Famously, in 1790, Edmund Burke asked who of the most recent generation had ever read a work of the most prominent freethinkers of the earlier eighteenth century (naming Anthony Collins, John Tolan...

A revised and expanded version of a talk given by Richard Rorty on the occasion of the award of the Meister-Eckhart Sachbuch preis in December 2001, the article provides for its author an occasion for highlighting the latest developments regarding the condition of reli- gion, religiosity, belief, faith, and atheism. Starting from the common sense and rather numerous instances of those who are „religiously unmusical,“ Richard Rorty looks briefly at the meandering course of secularization, endors- ing the idea that the (...) conflict between science and religion is a struggle for supremacy between two institutions. Dealing mostly with Gianni Vattimo’s book Credere di credere, the American philosopher builds, in his unmistak- able style, rich in highlights and shades, a case for the question of the (post)modernist believer, but also an occasion to notice the entrenching line separating the religious from the non-religious person, as two opposing ways of interpreting transcendence: as dependence, for the religious person; as hope, for the non-religious one. (shrink)

In the last few years, there has been a notable surge of interest in the themes of civil religion and the battle against “priestcraft” among historians of political thought. Examples include Eric Nelson’s The Hebrew Republic; Paul Rahe’s Against Throne and Altar; Jeffrey Collins’s The Allegiance of Thomas Hobbes; Jonathan Israel’s work on the legacy of Spinoza; Justin Champion’s work on John Toland; and my own book, Civil Religion. Within the intellectual space created by this recent scholarship, this article focuses (...) on relevant themes in the work of the one of the two thinkers who J.G.A. Pocock identified as most responsible for the “implantation of the values of civic humanism in English political thought” – namely, James Harrington (the other being the 3rd Earl of Shaftesbury). (shrink)

(2000). 'Religion's Safe, with Priestcraft is the War': Augustan Anticlericalism and the Legacy of the English Revolution, 1660-1720. The European Legacy: Vol. 5, No. 4, pp. 547-561.

In recent years, scholars have delved deeper into the intricate connections between Thomas Hobbes’s political and religious doctrines. It is now widely recognized that religion plays a central role...

This article reminds the reader of the views of Voltaire, one of the most prominent and influential philosophers of the Age of Enlightenment. Voltaire’s radicalism manifested itself mainly in anticlericalism which was consistent, uncompromising and voiced without mincing words. A general aim of this article is to demonstrate to his contemporary imitators, who can be found in different countries including Poland, that they are in fact more or less accurate copies of him and they are not always aware of (...) whom they imitate and what value this imitation has. Perhaps this article can make them, if not more restrained in their statements and practical actions, at least more self-critical and taking into account what is expressed in public discourse. (shrink)

What is the cash value of Richard Rorty’s philosophy and politics of religion? This paper analyzes the political promise of Rorty’s shift from atheism to anticlericalism in the last decade of his life. It seeks to deliver primarily a concise summary of this shift, and of its transformative motivation. Then a critique of this shift is followed by the suggestion of a friendly amendment: its extension towards a pragmatic pluralism. The outlined Rortyan conception of a serene, and, at the (...) same time robust, politics of religion is proposed as a promising answer to the question of how secular liberal citizens should react to the “return of the gods.”. (shrink)

Hobbes left a complicated legacy for the English Whigs. They thought that his Leviathan was all too powerful, but they found other elements in his thought more appealing – mostly his anticlericalism. Still, the precise relationship between Hobbes and the Whigs has remained underexplored, while some still argue that Hobbes was simply too much of an absolutist for the Whigs to rely on his political ideas. This article attempts to show that Hobbes was, in fact, recruited by proto- and (...) early Whigs for their causes. It shows how Hobbesian ideas were used in the toleration debates of the 1660s and 1670s, and even in debates on human reason and liberty of conscience. Then it demonstrates how similar Hobbesian principles, and even phrases, were used subsequently in the formative years of Whiggism from the 1680s to the 1720s, by thinkers who were worried, as Hobbes was, about the political aspirations of the Church. By collecting a series of prominent thinkers who are associated with Whiggism and who engaged with Hobbes in various ways – including Buckingham, Marvell, Cavendish, Warren, Blount, Tindal, Trenchard and Gordon – this article shows that Hobbes was employed systematically in the service of Whig causes, such as limited toleration, civil religion and an opposition to religious persecution. (shrink)

Benedict de Spinoza is one of the most controversial and enigmatic thinkers in the history of philosophy. His greatest work, Ethics (1677), developed a comprehensive philosophical system and argued that God and Nature are identical. His scandalous Theological-Political Treatise (1670) provoked outrage during his lifetime due to its biblical criticism, anticlericalism, and defense of the freedom to philosophize. Together, these works earned Spinoza a reputation as a singularly radical thinker. -/- In this book, Steinberg and Viljanen offer a concise (...) and up-to-date account of Spinoza’s thought and its philosophical legacy. They explore the full range of Spinoza’s ideas, from politics and theology to ontology and epistemology. Drawing broadly on Spinoza’s impressive oeuvre, they have crafted a lucid introduction for readers unfamiliar with this important philosopher, as well as a nuanced and enlightening study for more experienced readers. (shrink)

This chapter is an overview of Elizabeth Cady Stanton's attempts to come to grips with religion during the philosophically eventful nineteenth century in the United States, and an attempt to determine whether she qualifies as an atheist.

