Martin Mulsow is Professor of Intellectual History at the University of Erfurt, where he is currently Director of the Gotha Research Center. An internationally renowned intellectual historian, he has been a member of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton and the Wissenschaftskolleg in Berlin. He is the author of more than ten monographs, winner of numerous awards and member of several academies. His recent publications include Enlightenment Underground: Radical Germany 1680–1720 (2015) and Knowledge Lost: A New View of Early Modern Intellectual History (2022). H. C. Erik Midelfort, professor emeritus at the University of Virginia, has translated several works by noted German historians, including Bernd Moeller, Peter Blickle, and Wolfgang Behringer. Most recently he translated Martin Mulsow's book, Knowledge Lost (Princeton University Press, 2022).

• Introduction; 1. The mortal soul: biblicism, materialism and the new science; 2. Nature and idolatry. The ambivalence of the natural from Henry Stubbe to Christian Gabriel Fischer; 3. The doctrine of the temperaments: medicine and the problem of atheism; 4. Natural law, religion and moral scepticism; 5. From Becmann to Stosch: the Socinian contexts of the concordia rationis et fidei [the harmony of reason and faith] (1692); 6. The founders of religion as human beings: Moses and Jesus between inflation and deflation; Conclusion.

'The value of Mulsow's micro-histories does not lie in their generalizations. Indeed, they might be construed as critiques of the possibility of generalization at all. We might begin with a simple question - for example, whether the rise of seventeenth-century natural law was a response to moral skepticism - that has enjoyed a history of equally simple answers. But Mulsow then shows that the question is not so simple after all, exploring the varieties of natural law at play, the complexity of moral skepticism, and the heterogeneity of texts and contexts essential to understanding the intellectual world of the early Enlightenment. The results are both delightful and dizzying … an excellent book…' Jonathan Sheehan, The Journal of Modern History

Martin Mulsow is Professor of Intellectual History at the University of Erfurt, where he is currently Director of the Gotha Research Center. An internationally renowned intellectual historian, he has been a member of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton and the Wissenschaftskolleg in Berlin. He is the author of more than ten monographs, winner of numerous awards and member of several academies. His recent publications include Enlightenment Underground: Radical Germany 1680–1720 (2015) and Knowledge Lost: A New View of Early Modern Intellectual History (2022). H. C. Erik Midelfort, professor emeritus at the University of Virginia, has translated several works by noted German historians, including Bernd Moeller, Peter Blickle, and Wolfgang Behringer. Most recently he translated Martin Mulsow's book, Knowledge Lost (Princeton University Press, 2022).

• Introduction; 1. The mortal soul: biblicism, materialism and the new science; 2. Nature and idolatry. The ambivalence of the natural from Henry Stubbe to Christian Gabriel Fischer; 3. The doctrine of the temperaments: medicine and the problem of atheism; 4. Natural law, religion and moral scepticism; 5. From Becmann to Stosch: the Socinian contexts of the concordia rationis et fidei [the harmony of reason and faith] (1692); 6. The founders of religion as human beings: Moses and Jesus between inflation and deflation; Conclusion.

'The value of Mulsow's micro-histories does not lie in their generalizations. Indeed, they might be construed as critiques of the possibility of generalization at all. We might begin with a simple question - for example, whether the rise of seventeenth-century natural law was a response to moral skepticism - that has enjoyed a history of equally simple answers. But Mulsow then shows that the question is not so simple after all, exploring the varieties of natural law at play, the complexity of moral skepticism, and the heterogeneity of texts and contexts essential to understanding the intellectual world of the early Enlightenment. The results are both delightful and dizzying … an excellent book…' Jonathan Sheehan, The Journal of Modern History

Martin Mulsow is Professor of Intellectual History at the University of Erfurt, where he is currently Director of the Gotha Research Center. An internationally renowned intellectual historian, he has been a member of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton and the Wissenschaftskolleg in Berlin. He is the author of more than ten monographs, winner of numerous awards and member of several academies. His recent publications include Enlightenment Underground: Radical Germany 1680–1720 (2015) and Knowledge Lost: A New View of Early Modern Intellectual History (2022). H. C. Erik Midelfort, professor emeritus at the University of Virginia, has translated several works by noted German historians, including Bernd Moeller, Peter Blickle, and Wolfgang Behringer. Most recently he translated Martin Mulsow's book, Knowledge Lost (Princeton University Press, 2022).

• Introduction; 1. The mortal soul: biblicism, materialism and the new science; 2. Nature and idolatry. The ambivalence of the natural from Henry Stubbe to Christian Gabriel Fischer; 3. The doctrine of the temperaments: medicine and the problem of atheism; 4. Natural law, religion and moral scepticism; 5. From Becmann to Stosch: the Socinian contexts of the concordia rationis et fidei [the harmony of reason and faith] (1692); 6. The founders of religion as human beings: Moses and Jesus between inflation and deflation; Conclusion.

'The value of Mulsow's micro-histories does not lie in their generalizations. Indeed, they might be construed as critiques of the possibility of generalization at all. We might begin with a simple question - for example, whether the rise of seventeenth-century natural law was a response to moral skepticism - that has enjoyed a history of equally simple answers. But Mulsow then shows that the question is not so simple after all, exploring the varieties of natural law at play, the complexity of moral skepticism, and the heterogeneity of texts and contexts essential to understanding the intellectual world of the early Enlightenment. The results are both delightful and dizzying … an excellent book…' Jonathan Sheehan, The Journal of Modern History