ABSTRACTThis article examines the controversy surrounding Andreas Hojer, the future professor of natural law, and his youthful work on the non-prohibition of incestuous marriages by divine law that took place in 1719–1720 in Copenhagen. The article discusses manuscript sources from the theological faculty and central government to show how the controversy concerned not just Hojer's allegedly dangerous arguments but also embodied a heated debate about the liberty to discuss such matters in print. The controversy moreover reveals the significant presence of followers of Christian Thomasius in influential positions in Denmark in the decades around 1700. These Thomasians combined natural law with a strong criticism of the authority of orthodox theologians and, arguably the earliest and most radical, arguments for a wide-ranging liberty of thought, libertas philosophandi, in early modern Denmark. This was in turn met by proponents of a more conservative natural law supporting the theological authorities. The article concludes by discussing how Hojer and the controversy surrounding him illustrate the wider significance of Thomasian natural law for the intellectual culture, for freedom of thought, and for religious and legal reform in early eighteenth-century Denmark.

ABSTRACTThis article examines dictionaries and encyclopedias’ coverage of the term “atheism” in the anglophone world from the early modern period up until the twentieth century. The article recounts how most dictionary- and encyclopedia-makers often portrayed atheism as an irrational and immoral belief system, through their use of negative illustrative quotations or the idea of “atheism” as a denial of God. The article will also show how atheists responded to these dictionaries and encyclopedias, particularly by examining the alternative definition supplied in the middle of the nineteenth century by Charles Bradlaugh, the most important British atheist of the era.

ABSTRACTThe motif of “Moses as legislator”, known since antiquity, was held in special esteem by Jews in Quattrocento Italy, although Christian authors also knew of it. This designation for Moses should be understood against the background of the revival of Platonic thought in the West, which led Jewish scholars, especially in Italy, to emphasize Platonic trends that had long characterized Jewish medieval thought. But Jewish authors of the period were also involved in debates with non-Jews, causing them to draw on classical and scholastic sources better known to Christians. Adapting Arabic–Jewish Platonic texts to Aristotelian humanistic thought eventually gave rise to a new understanding of politics – both practical and theoretical. At the end of the fifteenth century, this new mix of perspectives allowed Jewish and Christian scholars in Italy to interpret Mosaic legislation not only as a divinely revealed collection of moral and religious precepts but also as a model legal system for the modern age – a code that could give various forms of government in early modern Europe a basis in the political exegesis of biblical institutions.

ABSTRACTA leading figure of the British and Indian intellectual stage from the 1880s, Annie Besant (1847–1933) is chiefly remembered for her numerous and somewhat diverging commitments. This article seeks to account for her shift from socialism to theosophy by focusing on the latter as a system of thought and on the philosophical basis of her critique of capitalism. It is argued that the case for the common ownership of means of production that she makes throughout her socialist writings both results from her secularism and explains her eventual drift away from it. In an attempt to promote equality through democratic and pragmatic methods, Besant claimed to predicate her enterprise on the laws of evolution rather than on utopian schemes or revolutionary action. It is shown how this approach drew on philosophies of history: collectivism was deemed the necessary outcome of economic changes and the next stage of industrialization. It is also shown how Besant’s brand of socialism rested on a faith in progress, rather than on scientific reasoning. A secularized theology – her plea for socialism, it appears – was at odds with the philosophical foundations of democracy that she advocated throughout her life.

ABSTRACTAt the turn of the seventeenth century, Bruno and Cavalieri independently developed two theories, central to which was the concept of the geometrical indivisible. The introduction of indivisibles had significant implications for geometry – especially in the case of Cavalieri, for whom indivisibles provided a forerunner of the calculus. But how did this event occur? What can we learn from the fact that two theories of indivisibles arose at about the same time? These are the questions addressed in this paper. Relying on the methodology of “historical epistemology”, this paper asserts that the similarities and differences between the theories of Bruno and Cavalieri can be explained in terms of “shared knowledge”. The paper shows that the idea – on which both Bruno and Cavalieri build – that geometrical objects are generated by motion was part of the mathematical culture of the time. Tracing this idea back to its Pythagorean origins thus sheds light on the relationship between motion and continuum in mathematics.

