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Melancholy Duty

The Hume-Gibbon Attack on Christianity

  • Book
  • © 1997

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Authors:
  1. Stephen Paul Foster

    1. Central Michigan University, Mount Pleasant, USA

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Table of contents (11 chapters)

  1. Front Matter

    Pages i-xiv
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  2. Introduction: Hume, Gibbon, and the Attack on Christianity

    • Stephen Paul Foster
    Pages 1-53

  3. Philosophic History and the Critique of Orthodoxy

    • Stephen Paul Foster
    Pages 55-91

  4. “Of Miracles” at Work in the Decline and Fall

    • Stephen Paul Foster
    Pages 93-127

  5. The Demise of Immortality

    • Stephen Paul Foster
    Pages 129-161

  6. Persecution, Platonism, and the Virulence of Metaphysics

    • Stephen Paul Foster
    Pages 163-190

  7. Monkish Virtues and Conventional Morality: The Moral Critique of Religion

    • Stephen Paul Foster
    Pages 191-211

  8. Politics and Fanaticism

    • Stephen Paul Foster
    Pages 213-237

  9. The Priest and the Prince: Co-Opting the Church

    • Stephen Paul Foster
    Pages 239-264

  10. Naturalizing Religion: Superstition, Enthusiasm, and Religious Conduct

    • Stephen Paul Foster
    Pages 265-306

  11. Attacking Christianity: By Way of Islam

    • Stephen Paul Foster
    Pages 307-330

  12. Conclusion

    • Stephen Paul Foster
    Pages 331-336

  13. Back Matter

    Pages 337-362
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Keywords

About this book

This book studies the complementary features of the thought of David Hume and Edward Gibbon in the complete range of its confrontation with eighteenth-century Christianity. The ten chapters explore the iconoclasm of these two philosophical historians - Hume as the premier philosopher, Gibbon as the consummate historian - as they labored to `naturalize' the study of Christianity, particularly with attention to its social and political dimensions. No other work deals as comprehensively or thoroughly with the attempt of philosophical history's challenge to Christianity. Belief in miracles and the afterlife, the dimensions of fanaticism and superstition, and the nature of religious persecution were the themes that occupied Hume and Gibbon in the making of their critique of Christianity. This book makes a valuable contribution to scholarship in a number of fields including the history of ideas, religious studies, and philosophy. It will be of interest to philosophers of religion, historians of ideas, eighteenth-century intellectual historians, scholars of the Scottish Enlightenment, and Hume and Gibbon scholars.

Authors and Affiliations

  • Central Michigan University, Mount Pleasant, USA

    Stephen Paul Foster

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