1. SECULARIZATION & MODERNITY
   

2. RESOURCES

1. Giovanni Bellini, “Pieta”

THE FOLLOWING SELECTION OF TEXTS, arranged chronologically from the mid-seventeenth to the early twentieth century, seeks to showcase how questions of modernity and secularization have been explored across a vast swath of rhetorical and literary forms, disciplines, and intellectual projects (theology, historiography, sociology, literature, psychology, aesthetics, science, etc.) for nearly four-hundred years.  In virtually all cases, the materials posted here are selections from texts available in full through GoogleBooks, the Eighteenth-Century Collections Online, the Library of Liberty, the Internet Archive, or other major databases offering texts in the public domain.  The principal objective of this selection, then, is to offer some orientation for research projects and more advanced study.  In many cases, the texts represented are also available in more recent, critical editions still covered under copyright provisions.  When exploring one of these texts in a research paper, you should consult more recent, alternative editions whenever they are available. (T. P.)

1641 – René Descartes, from Meditations on the First Philosophy

1651 – Thomas Hobbes, from Leviathan

1670 – Blaise Pascal, from Pensées

1689 – John Locke, “A Letter Concerning Toleration”

1732 – Baruch (Benedictus) de Spinoza, from Tractatus Theologico-Politicus

1736 – Joseph Butler, from The Analogy of Religion

1739/1740 – David Hume, from A treatise of human nature

1755 – John Wesley, The Nature of Enthusiasm: a Sermon on Acts xxvi.24

1757 – David Hume, The Natural History of Religion

1777 – Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, “Of the Spirit and the Power”

1781 – Documents on the Civil Emancipation of the Jews in Germany, Austria, and France, 1781 - 1791

1783 – Moses Mendelssohn, from Jerusalem: of Religious Power and Judaism

1785 – William Paley, from The Principles of Moral and Political Philosophy

1791 – French Constitution adopted by the National Assembly

1793 – Immanuel Kant, from Religion within the Limits of Reason Alone

1793-1914 – Documents on the Acculturation of German Jews between 1793 and 1930

1794 – Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason

1795 – Samuel Taylor Coleridge, “A Moral-Political Lecture”

1795 – Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, “The Positivity of the Christian Religion”

1800/1801 - Friedrich Hölderlin, “Bread and Wine” & “Patmos”

1802 – William Paley, from Natural Theology

1817 – Samuel Taylor Coleridge, A Lay Sermon

1825 - Henri de Saint-Simon, The New Christianity

1829 – Thomas Babington Macaulay, “Civil Disabilities of the Jews”

1830-1842 – Auguste Comte, from Course in Positive Philosophy, trans. Harriet Martineau, “Introduction”

1835 – Heinrich Heine, from On the History of Philosophy and Religion in Germany, Part I

1841 – John Henry Newman, Tract no. 90, “Remarks on Certain Passages in the 39 Articles”

1841/1854 – Ludwig Feuerbach, from The Essence of Christianity (Preface and Introduction)

1843 – Thomas Carlyle, from Past and Present, Book III (“The Modern Worker”)

1844 – Karl Marx, On the Jewish Question

1845 – Wilhelm Weitling, The Poor Sinner’s Gospel (Das Evangelium eines armen Sünders)

1851 – Arthur Schopenhauer, “On the Emptiness of Existence” and “On Religion: a Dialogue”

1859 – John Stuart Mill, from On Liberty

1860 – 1879 – Charles Darwin on religion and science

1861 – George Eliot, Silas Marner

1864 – Pope Pius IX., Encyclica Quanta Cura (“With much concern”)

1864/1865 – John Henry Newman, from Apologia Pro Vita Sua

1869 – Matthew Arnold, from Culture and Anarchy

1873 – Friedrich Nietzsche, David Friedrich Strauss: the Confessor and the Writer

1874 – John Stuart Mill, Three Essays on Religion

1875 – Émile Zola, The Sin of Father Mouret (La Faute de l’Abbé Mouret)

1876 – George Eliot, from Daniel Deronda

1879 – Pope Leo XIII., Encyclica Aeterni Patris (“On the Restoration of Christian Philosophy”)

1880 – Fyodor Dostoevsky, from The Brothers Karamazov (Chapters 4 & 5)

1886 – Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil

1892 – Pope Leo XIII., Encyclica Au Milieu des Sollicitudes (“On Church and State in France”)

1893 – Leslie Stephen, An Agnostic’s Apology

1904/1905 – Max Weber, from The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism

1905 – Thomas Mann, “Blood of the Walsungs”

1912 – Émile Durkheim, from The Elementary Forms of Religious Life