This book asks whether there any limits to the sorts of religious considerations that can be raised in public debates, and if there are, by whom they are to be identified. Its starting point is the work of Richard Rorty, whose pragmatic pluralism leads him to argue for a politically motivated anticlericalism rather than an epistemologically driven atheism. Rather than defend Rorty’s position directly, Gascoigne argues for an epistemological stance he calls ‘Pragmatist Fideism’. The starting point for this exercise (...) in what Rorty calls ‘Cultural Politics’ is an acknowledgement that one must appeal to both secularists and those with religious commitments. In recent years ‘reformed’ epistemologists have aimed to establish a parity of epistemic esteem between religious and perceptual beliefs by exploiting an analogy in respect of their mutual vulnerability to sceptical challenges. Through an examination of this analogy, and in light of Wittgenstein’s On Certainty, this book argues that understood correctly the ‘parity’ argument in fact lends epistemological support to the argument that religious considerations should not be raised in public debate. The political price paid—paying the price of politics—is worth it: the religious thinker is provided with a good reason for maintaining that their practices and beliefs are not undermined by other forms of religious life. (shrink)

Richard Rorty is one of the most oft-cited yet least understood philosophers of the twentieth century. This book offers an overview and introduction to Rorty's ideas, key writings and contributions to the various fields of philosophy. Chronologically organized, the book traces the development of Rorty's thought and examines all the key topics, and controversies, central to his work. Ronald A. Kuipers introduces Rorty's complex thought through the exploration of three Rortyan personas: The Philosophical Therapist, The Liberal Ironist, and the Anticlerical (...) Prophet. This exploration of Rorty's multivalent yet deeply coherent intellectual identity is set against the background of Rorty's personal motivations for studying philosophy, and for pursuing the controversial questions he did. The book portrays how, in conversation with the traditions of American Pragmatism, Analytic Philosophy, and Continental Thought, Rorty weaves his own unique and original philosophy. Rorty's originality resides in his fresh approach to interrelated social and political problems, revealing a thinker who has important reasons for wading into controversial intellectual waters. This is the ideal companion to study of this hugely influential thinker. (shrink)

¿Es el desideratum secularista de separación Iglesia-Estado capaz de enfrentar las consecuencias negativas de la revitalización política de los conservadurismos religiosos y la instrumentalización de la religiosidad popular para fines antiigualitarios? La respuesta negativa es la tesis de la que parto para analizar por qué los liberalismos secularistas y postsecularistas no pueden procesar ni en la teoría ni en la práctica la reordenación política de las iglesias cristianas conservadoras (católicas y evangélicas) en nuestra región. Esto no me conduce a abrazar (...) una teología política ni un relativismo abstencionista. Me interesa estudiar la plausibilidad de desarrollar una postura ético-política anticlerical que no desprecia la religiosidad popular ni el potencial emancipador en los fenómenos religiosos, en un mundo en el que no es ni moral ni históricamente viable soslayarlos insistiendo en colocarlos en la esfera inasible de lo privado o en un pasado sublimado en procesos de secularización. La hipótesis guía de este artículo es que la cuestión normativa y política básica sobre la que tratan la mayor parte de los debates sobre secularización en la actualidad es la participación de las iglesias en lo político por medio de la formación del juicio y la voluntad públicos. -/- . (shrink)

Malgré l’évidente réticence du parti anticlérical à adopter une nouvelle religion avec un dogme et des sacrements, la promotion philosophico-politique du lien social sous la Troisième République a conduit à revisiter en théorie, sinon en pratique, quelques thèmes majeurs du positivisme religieux. Le parcours ici proposé va de la politique (Ferry, Léon Bourgeois, Jaurès, la libre-pensée) à la philosophie morale et sociale (Jean-Marie Guyau, Alfred Fouillée, Gustave Belot, Émile Boutroux) et de celle-ci à la sociologie (Durkheim) et à l’analyse de (...) la pensée (Alain). L’usage ambigu, sélectif, des textes et des idées de Comte, mélange d’hommage et d’aversion, reflète la liberté d’interprétation qui parvient à féconder une philosophie au-delà de son cadre d’origine. L’enquête privilégie cet axe de recherche et met au jour les transactions par lesquelles s’est monnayé un héritage que l’on aurait tort de croire aujourd’hui disparu. (shrink)

The spectacular “attack upon Christendom” with which Kierkegaard concluded his career (and his life) was not an aberration. It was the culmination of an anticlerical---and, indeed, antiecclesial---tendency that had developed over a considerable period. This development can be followed quite clearly in Kierkegaard’s journals and papers, where we can observe Kierkegaard’s stance as it evolved through his often polemical engagement with the leading ecclesiastical figures of his time, and in particular with Bishop J. P. Mynster, Primate of the Danish Church. (...) Of even greater importance, we can observe Kierkegaard’s increasing appreciation of the significance of the modernizing Revolution of 1848, particularly the ecclesiastical and political consequences of that revolution. But Kierkegaard’s critique also worked its way backward in time from 1848, and in the end it is doubtful whether he viewed any form of earthly congregation as compatible with what he believed to be “the Christianity of the New Testament.”. (shrink)

The career of John Jackson , Arian theologian and controversialist, provides a key to unlocking the early reception and quick collapse of a Newtonian natural apologetic originally developed by Samuel Clarke. The importance of friendship and discipleship in eighteenth-century intellectual enquiry is emphasised, and the links between Newton and his followers are traced alongside those of a group of Cambridge Lockeans, led by Jackson’s direct contemporary Daniel Waterland, who proved instrumental in the initial dismantling of Clarke’s brand of Newtonian apologetic. (...) The controversial context of this engagement is shown to have been largely provided by the religiously compromising rise of freethinking, and Tindal’s Christianity as old as the creation signalled the dangers to proponents of natural religion as an adjunct of Christian apologetic in such a heated atmosphere. Religious division of the sort that resulted paradoxically played into the hands of the freethinkers in the anticlerical atmosphere of the 1730s, and accusations were exchanged between Newtonians and Lockeans accordingly. The dynamic of England’s Enlightenment experience is, then, a complicated one, and, as the career and writings of Jackson and William Whiston demonstrate, it was one which absorbed as well as repudiated ‘enthusiasm’.Author Keywords: Newtonianism; Enlightenment; Enthusiasm; Natural religion; Arianism; John Jackson. (shrink)

