Vorwort
A vivid account of the diverse intellectual landscape of the German Enlightenment, exploring radical writing between 1680 and 1720.

Autorentext

Martin Mulsow is Professor of Intellectual History at the University of Erfurt, where he is currently Director of the Gotha Research Center. An internationally renowned intellectual historian, he has been a member of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton and the Wissenschaftskolleg in Berlin. He is the author of more than ten monographs, winner of numerous awards and member of several academies. His recent publications include Enlightenment Underground: Radical Germany 1680-1720 (2015) and Knowledge Lost: A New View of Early Modern Intellectual History (2022).

Klappentext

"The book offers an original reconstruction of long-forgotten but vital controversies among German figures in the "early" Enlightenment, c. 1680-1720, and also explores how the mainstream of the early Enlightenment in Halle and the underground of the fragmented "radical Enlightenment" were mutually dependent on each other"--

Zusammenfassung
The early German Enlightenment is seen as a reform movement that broke free from traditional ties without falling into anti-Christian and extremist positions. But how did the works which were radical and critical of religion during this period come about? And how do they relate to the dominant 'moderate' Enlightenment?

Inhalt

Introduction; 1. The mortal soul: biblicism, materialism and the new science; 2. Nature and idolatry. The ambivalence of the natural from Henry Stubbe to Christian Gabriel Fischer; 3. The doctrine of the temperaments: medicine and the problem of atheism; 4. Natural law, religion and moral scepticism; 5. From Becmann to Stosch: the Socinian contexts of the concordia rationis et fidei [the harmony of reason and faith] (1692); 6. The founders of religion as human beings: Moses and Jesus between inflation and deflation; Conclusion.