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Full-Text Articles in Intellectual History
The Determination Of Man: Johann Joachim Spalding And The Protestant Enlightenment, Michael Printy
The Determination Of Man: Johann Joachim Spalding And The Protestant Enlightenment, Michael Printy
Michael Printy
This article uses Johan Joachim Spalding's Bestimmung des Menschen (1748) to explore the transformation of German Protestantism in the second half of the eighteenth century. The text was at once a philosophical and religious meditation about the senses, the spirit, the nature of creation, and the immortality of the soul. In unleashing a set of discussions about the purpose of "man" that went far beyond his apologetical and devotional intention, Spalding laid the groundwork for the culture of modern German Protestantism, and also introduced a rivalry between theology and philosophy that was one of its constitutive and abiding features.
Protestantism And Progress In The Year Xii: Charles Villers' Essay On The Spirit And Influence Of Luther's Reformation (1804), Michael Printy
Protestantism And Progress In The Year Xii: Charles Villers' Essay On The Spirit And Influence Of Luther's Reformation (1804), Michael Printy
Michael Printy
This article examines Charles Villers's Essay on the Spirit and Influence of Luther's Reformation (1804) in its intellectual and historical context. Exiled from France after 1792, Villers intervened in important French and German debates about the relationship of religion, history, and philosophy. The article shows how he took up a German Protestant discussion on the meaning of the Reformation that had been underway from the 1770s through the end of the century, including efforts by Kantians to seize the mantle of Protestantism for themselves. Villers's essay capitalized on a broad interest in the question of Protestantism and its meaning for …
The Intellectual Origins Of Popular Catholicism: Catholic Moral Theology In The Age Of Enlightenment, Michael Printy
The Intellectual Origins Of Popular Catholicism: Catholic Moral Theology In The Age Of Enlightenment, Michael Printy
Michael Printy
The popular Catholic revival of the nineteenth century was preceded by an intellectual revolution that enabled the Catholic Church to overcome its traditional suspicion of popular religious practices. Central to this transformation was the elaboration of the moral-theological doctrine of equiprobabilism in response to rigorist Augustinian moral pessimism, most fruitfully by Alphonsus of Liguori (1696-1787). His moral theology would set the Church in confrontation with the Catholic Enlightenment. On account of this shift in moral theology, Catholicism was best able of the major Christian churches to preserve within its institutional fold the broad religious revival of the nineteenth century.
From Barbarism To Religion: Church History And The Enlightened Narrative In Germany, Michael Printy
From Barbarism To Religion: Church History And The Enlightened Narrative In Germany, Michael Printy
Michael Printy
The subject of this essay is the historical vision of the German Catholic Enlightenment as seen in the work of Michael Ignaz Schmidt, a Catholic priest and author of the eleven-volume History of the Germans (1778–1793). A proper acknowledgement of Schmidt's career helps us revise the standard account of German historicism and historical practice in the eighteenth century, and also sheds light on the place of religion in the German Enlightenment. Schmidt wrote a thoroughly modern ‘history of manners’ that was indebted both to Voltaire and to Robertson. Yet his work passed into obscurity largely because he focused on the …