This article reconsiders Marx’s thinking on religion in light of current preoccupations with the encroachment of religious practices and beliefs into political life. It argues that Marx formulates a critique of the anticlerical and Enlightenment-critique of religion, in which he subsumes the secular repudiation of spiritual authority and religious transcendence into a broader analysis of the ‘real abstractions’ that dominate our social existence. The tools forged by Marx in his engagement with critiques of religious authority allow him to discern the (...) ‘religious’ and ‘transcendent’ dimension of state and capital, and may contribute to a contemporary investigation into the links between capitalism as a religion of everyday life and what Mike Davis has called the current ‘reenchantment of catastrophic modernity’. (shrink)

Texto publicado em 1915, no diário de orientação anticlerical e bastante ativo à época chamado A Lanterna. É um dos primeiros a tratar da polêmica utilização das obras e das ideias da filosofia de Nietzsche a serviço guerra. E, quanto a isso, toma partido e defende o filósofo contra falsas apropriações, citando trechos de Humano, demasiado humano. De maneira irônica, aponta que não é o Zaratustra de Nietzsche o livro principal dos soldados do Kaiser, mas a Bíblia.

O presente artigo apresenta uma análise baseada em pesquisa bibliográfica e documental e tem como objetivo apresentar a relação entre a laicidade e o direito à liberdade de consciência, diferenciando-a da liberdade religiosa. Apresenta uma retrospectiva de pensadores estrangeiros e nacionais que refletiram sobre o tema da laicidade e de fatos que conduziram à separação entre Igreja e Estado na França (considerada a pátria da laicidade) e no Brasil. Esclarece alguns conceitos básicos, inclusive o próprio conceito de laicidade, muitas vezes (...) erroneamente confundido com anticlericarismo, ateísmo ou perseguição religiosa por parte do Estado. Apresenta a gênese da laicidade no País e conclui relacionando a defesa da laicidade pelo Estado com a defesa do direito individual à liberdade de consciência, sempre levando em conta a legislação pertinente. Partimos da máxima de Lacordaire - Entre o forte e o fraco (...), é a liberdade que oprime e, a lei que liberta - e através de outras citações do mesmo autor e da análise dos documentos coletados, a ela retornamos. Palavras-chave : laicidade; liberdade de consciência; liberdade religiosa.This article presents an analysis based on bibliographic and documentary research and aims to show the relationship between secularity and freedom of conscience, differentiating it from religious freedom. The text shows an overview of national and foreign thinkers who have reflected on the issue of secularism and the events that have led do the separation of church and state in France (considered as the country of the secularism) and in Brazil. It also clarifies some basic concepts, including the concept of secularism, often wrongly taken as anticlericalism in the Country. This text presents the genesis of secularism and concludes by relating the defense of secularism by the state with in defense of individual rights to freedom of conscience, always taking into account the required legislation. Finally, the present text started from the following statement of Lacordaire - "Between the strong and the week (...), is the freedom which oppresses and the law that liberates" - it used other quotes by the same author, it analyzed some collected documents, and then it returned to the statement of Lacordaire. Key words: Secularity; freedom of conscience; religious freedom. (shrink)

Theories concerning the origin, the growth and the efficacy of political elites mainly originated after the first world-war. They arose in circles and with people who resented the increasing democratisation of political life. They were above all meant as a legitimation of conservative ideas with regard to the exertion of politica! power. The years between 1830 and 1914 however can be considered as the incubation-period for these elite-theories. Some examples taken from the Belgian political literature shall illustrate this evolution.The liberal (...) middle class got divided on the interpretation of the political events between 1789 and 1848. The doctrinarians wished to maintain the acquired results whereas the radicals chose for a further sharing ofpower with the lower social classes. The conservatives held the past as an example and in principle they wished a return to the situation that existed before 1789. The contrast between clericals and anticlericals and above all the relationship between church and state interfered with these theoretical conceptions. But neither conservatives nor liberals however had their doubts about the elite-principle.In the second half of the nineteenth century the social consequences of the industrial revolution were felt in such a radical way that the masses too claimed political power in order to improve their destiny.On the political scene the discussion especially crystallized on the demand for universal suffrage and the way of representation. Not only political publicists hut towards the end of the century particularly scientists too supplied a theoretical foundation for the relationship between the elite and the masses. (shrink)

