianity. This landmark book overturns stereotypical views of the early Enlightenment in Germany as cautious, conservative, and moderate, and replaces them with a new portrait that reveals a movement far more radical, unintended, and puzzling than previously suspected. -- from dust jacket.
Title |
Enlightenment underground : radical Germany, 1680-1720 / Martin Mulsow translated by H. C. Erik Midelfort. |
---|---|
Contributors |
Midelfort, H. C. Erik (translator) |
Publisher |
Charlottesville : University of Virginia Press |
Creation Date |
2015 |
Notes |
"Originally published in German as Moderne aus dem Untergrund: Radikale Frühaufklärung in Deutschland 1680-1720, © 2002 by Felix Meiner Verlag, Hamburg, Germany." -- Title page verso. Includes bibliographical references and index. Translated from the German. |
Content |
Introduction: Radicalism as a problem for research -- The ambivalence of scholars: A Jewish Anti-Christian manuscript and its path into the German early Enlightenment -- To Socinian enlightenment: Sameul Crell's European networks -- Atheism at the heart of orthodoxy? On the origin and early spread of Johann Joachim Müller's De tribus impostoribus (1688) -- Political theology: Reason of state, historical pyrrhonism, and the critique of religion -- The destruction of Christian Platonism: Souverain's Le Platonisme dévoilé (1700) and Gundling's "Plato atheos" (1713) -- Gundling versus Budde: Skeptical versus Conservative enlightenment -- Eclecticism and indifferentism: The hidden discourse of the Religio Prudentum from the Ineptus religiosus of 1652 to the Religio Eclectica of 1702. |
Series |
Studies in early modern German history |
Extent |
x, 454 pages 25 cm. |
Language |
English |
Copyright Date |
©2015 |
National Library system number |
990038842950205171 |
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