ABSTRACTThe philosophical allegation of imposture levelled by the Radical Enlightenment at Moses, Jesus, and Muhammad – the three founders of the monotheistic religions – has a complex theological history. Strange as it may sound, it is an idea closely connected to some of the “dangerous” debates conducted by scholastic theologians. Some of these theologians described divine omnipotence in a manner that prompted the vexed question of whether God can deceive us. Of course, no theologian doubted that God could and yet would not deceive us. However, for some scholastics, God permitted the Devil to deceive men. After the Reformation, the Devil assumed a central role in debates between the Christian denominations. Depending on one’s confessional allegiance, the Devil could be the Pope or Luther or Calvin. In this way, the churches of post-Reformation Europe contributed to a process by which the Devil was transformed into the human figure of the “impostor,” preparing the ground, as this article shows, for later, more radical criticisms of religion per se.

ABSTRACTThis study examines the leading early nineteenth-century Scottish moral philosopher Dugald Stewart’s discussion of the origin and development of religion. Stewart developed his account in his final work, The Philosophy of the Active and Moral Powers of Man (1828), in an effort to show that the fact that polytheism was the first religion of humankind does not undermine the truth of monotheism. He wrote in response to similar discussions presented in David Hume’s “Natural History of Religion” (1757), which argued for the primacy of polytheism, and Stewart’s old moral philosophy tutor Adam Ferguson’s Principles of Moral and Political Science (1792), which argued for the primacy of monotheism. Stewart accepted the conclusions of the Scots’ enlightened study of religion, which argued for truth of Hume’s account, but aimed to reassert many of the natural theological arguments about the naturalness of religion that the “Natural History” had challenged. Stewart’s discussion acts as a useful way by which we can assess the achievement of the literati’s study of religion.

ABSTRACTThe conservative German publicist and political theorist, Constantin Frantz (1817–1891), occupies an ambiguous place in German intellectual history. Some, such as Friedrich Meinecke, located him within the rich intellectual tradition of German federalism, highlighting his hostility to the idea of the “nation-state” and the traditions of nationalism, Realpolitik and militarism. Others, by contrast, have situated him within a long genealogy of German fascism, identifying his remarkable 1852 work, Louis Napoleon, as a kind of precursor or antecedent of twentieth-century fascist ideology. This interpretation raises broader questions about the historiography on Bonapartism and Caesarism, which has often been motivated by an interest in the intellectual origins of modern fascism. The present article supplies a reinterpretation of Frantz’s thinking about Bonapartism (Napoleonismus) and Caesarism by focusing on a much broader range of his intellectual output and by tracking the development of his view of Bonapartism’s significance between 1851 and the early 1870s. The main outcome is not just to question Frantz’s place in the “prehistory” of fascism, but also to show how deeply nineteenth-century debates about Bonapartism were connected to concerns about liberalism, democracy, nationalism and imperialism.

ABSTRACTFor the British-Canadian writer and intellectual George Woodcock, the Doukhobors – a persecuted radical Christian sect, many members of which emigrated from Russia to Canada at the turn of the twentieth century – were a continual source of fascination. A cause célèbre for a host of nineteenth-century thinkers, including Leo Tolstoy and Peter Kropotkin, the Doukhobors were frequently portrayed as the exemplars of the viewer’s particular ideological beliefs. The present article examines Woodcock’s shifting interpretation of the Doukhobors, mapped onto the development of an intellectual career that saw him emerge as a leading anarchist thinker, and his broader transition from a British writer to a Canadian public intellectual. Where once he saw the Doukhobors representing anarchism in action, as his politics matured his view of the sect became more complex. Rather than living anarchists, he came to see the Doukhobors’ experience as a powerful reminder of the forces of assimilation at work in modern democracies that threatened the liberties of dissenters. Reflecting Woodcock’s revised anarchist politics, the Doukhobors’ story now became a key component of an intellectual vision that cast a probing light on Canadian history and Canadian cultural politics.

"Before Boas: the genesis of ethnography and ethnology in the German Enlightenment, by Han F. Vermeulen." Intellectual History Review, 27(4), pp. 561–562