A major new history of how the Enlightenment transformed people’s everyday lives The Secular Enlightenment is a panoramic account of the radical ways that life began to change for ordinary people in the age of Locke, Voltaire, and Rousseau. In this landmark book, familiar Enlightenment figures share places with voices that have remained largely unheard until now, from freethinkers and freemasons to French materialists, anticlerical Catholics, pantheists, pornographers, readers, and travelers. Margaret Jacob, one of our most esteemed historians of the (...) Enlightenment, reveals how this newly secular outlook was not a wholesale rejection of Christianity but rather a new mental space in which to encounter the world on its own terms. She takes readers from London and Amsterdam to Berlin, Vienna, Turin, and Naples, drawing on rare archival materials to show how ideas central to the emergence of secular democracy touched all facets of daily life. Human frailties once attributed to sin were now viewed through the lens of the newly conceived social sciences. People entered churches not to pray but to admire the architecture, and spent their Sunday mornings reading a newspaper or even a risqué book. The secular-minded pursued their own temporal and commercial well-being without concern for the life hereafter, regarding their successes as the rewards for their actions, their failures as the result of blind economic forces. A majestic work of intellectual and cultural history, The Secular Enlightenment demonstrates how secular values and pursuits took hold of eighteenth-century Europe, spilled into the American colonies, and left their lasting imprint on the Western world for generations to come. (shrink)

When censorship was reformed during the era of Joseph II publishing and the book trade underwent a liberalisation. Enlightenment conceptions helped create the image of the ideal reader—someone who reads to acquire knowledge or to improve his spiritual life. During the reign of Joseph II reading spread to all social strata, but readers’ preferences did not follow a reading ideal. This is demonstrated by significant urban-rural disparities. The publishing projects of the Protestant elite met with failure in the distribution phase (...) and with the indifference country people displayed towards spiritual literature. This relates to several other social phenomena such as literacy and living conditions. Archival sources, which are relevant to lending library research, indicate the reading preferences of the urban classes. An uncontrollable reading mania targeted literature and short political and anticlerical writing, which triggered public discussions on the dangers of uncontrolled reading. The print medium helped shape a “reading public“, whose reading activities occupied an area between mainstream cultural consumption and the dissemination of political news. (shrink)

Bernard Mandeville was best known for The Fable of the Bees, in which he demolishes the supposed moral basis of society by a Hobbesian demonstration that civilization depends on vice. Today Mandeville is seen as a trenchant satirist of the manners and foibles of his age. He is also seen as a precursor of some of Adam Smith's doctrines, a forerunner in the field of sociology. A prescient analyst of the dynamics of our modern consumer society, Mandeville is author of (...) a striking naturalistic account of the gradual evolution of modern society from its primitive antecedents. His literary signature, in a manner of speaking, is his famous paradox, "private vices, public benefits." This new edition of Free Thoughts is prefaced by a lengthy and informative introduction by Irwin Primer, who recreates not only the literary, political, and religious atmosphere surrounding Mandeville, but also the controversies that surrounded his writing in mid-eighteenth-century England. Primer includes textual notes on the first and second editions of this classic work. To understand Mandeville's Free Thoughts, one needs to situate it within the context of the religious and political controversies, ongoing subversion, fear and dormant warfare of his times. Those would eventually erupt again and for the last time in the bloody Jacobite rebellion of 1745-46. The first five chapters of the book explore religious and theological issues including the nature of belief and knowledge, the significance of rites and ceremonies, and controversies about Christian mysteries such as the Trinity and free will and predestination. The next five chapters explore controversial issues of church politics, including persecution and toleration across the centuries, the basis of Mandeville's anticlericalism. In the eleventh chapter, he turns aside from matters of religion to review the balance of powers in Britain's government, a mixed or limited monarchy. The final chapter is essentially a repetition of Mandeville's pleas for civil and religious peace through mutual toleration by opposing religious parties. Mandeville's work is of continuing interest to students of culture and history, religion and theology, and political science. Irwin Primer is professor emeritus at Rutgers University who has written widely on Mandeville and the Scottish tradition in philosophy. (shrink)

