Scepticism and Irreligion in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries

Richard Popkin, Ph.D. Columbia 1950, is presently Professor Emeritus, Washington University, St. Louis and Adjunct Professor History and Philosophy at UCLA. He has published nine books, including three with Brill: Isaac La Peyrère, his Life, his Work, his Influence (1987); Millenarianism and Thought 1650-1800, (ed. 1988), Menasseh ben Israel and his World ed. with Y. Kaplan and H. Mechoulan, 1989) and The Third Force in Seventeenth Century Philosophy.Arjo Vanderjagt (1948) is Associate Professor at the University of Groningen. He has published books on Anselm of Canterbury and on late-medieval and Renaissance intellectual history.

• Introduction, Richard Popkin1. Gassendi's scepticism as a religious attitude, Sylvia Murr2. From "learned ignorance" to scepticism: Descartes and Calvinist orthodoxy, Theo Verbeek3. Descartes' scepticism, Richard A. Watson4. Hobbes: religion and ideology, Ezequiel de Olaso5. "A disease incurable": Scepticism and the Cambridge Platonists, Alan Gabbey6. The answer to scepticism of Queen Christina's academy, Susanna Åkerman7. Science, philosophy, and atheism: Edward Stillingfleet's defence of religion, Sarah Hutton8. Orthodoxy and scepticism in the early Dutch enlightenment, Ernestine van der Wall9. Isaac Vossius and the English biblical critics 1650-1689, David S. Katz10. Skepticism and the problem of atheism in early-modern France, Alan Charles Kors11. Scepticism and the Traité des trois imposteurs, Silvia Berti12. The wisdom of Simonides: Bayle and La Mothe Le Vayer, Ruth Whelan13. Bayle's attack on natural theology, Harry M. Bracken14. Das Theodizeeproblem und Bayles fideistischer Lösungsversuch, Lothar Kreimendahl15. Biblical interpretation, Newton and English Deism, James E. Force16. Scepticisme et religion dans la Réponse à un théologien du médecin Gaultier et sa posterité clandestine, Olivier Bloch17. Diogenes Laertius's Life of Pyrrho and the interpretation of ancient scepticism in the history of philosophy: Stanley through Brucker to Tennemann, Constance BlackwellIndex

"This is a valuable work for specialists and necessary for research libraries."Richard M. Golden, Religious Studies Review, 1994."…offre un ensemble d'études particulières d'où transparaissent des lignes de force et des fractures fort utiles à l'historien des idées."F. Moureau, Dix-Huitieme Siecle, 1994."Au total, un volume riche, érudit et cohérent qui ne craint pas la discussion interne..."Willem Frijhoff, Justificatif, 1994."Scepticism and Irreligion contains plenty of interesting material, and is an important addition to the literature on the nature of unbelief in early modern Europe."Scott Mandelbrote, Dutch Review of Church History, 1994.