One of the main consequences of recent work in early modern intellectual and religious history has been a discrediting of the notion of a sudden and dramatic transition to the spiritual world of the Enlightenment. Scholars are increasingly examining the underlying spiritual trends and tendencies which confirm the variety and complexity of the slow movement from Renaissance to Enlightenment, and the profound impact of many of the manifestations of intellectual and religious tension during the early modern period. The essays in this volume are a contribution to this process of reappraisal, focusing specifically on the phenomena of scepticism and millenarianism, especially as part of the more pronounced role of the Jews and their culture.
Author(s): David S. Katz, Jonathan I. Israel (eds.)
Series: Brill's Studies in Intellectual History, 17
Publisher: E. J. Brill
Year: 1990
Language: English, French
Pages: 304
City: Leiden
Contributors viii
Introduction ix
Scepticism and the Problem of the Criterion / Avrum Stroll 1
Gibbon and the Idol Fo: Chinese and Christian History in the Enlightenment / J. G. A. Pocock 15
Descartes - An Enthusiast 'malgré lui'? / Michael Heyd 35
Reflections on the Other-Minds Problem: Descartes and Others / Alan Gabbey 59
Descartes and the Method of Annihilation / Amos Funkenstein 70
Dutch Sephardi Jewry, Millenarian Politics, and the Struggle for Brazil (1640-1654) / Jonathan I. Israel 76
Why was Baruch de Spinoza Excommunicated? / Asa Kosher and Shlomo Biderman 98
Queen Christina of Sweden and Messianic Thought / Susanna Akerman 142
A Philo-Semitic Millenarian on the Reconciliation of Jews and Christians: Henry Jessey and his 'The Glory and Salvation of Jehudah and Israel' (1650), E. G. E. van der Wall 161
Au dossier du Sabbataisme: Une relation italienne du XVIIème siècle / Henry Méchoulan 185
'Karaites' in Early Eighteenth-Century Amsterdam / Yosef Kaplan 196
The Hutchinsonians and Hebraic Fundamentalism in Eighteenth-Century England / David S. Katz 237
Priestley, the Jews and the Millennium / J. van den Berg 256
Social Theory and Gothic Horror in the Writings of Simon-Nicolas-Henri Linguet / Jeremy D. Popkin 275
Index