More's Latin reply to Bugenhagen, given here with a facing English translation, is a comparatively brief but intense rebuttal of the principal points of Lutheran teaching concerning scripture ant tradition, faith and works, grace and free will, clerical celibacy, and the sacraments. It presents arguments elaborated at much greater length in More's other polemical works. _Supplication of Souls_ refutes _A Supplication for the Beggars_, an anticlerical pamphlet by Simon Fish which Henry VIII seems to have regarded with some favor. More (...) places his response in the mouths of the souls in purgatory. In the first book, he contemptuously demolished Fish's loose railery with accurate statistics and historical analysis. In the second, he defends the traditional doctrine of purgatory with brief arguments drawn from reason and a detailed analysis of scriptural passages. _Letter against Frith_ answers John Frith's Zwinglian arguments against the physical presence of Christ in the more. Written to an unknown correspondent, it is the briefest and mildest of More's polemical works and anticipates arguments presented moer elaborately in More's _The Answer to a Poisoned Book_. Besides full introductions and commentaries, a glossary, and an index, this volume contains seven appendices giving the works to which More is replying and other thematic, historical, and bibliographical matter closely related to the three works by More. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Republicanism, Religion, and Machiavelli’s Savonarolan MomentMarcia L. ColishMachiavelli’s readers often take at face value his claim that Christianity has weakened Italy’s civic spirit and martial valor, leaving it open to priestcraft and foreign invasion. Some scholars see this critique of Christianity as an expression of the irreligious, immoral, neopagan, or scientific Machiavelli, making it the chief index of his modernity. 1 One subset within this group treats Machiavelli’s [End (...) Page 597] anthropology as a secularized version of Augustine on original sin, absent an Eden behind it and a redemption before it. 2 Another view of Machiavelli on religion sees him as treating religion, whatever its teachings, functionally, as an instrument promoting desirable political behavior. 3 This is why they regard [End Page 598] Machiavelli as original and modern; although Maury D. Feld notes rightly that Machiavelli is here simply imitating the ancient Roman historians, who all treat religion in just this way. 4 For some proponents of the functionalist interpretation, it does not preclude Christian belief on Machiavelli’s part. For them his brief is not against Christianity itself but against clericalism, the papacy, and Christianity as it is currently interpreted. 5 Still others recognize Machiavelli’s acceptance of signs and portents, saintly behavior and miracles, and other indices of God’s existence and action in human history. They also note Machiavelli’s praise of biblical leaders seen as divinely inspired and his inclusion of them among the founders of religions and states who head his list of heroes. 6 Going farther, some scholars argue that Machiavelli was a conventional, if not an ardent or impeccable, Christian, who joined a religious confraternity before which he preached his Exhortation to Penitence, and the apparent recipient of the last rites of his church after a deathbed confession. 7 [End Page 599]Can these conflicting assessments of Machiavelli and religion be integrated? To some extent, yes. Once, that is, we consider a number of issues not always brought to bear on this question. Machiavelli recognizes that the foreigners who have overrun Italy and deprived Florence of the republic he had served are as Christian as the Italians. At home and abroad, their Christianity has not undermined their military strength or the civic virtue Machiavelli associates with republics. Within contemporary Florence there were three kinds of republicanism on offer, for those unhappy with the Medici restoration of 1512. One group sought to restore the pre-Medici governo stretto constitution dominated by the ottimati. Their opponents defended governo largo republicanism. Machiavelli advocated this type of polity, informed by his reading of ancient history and his assessment of human nature. But another, competing version of governo largo was put forth by Girolamo Savonarola during the Dominican friar’s stormy career as de facto head of the Florentine state from 1494 to 1498. Savonarola’s republican theory combined a number of ideas that Machiavelli loathed: the appeal to the Venetian Great Council as a model, the wish to purge Florence of her sins so that she could serve as the New Jerusalem in the coming apocalypse, and the notion that governo largo was a means to these religious ends, since the more broad-based the government, the more readily could it legislate and enforce moral reform. And, far from self-destructing after the friar’s ashes had been strewn on the Arno, Savonarolan republicanism continued to draw support from a diverse and substantial group of Florentines. Equally alarming, the agents [End Page 600] of this protracted Savonarolan moment seemed to have preempted Machiavelli’s own anticlerical, antipapal, antioligarchic, and antiMedicean positions, as well as a theory of governo largo. If we foreground Machiavelli’s desire to defend his own version of republicanism by undermining the Savonarolan alternative and if we recall that he treats Christianity positively in other contexts, it becomes possible to read those passages where he criticizes Christianity as practiced in Italy as texts with an antiSavonarolan subtext. Read this way, they are not incompatible with his acceptance of Christianity as true or as politically constructive elsewhere. In approaching this topic, we should also remember the longstanding associations that bound Christianity to politics and warfare.Addressing this last point... (shrink)

Afrikaans-speaking Pentecostal Churches were originally part of a revival movement that for various historical reasons chose not to be known as a church. The liturgical space in their churches reflected the anticlerical feeling. From the fifties of the previous century, however, it became important for Pentecostal Churches to be accepted as such within the community and the church world. This led to changes in the organisation of the liturgical space that began to duplicate the liturgical space of the three Afrikaans-speaking (...) Sister churches to a large extent. From the nineties pulpits were replaced with a lectern, and the liturgical space adapted to reflect a new emphasis that became important for these churches. This article briefly examines the history of the use of liturgical space within Pentecostal Churches for the purpose of offering a theological reflection on current trends. (shrink)

