Description
Book SynopsisReligion, Science and Moral Philosophy in the Huguenot Enlightenment makes two significant contributions to existing scholarship on the Enlightenment. Firstly, as an author, journalist, translator, and inexhaustible letter writer, the Huguenot pastor and secretary of the Berlin Academy of Science, Samuel Formey, was involved in most of the philosophical debates in the European Republic of Letters during the second half of the eighteenth century. This is the first monograph dedicated solely to Formey’s multifaceted work. Secondly, the book recasts the concept of Religious Enlightenment by considering Formey as a pastor-philosopher whose concept of philosophy included revealed religion instead of perpetuating the image of him as an ‘enemy of Enlightenment’ who opposed the philosophy of his time by referring to religion.
More precisely, the book explores the notion of the compatibility between reason and faith in Formey’s thought on the existence of God, the freedom of will, divine providence and other questions relating to religion and metaphysics. It shows how Formey altered his portrayal of the relation between reason and faith depending on the genre and immediate context of his writings. The broader contextualisation of Formey’s arguments in German rationalist philosophy and Calvinist theology unveils not only the overlaps between Wolffianism and eighteenth-century Calvinism but also gives an impression of the diversity of the thought of Huguenot pastors and philosophers during the Enlightenment.
Table of ContentsAcknowledgements
Abbreviations
Introduction
Reason and faith in the Enlightenment
The Huguenots and the Enlightenment
Religious Enlightenment
Method and structure of the book
- Formey’s concept of philosophy and its relationship to religion
Philosophy as a universal science of reason
The epistemological foundations of Christian philosophy
The Christian philosopher in the French debate about the ‘true’ philosopher
- Formey in the Berlin Huguenot Enlightenment, or how to reconcile the pastor and the philosopher
Early Huguenot socialisation
Acquaintance with Wolffianism
Formey’s transition from pastor to professor of philosophy
- Preaching like a philosopher and philosophising like a preacher
Philosophical preaching between Calvinist homiletic reform and Wolffianism
Formey’s transformation of philosophical sermons into moral philosophical essays
Secularisation of morality
- The existence of God and the superiority of metaphysics
Rationalism against scepticism: Formey’s dictionary entry for ‘God’
Metaphysics against physico-theology: Formey’s revision of the teleological proof of God
Formey and Maupertuis on metaphysics
Newtonians against Wolffians: Perception of the debate by two groups of contemporaries
- Pre-established harmony and fatalism
Popularising Wolff’s philosophy: Formey’s Belle wolfienne
Formey’s multi-vocal criticism of pre-established harmony and the nexus rerum
The origins of Formey’s criticism
- The debate on free will
An empirical science of the soul
Free will between absolute necessity and liberty of indifference
The free will debate at the Berlin Academy
- Providence, moral duties and optimism
The Berlin Academy’s 1751 prize essay competition on the theme of providence
The ‘real’ theory of fortune: Formey and the winning essay
The debate between Formey and Boullier about Leibnizian optimism
- Natural law, morality and science
Formey on Rousseau’s Discours sur les sciences et les arts
Formey’s scientific moral philosophy
Divine and natural law in Formey’s moral philosophy
Conclusion – Religious Enlightenment between Calvinism and Wolffianism
Bibliography
Archival material
Primary sources
Secondary sources
