1.

Record Nr.

UNINA9910154672903321

Autore

Kors Alan Charles

Titolo

Epicureans and atheists in France, 1650-1729 / / Alan Charles Kors [[electronic resource]]

Pubbl/distr/stampa

Cambridge : , : Cambridge University Press, , 2016

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

Descrizione fisica

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

Disciplina

194

Soggetti

Epicureans (Greek philosophy)

Atheism - France - History - 17th century

Atheism - France - History - 18th century

France Intellectual life 17th century

France Intellectual life 18th century

Lingua di pubblicazione

Inglese

Formato

Materiale a stampa

Livello bibliografico

Monografia

Note generali

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

Nota di bibliografia

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Nota di contenuto

Reading Epicurus -- The Epicureans -- At the boundaries of unbelief -- Historians, atheists, and historical atheists.

Sommario/riassunto

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.