La polémique de Kierkegaard contre l’Église est menée au nom d’arguments religieux. Voilà pourquoi c’est dans le « christianisme » du philosophe danois, et plus particulièrement dans son ecclésiologie, que nous chercherons les facteurs de cet anticléricalisme spécifiquement chrétien. Nous en dégagerons les grandes lignes d’une pensée religieuse qui se construit sur l’opposition entre « christianisme » et « chrétienté », ainsi que les principes d’une ecclésiologie de conviction, qui laisse peu de place pour les compromis avec le « Monde (...) ». Kierkegaard’s polemic against Church is led in the name of religious arguments. That’s why it is in the « Christianity » of the Danish philosopher, and more particularly in his ecclesiology, that we will look for the factors of this specifically Christian anticlericalism. We will draw the mean lines of a religious thought which builds itself on the opposition between « Christianity » and « Christendom », and the principles of an ecclesiology of conviction, which gives few place to compromises with the « World ». (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Feminist Studies 41, no. 3. © 2015 by Feminist Studies, Inc. 509 Mytheli Sreenivas Birth Control in the Shadow of Empire: The Trials of Annie Besant, 1877–1878 In March 1877, two London activists provoked a debate about poverty and overpopulation that reverberated across metropole and colony. These activists, Annie Besant and Charles Bradlaugh, republished a book by the American physician Charles Knowlton that outlined methods to prevent conception. TheFruitsofPhilosophy,which (...) Bradlaugh and Besant provocatively subtitled An Essay on the Population Question, had been in limited circulation in Britain since 1833, but the book’s legality was called into question when its previous publisher was charged with obscenity in early 1877.1 Determined to establish the legal right to publish information about contraception, on March 23rd, 1877, Bradlaugh and Besant delivered copies of The Fruits of Philosophy to the police department, the city solicitor, and local magistrates, and they announced their intent to sell the book from their premises at the Freethought Publishing Company on Stonecutter Street in East London. The following day, a crowd filled the narrow space outside the publishing house, and the two activists sold hundreds of copies of Knowlton’s book. When no arrests were made, Besant and Bradlaugh renotified the authorities that they were selling a supposedly obscene book and were informed in turn that papers were 1. S. Chandrasekhar, “A Dirty, Filthy Book”: The Writings of Charles Knowlton and Annie Besant on Reproductive Physiology and Birth Control and an Account of the Bradlaugh-Besant Trial (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1981), 26. 510 Mytheli Sreenivas being prepared for their arrest and prosecution. On the 7th of April, 1877, Besant and Bradlaugh were arrested and taken into custody.2 In their subsequent trial, the two activists linked birth control advocacy to a Malthusian worldview. They argued that the urban working classes and the rural poor in Britain labored under the burden of overpopulation. Humanitarian concern for impoverished people, and not intent to promote obscenity, drove them to disseminate information about birth control. Besant and Bradlaugh were eventually acquitted on a legal technicality, and Bradlaugh moved on to other issues. Besant, however, was dissatisfied with The Fruits of Philosophy because its methods were outdated by the science of the day. She was determined to write a more up-to-date guide explaining contraceptive methods and went on to found a Malthusian League to disseminate birth control information. These events—the trial and Besant’s further campaigns promoting contraception —mark a watershed moment in the history of birth control activism.3 They would shape how reproduction came to be understood not as a private matter, but as a particular sort of social problem, whose implications reverberated from London to the empire in India and back again. To outside observers, Bradlaugh and Besant may have seemed an unlikely pair to set these events into motion. Bradlaugh, at age forty-four, had a long history of association with radical causes. A celebrated atheist and antimonarchical republican, he helped to shape a tradition of mid-nineteenth-century English radicalism that developed in the wake of Chartist decline. As a member of the National Reform League in the 1860s, he had participated in public demonstrations to extend the franchise. His leadership of the National Secular Society made him a popular lecturer among Freethinkers on issues of political democracy, anticlericalism, and occasionally on neo-Malthusianism.4 2. Anne Taylor, Annie Besant: A Biography (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992), 110–12. 3. The term “birth control” was coined in a meeting of Margaret Sanger and her associates in 1914, and thus would not have been in use in the late nineteenth century. The term contraception was not unknown, but had only limited circulation in scientific discourses. Nevertheless, I use both “birth control” and “contraception” interchangeably to mean methods to prevent conception. See Peter C. Engelman, A History of the Birth Control Movement in America (Santa Barbara, CA: Praeger, 2011), xviii. 4. Taylor, Annie Besant, 80–81. Mytheli Sreenivas 511 In comparison to Bradlaugh’s prominence, Besant was relatively unknown. Her public career began after a separation from her husband, the Anglican vicar Frank Besant. Perhaps the couple were ill-suited to each other from... (shrink)

The constitutional provision for the separation of the Church and the State has been in existence for over 200 years. They are now referring to it, no longer remembering how it came about. The fact is that the French Revolution of 1789 was anti-feudal and anticlerical. It separated the affairs of the state from the ecclesiastical so that bishops and cardinals would govern the Church, not the state. The 1917 revolution in Russia also tore the triumvirate of "statehood, orthodoxy, nationality." (...) The state and the Church should have existed separately. The Bolsheviks rejected the old state and the Church, but in their legislation in 1919 the Decree recorded the separation of the Church from the state and the school from the Church. Because they disregarded law, morality and religion and absolutized the state, the state, and especially its punitive organs, trampled on morality, ethics, religion, clergy and their defenders... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:The Future of ReligionMark WoodThe Future of Religion. By Richard RortyGianni Vattimo. Edited by Santiago Zabala. New York: Columbia University Press, 2005. 91 pp.In The Future of Religion, Santiago Zabala, Richard Rorty, and Gianni Vattimo provide contrasting and often complementary reflections on the future of religion after the end of metaphysics. They join a growing number of contemporary theologians, philosophers, and cultural critics who recognize that we are (...) presently undergoing [End Page 162] what may well prove to be the most significant turning point in the history of religious experience, a movement beyond the separatism resulting from absolutist and exclusionary religious claims. In addition to post-Enlightenment critiques of religion, the constitutional separation of church and state, and the retreat of religion resulting from, in Darwin’s words, “the gradual illumination of men’s minds” by advances in science, globalization’s world-transforming integration of individuals from diverse religious backgrounds into communities of shared interest and concern are further weakening the confidence with which any particular religious tradition may claim to possess absolute truth and, even more, fostering transreligious conversation and the formation of a postmetaphysical spiritual culture.The future of religion, writes Vattimo in Vero e falso Universalismo cristiano, lies not in “seeking the triumph of one faith over the others.” Rather we must “rediscover—after the ‘metaphysical’ age of absolutisms and of the identity between truth and authority—the possibility of a postmodern religious experience in which the relation with the divine is no longer corrupted by fear, violence, and superstition” (p. 26). We know all to well the horrific costs of failing to accomplish this goal, and today the union of religious absolutisms and weapons of mass destruction make our failure potentially catastrophic.In his introduction, “A Religion without Theists or Atheists,” Zabala notes that Rorty and Vattimo present a way of thinking beyond the ontotheological tradition that “consists of weakening and dissolving the ancient European concept of ‘Being’ and the very idea of ‘ontological status.’ This new, weak way of thought not only opens up alternative directions, it also recovers tradition: the relationship between the believer and God is not conceived as power-laden but as a gentler relationship, in which God hands over all his power to man” (p. 3). In the “Age of Interpretation” neither science, nor philosophy, nor religion enjoys epistemological or ontological authority over the other. The resulting “Gadamerian culture of dialogue,” which understands that “all positions are equally ‘valid’ because ‘of the lack of confidence in truth’ constitutes the greatest success obtained by the deconstruction of metaphysics” (p. 11). After metaphysics, “postmodern man, no longer needful of the extreme, magical reassurance supplied by the idea of God, accepts the probably that history is not on his side at all and that there is no power capable of guaranteeing him the happiness he seeks” (ibid.). Living without metaphysical foundations means affirming our ontological historicity, epistemological insecurity, and existential finitude. Rather than “search for truth,” says Zabala, we now “seek solidarity, charity, and irony” (pp. 17–18).In “Anticlericalism and Atheism,” Rorty articulates the historical movement to postmetaphysical thinking as one in which “philosophy professors began to stop asking “bad questions—questions like ‘What really exists?’ ‘What are the scope and limits of human knowledge?’ and ‘How does language hook up with reality?’” and began to focus on questions regarding how we can best practice solidarity, charity, and love (p. 29). Rorty’s description of our situation leads him to confess that his earlier self-identification as an atheist was philosophically mistaken. To deny the existence of God assumes one has evidence in support of this claim. But evidence against is equally empirically unavailable as is evidence for the existence of God. President [End Page 163] Bush, Rorty adds, is at least right about this much when he says that “‘atheism is a faith’ because it is ‘subject to neither confirmation nor refutation by means of argument or evidence’” (p. 33). The shift from atheism to anticlericalism is a shift from a metaphysical to a political stance, signifying Rorty’s commitment to challenging antidemocratic structures of power that legitimate their existence by claiming they have been ordained by... (shrink)

