Epicureans and atheists in France, 1650-1729 / Alan Charles Kors.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Kors, Alan Charles, author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Epicurus.

Epicureans (Greek philosophy).

Atheism--France--History--17th century.

Atheism.

Atheism--France--History--18th century.

France--Intellectual life--17th century.

France.

France--Intellectual life--18th century.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (ix, 242 pages) : digital, PDF file(s).

Place of Publication:

Cambridge : Cambridge University Press, 2016.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

Atheism was the most foundational challenge to early-modern French certainties. Theologians and philosophers labelled such atheism as absurd, confident that neither the fact nor behaviour of nature was explicable without reference to God. The alternative was a categorical naturalism, whose most extreme form was Epicureanism. The dynamics of the Christian learned world, however, which this book explains, allowed the wide dissemination of the Epicurean argument. By the end of the seventeenth century, atheism achieved real voice and life. This book examines the Epicurean inheritance and explains what constituted actual atheistic thinking in early-modern France, distinguishing such categorical unbelief from other challenges to orthodox beliefs. Without understanding the actual context and convergence of the inheritance, scholarship, protocols, and polemical modes of orthodox culture, the early-modern generation and dissemination of atheism are inexplicable. This book brings to life both early-modern French Christian learned culture and the atheists who emerged from its intellectual vitality.

Contents:

Reading Epicurus

The Epicureans

At the boundaries of unbelief

Historians, atheists, and historical atheists.

Notes:

Title from publisher's bibliographic system (viewed on 06 Jun 2016).

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

1-316-68330-3

1-316-68492-X

1-316-68519-5

1-316-68546-2

1-316-68654-X

1-316-68573-X

1-316-45098-8