This chapter explores the erosion of trust in public facts and the crisis within commonsense conceptions of reality. It traces the evolution of scientific practices, emphasizing the role of early experimental scientists like Robert Boyle in grounding them. Ezrahi argues that the contemporary breakdown of epistemological norms, which previously upheld facts as sociopolitical currency, inevitably undermines the foundations of contemporary democracy. The citizens' diminished confidence in understanding why political actors behave in specific ways, coupled with the disparities between motives and visible effects, fosters the proliferation of conspiracy theories. The current breakdown of epistemological norms manifests itself in the “post truth” era and the ascent of “alternative facts.” Ezrahi scrutinizes the challenges of discerning facts from opinions in journalism and underscores the perils of exposure to fake news. The chapter investigates the erosion of a shared commonsense perception of reality through the lens of the Brexit campaign and the Trump presidency. Ezrahi highlights that the blurring of the cosmological dichotomy between Nature and humans has made it increasingly challenging for the public to differentiate between facts and fiction. Finally, he advocates for an awareness of the public’s role in defining political causes and facts.

Ostensibly, Hume’s Essays do not have much to say about religion. ‘Of Superstition and Enthusiasm’ (1741) may contain an incisive treatment of the psychological origins of religious error and its ecclesiastical and political consequences, but it was the one Essay dedicated to religion published in Hume’s lifetime. But when the topic of religion does come up in the Essays, as it frequently does in examples, asides and footnotes, we find Hume doing two things: outlining the character and dangers of institutional religion on individual happiness and social stability and doing so in a neutral manner characteristic of his wider ‘science of man’. He brought religious belief and priestly power down to the level of another aspect of human life, comparable to the other themes discussed in this guide, and which could subject to ‘scientific’ observation that led to identification of general principles. Piecing together the various discussions of religion, we find Hume articulating a strong anticlericalism in which religion is understood to be a natural propensity of human nature, exploited by priesthoods claiming power over others, but which could be managed through increased scepticism about clerical claims amongst the citizenry and the subordination of church to state.

The chapter explores how Hume’s Essays were received in Germany during the eighteenth century, highlighting the cultural exchange and intellectual shifts of that time. Hume’s influence is analysed in the context of the growing interest in English books and culture in Germany during the eighteenth century, a trend known as ‘Anglophilia’. Hume’s political and economic writings were translated into German shortly after their original publication. His name was held in high regard and his writings were considered to be instructive. But the specifics of cameralism prevented his economic and political essays from having a major impact on German discourse. Nonetheless, new translations continued to appear. In the German reform debate of the late eighteenth century, Hume’s Essays were used to both support the status quo and to advocate for political change. In the early nineteenth century, an academic translation of Hume’s essay was published, acknowledging his contribution to the formation of political economy as a science. By exploring the reception of Hume’s Essays in eighteenth-century Germany, the chapter shows how translations not only played a big role in sharing knowledge during the Enlightenment but also reflected cultural differences.

Chapter 6 completes the theme of the European Mythology of the Indies (III) and analyzes the impact of Enlightenment thought (French and British) on interpretations of Native Americans and Pacific Islanders. The chapter explores myths of primitivism and progress, showing how appeals to scientific authority grew at the expense of reference to biblical texts. It then examines the impact of the scientific voyages of Bougainville and Cook. On the one hand, the manner and customs of some of the South Seas peoples evoked the same kind of comparisons with classical antiquity as had been made in the Americas, especially the Golden Age of Antiquity, and appeared to offer confirmation of the myth of humankind in its infancy. So it was not just the Polynesians who interpreted the first Europeans in terms of their own myths; the same was true vice versa. On the other hand, the “enlightened” scientific expedition produced new data on non-European peoples which laid the foundations for rethinking theories of development of humankind, whether through progress or degeneration. Increasingly towards the end of the eighteenth century, notions of race became more salient in how non-European peoples were understood.

Through a broad history of the interpretation of Pauline letters, the chapter highlights a difference between their earliest understanding as authoritative and scripture-like, and Enlightenment readings when they became valued for their historical worth. Both during and following the Enlightenment, issues surrounding the letters became relevant, such as authorship, provenance, language style, and social-political context. In addition, scholars like F.C. Baur and others mined the letters they deemed authentic for what they might reveal about Early Christianity. Yet the methodologies adopted to assess a letter’s authenticity (authorship) and historical reliability were variously flawed and very often circular, with the result that the scholarship reified a subjective an and unsubstantiated history. Criteria of authenticity reveal Pauline favoritism. The interpretation of Pauline letters as genuine correspondence can be attributed in large part to the flawed interpretation of the nineteenth-century scholar Adolf Deissmann. While rejecting Deissmann’s underlying and determinative rationale, NT scholars nonetheless carried forward his overall assessment of the letters as genuine correspondence.

Throughout the imperial period, but especially in the eighteenth century, the Russian imperial court held a quasi-monopoly on the production, circulation, and conservation of literary artefacts. As the dominant political and economic force in the Russian Empire, it was able to introduce a new type of public sphere by shaping the social mission of literary texts and dictating the norms according to which literature was to be created and judged. This chapter focuses on the reign of Catherine II in order to show how the court promoted social engineering through literature, in particular through the genres of panegyric poetry and neoclassical drama. Celebrated authors in turn benefited from the court’s support. As a result, the imperial palace combined political and aesthetic functions: it introduced a new ceremonial culture and deployed princely patronage to glorify the court’s policies and to impose an absolutist social and aesthetic order.