Richard Rorty never cared much for religion, to say the least. Faithful to his own philosophical and political outlook, he did, however, abandon atheism in favor of anticlericalism—the view that religion should play no role in the public life of democratic societies.1 This shift sets him apart from advocates of New Atheism (and their opponents), who consider the arguments for atheism a crucial component in the overall case against religion,2 but also from the growing group of religious and nonreligious (...) intellectuals who argue that democratic societies need more, not less, religious contributions to public life.3Rorty also came to articulate—particularly in the last volume of his Collected Papers—his .. (shrink)

In this essay I consider what grounds Spinoza’s defense of the freedom to philosophize, considering why Spinoza doesn’t think that we should attempt to snuff out irrationality and dissolution with the law’s iron fist. In the first section I show that Spinoza eschews skeptical, pluralistic, and rights-based arguments for toleration. I then delineate the prudential, anticlerical roots of Spinoza’s defense, before turning in the final section to consider just how far and when toleration contributes to the guiding norms of governance: (...) peace and empowerment. Once we see how the defense of toleration is anchored in these norms, we form a clearer picture of Spinoza as a liberal perfectionist for whom the bounds of political toleration depends on pragmatic and circumstance-specific assessments of what conduces to the flourishing of the state. This will help to illuminate what is distinctive—and, perhaps, distinctively commendable—about Spinoza’s form of liberalism. (shrink)

This paper explores the role of the Ciceronian tradition in the radical religious discourse of John Toland . Toland produced numerous works seeking to challenge the authority of the clergy, condemning their ‘priestcraft’ as a significant threat to the integrity of the Commonwealth. Throughout these anticlerical writings, Toland repeatedly invoked Cicero as an enemy to superstition and as a religious sceptic, particularly citing the theological dialogues De Natura Deorum and De Divinatione. This paper argues that Toland adapted the Ciceronian tradition (...) so that it could function as an active influence on the construction of his radical discourse. First, it shows that Toland championed a particular interpretation of Cicero's works which legitimised his use of Cicero in this rational context. Then, it shows the practical manifestations of this interpretation, examining the ramifications for how Toland formed three important facets of his campaign against priestcraft: his identification of priestcraft as a superstition; his argument for a rational religion in which priestcraft could play no role; and his portrayal of anticlericalism as a service to the Commonwealth. (shrink)

Though coming from different and distinct intellectual traditions, Richard Rorty and Gianni Vattimo are united in their criticism of the metaphysical tradition. The challenges they put forward extend beyond philosophy and entail a reconsideration of the foundations of belief in God and the religious life. They urge that the rejection of metaphysical truth does not necessitate the death of religion; instead it opens new ways of imagining what it is to be religious -- ways that emphasize charity, solidarity, and irony. (...) This unique collaboration, which includes a dialogue between the two philosophers, is notable not only for its fusion of pragmatism and hermeneutics but also for its recognition of the limits of both traditional religious belief and modern secularism. In "Anticlericalism and Atheism" Rorty discusses Vattimo's work _Belief_ and argues that the end of metaphysics paves the way for an anti-essentialist religion. Rorty's conception of religion, determined by private motives, is designed to produce the gospel's promise that henceforth God will not consider humanity as a servant but as a friend. In "The Age of Interpretation," Vattimo, who is both a devout Catholic and a frequent critic of the church, explores the surprising congruence between Christianity and hermeneutics in light of the dissolution of metaphysical truth. As in hermeneutics, interpretation is central to Christianity, which introduced the world to the principle of interiority, dissolving the experience of objective reality into "listening to and interpreting messages." The lively dialogue that concludes this volume, moderated and edited by Santiago Zabala, analyzes the future of religion together with the political, social, and historical aspects that characterize our contemporary postmodern, postmetaphysical, and post-Christian world. (shrink)

From many Aboriginal elders, such as Tjangika Napaltjani, Bob Williams and Djiniyini Gondarra, to painters, such as Arthur Boyd, Pro Hart and John Forrester-Clack, from historians, such as Manning Clark, and poets, such as Maureen Watson, Francis Webb and Henry Lawson, to celebrated novelists, such as Joseph Furphy, Patrick White and Tim Winton, the figure of Jesus has occupied an endearing and idiosyncratic place in the Australian imagination. It is evidence enough that 'Australians have been anticlerical and antichurch, but rarely (...) antiJesus'. But which Jesus? In what follows, I seek to listen to what some Australians make of Jesus, and to consider some theological implications of their contributions for the enduring quest for an Australian Jesus. (shrink)

