The Intellectual Consequences of Religious Heterodoxy, 1600-1750

The intellectual consequences of religious heterodoxy in European moral, political, and historical thought have yet to receive the attention they deserve, declare Mortimer (history, Oxford U., England) and Robertson (history of political thought, U. of Cambridge, England), who present ten papers from a March 2008 conference on the topic at Oxford that examine the consequences of heterodoxy on its own terms (as opposed to heterodoxy merely as an incidental way-station on the road to unbelief and/or secularism) in the period 1600-1750. The topic is largely considered in relation to specific intellectual figures, including Hugo Grotius, Thomas Hobbes, Robert Boyle, Isaaac Vossius, Robert Hooke, Pierre Bayle, John Locke, Baruch Spinoza, Giambattista Vico, Paolo Mattia Doria, Conyers Middleton, and David Hume. Annotation c2012 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Sarah Mortimer (D.Phil., Oxford, History, 2007) is an Official Student and Tutor of Christ Church, Oxford, and a University Lecturer in History. She was formerly a Junior Research Fellow of Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge. She is the author of Reason and Religion in the English Revolution: the Challenge of Socinianism (Cambridge, 2010).John Robertson (D.Phil. Oxford, History, 1981) is Professor of the History of Political Thought at the University of Cambridge, where he is a Fellow of Clare College. He was formerly a University Lecturer at Oxford, and Fellow of St Hugh's College. He is the author of The Case for the Enlightenment: Scotland and Naples 1680-1760 (Cambridge, 2005).