This chapter explores theologian and pastor Johann Joachim Spalding’s immensely popular Bestimmung des Menschen (eleven editions between 1748 and 1804), its reverberations throughout the German Enlightenment, and the ways in which it intersected with both philosophical and religious questions about humankind’s place in the world. The chapter discusses the ways in which religious thinkers attempted to provide new “apologies” for Christianity against deism and atheism, how they did so in a modern, literary German that solidified their positions in the public sphere, and how these interventions also shaped philosophical discourse in the eighteenth century.

This chapter shows how Enlightenment theology moved beyond its academic and ecclesiastical contexts to become part of a larger campaign for reform. Advocates of a new system of educating and training clergymen turned to the public sphere and cast their project as a continuation of the Reformation. Intended as a rhetorical strategy to solidify support among a Protestant public that was open to a less stringent and dogmatic Christianity than that of Lutheran Orthodoxy or Pietism, Enlightenment theologians paved the way for a fruitful reinterpretation of the Protestant past. The chapter provides an overview of the theological innovations of Halle theologian Johann Salomo Semler (1725–1791), which formed the backbone of much of Enlightenment theology (or “Neology” as it is frequently labeled). The chapter shows how public controversies about binding doctrines led to a series of public assertions that had the rhetorical effect of recasting the historical understanding of the Reformation.

This chapter provides an overview of the book’s argument. It first shows how the association of Protestantism with modern freedom and German philosophy was an artifact of political and social debates in the eighteenth century, a German version of Butterfield’s famous concept of the “Whig” idea of history. It next explores the evolution of the term “Protestant” from the early days of the Reformation to the eighteenth century, concluding with the diversity of German Protestantism on the eve of the 1717 Reformation anniversary. Third, the Introduction discusses the intellectual contexts in which Protestantism and the Reformation were redefined, providing working definitions for such terms as "religion," "philosophy," "theology," and the "Protestant public sphere." Particular attention is paid to disputes over the boundaries of philosophy and religion in the context of Pietism, Wolffian philosophy, and eclecticism. Finally, the Introduction situates the book in the scholarly contexts of Enlightenment historiography, early modern European history and Church history, and the history of modern philosophy.

This chapter will not question the terms of comparison and analogy in abstract methodological models; instead, it will place actors and debates in their appropriate historical context in order to understand why they were interested in comparison and why, in a given context, they practised it in one particular way and not in another. Moreover, each context will be resolutely trans-regional and comparison will be identified as a cross-cultural practice. I will therefore take some distance from current arguments relating comparison only to European colonial expansion. Infra-European tensions and competition were no less important in justifying comparisons than encounters with non-European worlds.

This chapter identifies the longstanding correspondence between the Anglo-Irish novelist, Maria Edgeworth, and the Jewish-American schoolteacher, Rachel Mordecai, as a transnational conduit of ecological inquiry. By teasing out the vagaries and idiosyncrasies of this transatlantic relationship (which lasted almost a quarter of a century), this chapter renders visible a minor tributary of transnational exchange that operated at the peripheries of the nineteenth century’s global power nexus. Both Edgeworth and Mordecai inhabited anomalous social positions and geographical locales, yet their shared ecological interests enabled them to contribute to wider channels of knowledge and experience in the period. Rather than celebrate their relationship as a triumph of lateral transnational exchange, however, the chapter exposes the complex power dynamics that simultaneously undergird and undermine their ecological collaboration. The correspondents’ mutual commitment to Enlightenment ecology may have engendered an invigorating intellectual exchange, but its limits and exclusions are witnessed most acutely in their nervous reflections upon slavery in the wake of the Nat Turner Rebellion of 1831. Even in its attempts to process and interpret Black resistance to slavery, their correspondence colludes to suppress the revolutionary potential of Turner’s alternative ecology.

This chapter focuses on Goldsmith’s The Citizen of the World (1762), which brings together the letters from the Chinese philosopher Lien Chi Altangi and his correspondents that were published in the Public Ledger across 1760 and 1761. Referencing many European Enlightenment writers, the chapter discusses Goldsmith’s work as a text which critically reflects on the meaning – and the possibilities and problematics – of the slippery term ‘cosmopolitanism’, considering the way in which it presents as ‘cosmopolitan’ the workings of both global commerce and the elite republic of letters.

This introduction sets out Major’s view of his age, "the experimental century," in relation to curiosity and curation. Although curiosity had been recuperated from a vice to a virtue in early modern Europe, Major continued to relate curiosity to original sin as a faulty, bodily lust for knowledge. This insatiable desire drove all people since Adam, but it did so more than ever in his age when the bounds and divisions set upon knowledge in the traditional encyclopedia were torn down. Curators applied cura or care (from the same root as curiosity) to knowledge. By acknowledging their own flaws, curators could guide the passion for knowledge closer and closer to truth, which, however, always remained out of human reach.

Race’ presents Goldsmith as a writer who played a role in the consolidation of racial ideology in the eighteenth century. Contrary to the views of some who would hold Goldsmith as an anti-imperialist writer, Goldsmith is presented here as an author whose natural historical writings in particular popularize ostensibly scientific hierarchies of race which themselves informed and underpinned ideologies of empire and subjugation.