The use of the term anti-clericalism for a variety of structurally unrelated phenomena has, for the most part, been rejected by German medieval scholarship, while many English-speaking historians and literary scholars use it in order to denote continuities from the Late Middle Ages to the Reformation period. This article seeks to utilize the term anticlericalism, which is admittedly inadequate for the internal differentiation of movements and phenomena, to contextualize texts and groups criticizing the clergy, pointing to similarities between anticlerical (...) and orthodox ideologies, specifically anti-Judaism and anti-feminism. This allows for both the points of rupture between the Catholic and anti-clerical movements and the importance of anti-clericalism as an indicator of the epochal break between the Middle Ages and the early modern period to be put into perspective. (shrink)

ABSTRACT This paper explores the neglected manuscripts and publications of Edward Hart, an early eighteenth-century Nonjuring bricklayer, whose determination to promote his cause ultimately led to his death. By discussing Hart’s support for High Church doctrines, such as the apostolic succession and non-resistance, this study challenges traditional historiographical associations between artisan theology and ‘radical’ anticlericalism, while also illuminating the fundamental role played by the Nonjuring laity in the dissemination of conservative politico-theological ideas. Moreover, by discussing Hart’s defence of Anglican (...) ‘orthodoxy’, this paper shows that the Nonjurors operated not on the fringes but in the very centre of the early eighteenth-century politico-theological arena. Despite his fierce opposition to the perceived anticlericalism of Latitudinarians and Dissenters, Hart was not entirely subservient to Nonjuring divines. Rather, Hart openly challenged the liturgical reforms proposed by some Nonjuring clergymen, which, he believed, threatened the dwindling communion’s survival. (shrink)

European states differ tremendously in the extent to which their national education systems administer preschool programs, and whether or not these services can serve as day care for working parents. This article traces contemporary policy differences in three countries—France, Sweden, and Germany—to the effects of nineteenth-century conflicts between religious and secular forces over education. Intense, clerical-anticlerical conflict in France led to the incorporation of preschools into the national education system. In Sweden and Germany, the more accommodating relationship between church and (...) state assured that no such incorporation took place. These decisions had lasting consequences for the nature and extensiveness of child care services for preschool-aged children. (shrink)

Fondée sur l’examen des sources d’archives, la présente étude tente de savoir comment les indulgences – en particulier celles qui faisaient l’objet de campagnes méthodiquement conduites – étaient reçues par le peuple chrétien dans le diocèse de Strasbourg entre 1452 et 1518. Une fraction non négligeable de la population, urbaine surtout, acquit ces pardons, mais, si l’offre était répétée trop souvent, la demande fléchissait ; les campagnes devaient être espacées pour éviter cette baisse. La conjonction de l’anticléricalisme populaire qui critiquait (...) la cupidité des clercs, d’une part, et de la sensibilité religieuse bouleversée par la prédication évangélique, d’autre part, produisit le refus des indulgences après 1518-1519. On the ground of research in the records, the present study investigates how, between 1452 and 1518, the Christian population of the Strasbourg diocese received the indulgences, in particular those that were promoted in methodically organized campaigns. A considerable part of the population, mainly the citizens, acquired these remissions, but if the supply was repeated too often, the demand declined; the campaigns had to be spaced out in order to avoid the decline. The conjunction of popular anticlericalism which criticized the clergymen's greed, on the one hand, and of the profound change of religious sensitivity due to Protestant preaching, on the other hand, brought about the refusal of the indulgences after 1518-1519. (shrink)

Julián Sanz del Río, founder of the philosophical movement of Spanish krausism, evolved politically from the moderate to the progressive liberalism between 1844 and 1854. His moderate friends ignored this occurrence, and supported him, until his reviews of two french books published in the Gaceta de Madrid, denounced for heterodoxy by the traditionalist press and then by the Bishops from Barcelona and Zamora, revealed to them his true true political positions and his anticlericalism.

The article analyzes the traditional and innovative worldview components in the political doctrine of Saint-Pierre, developed in his work Project for the Establishment of Perpetual Peace in Europe. Reflecting on the political prospects of mankind, the abbot highlighted the psychological motives that, in his opinion, determine acts of rulers. He proceeded from the idea that human nature does not change, his worldview is characterized by the belief that the final forms of government are already present in his epoch and are (...) not subject to transformation. In his view, the existing political structure prevailing in various countries should not be changed, but there should be formed a supranational collective body, authorized to carry out international arbitration. Referring to Henry IV’s plan for universal peace in Europe, Saint-Pierre did not literally repeat it, although in order to promote his ideas he presented himself as a follower of the great monarch. Proclaiming the value of impartial reasoning, the abbot attached particular importance to convincing the rulers that war is not beneficial to them personally or to their subjects. He connected happiness with the wealth and prosperity of society, subordinating politics to morality. Recognizing progress in the intellectual and economic spheres, he treated wars as a factor impeding mankind’s progress. Unlike most philosophers of Enlightenment, Saint-Pierre did not adhere to anticlericalism. He believed that the other states would join gradually join united Europe, although this process would certainly be very long. Saint-Pierre attached exceptional importance to the legal side of the issue, to the formal agreement, and he definitely underestimated economic differences among nations. (shrink)