The Birth of Modern Belief : : Faith and Judgment from the Middle Ages to the Enlightenment / / Ethan H. Shagan.
An illuminating history of how religious belief lost its uncontested status in the WestThis landmark book traces the history of belief in the Christian West from the Middle Ages to the Enlightenment, revealing for the first time how a distinctively modern category of belief came into being. Ethan Sh...
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Superior document: | Title is part of eBook package: De Gruyter DTL Humanities 2020 |
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Place / Publishing House: | Princeton, NJ : : Princeton University Press, , [2019] ©2018 |
Year of Publication: | 2019 |
Language: | English |
Online Access: | |
Physical Description: | 1 online resource (408 p.) :; 4 b/w illus. |
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Other title: | Frontmatter -- Contents -- Preface and Acknowledgments -- Introduction -- Chapter 1. Medieval Varieties of Believing -- Chapter 2. The Reformation of Belief -- Chapter 3. The Invention of the Unbeliever -- Chapter 4. The Unbearable Weight of Believing -- Chapter 5. The Birth Pangs of Modern Belief -- Chapter 6. Enlightened Belief -- Chapter 7. Belief in the Human -- Conclusion -- Abbreviations -- Notes -- Bibliography -- Index |
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Summary: | An illuminating history of how religious belief lost its uncontested status in the WestThis landmark book traces the history of belief in the Christian West from the Middle Ages to the Enlightenment, revealing for the first time how a distinctively modern category of belief came into being. Ethan Shagan focuses not on what people believed, which is the normal concern of Reformation history, but on the more fundamental question of what people took belief to be.Shagan shows how religious belief enjoyed a special prestige in medieval Europe, one that set it apart from judgment, opinion, and the evidence of the senses. But with the outbreak of the Protestant Reformation, the question of just what kind of knowledge religious belief was-and how it related to more mundane ways of knowing-was forced into the open. As the warring churches fought over the answer, each claimed belief as their exclusive possession, insisting that their rivals were unbelievers. Shagan challenges the common notion that modern belief was a gift of the Reformation, showing how it was as much a reaction against Luther and Calvin as it was against the Council of Trent. He describes how dissidents on both sides came to regard religious belief as something that needed to be justified by individual judgment, evidence, and argument.Brilliantly illuminating, The Birth of Modern Belief demonstrates how belief came to occupy such an ambivalent place in the modern world, becoming the essential category by which we express our judgments about science, society, and the sacred, but at the expense of the unique status religion once enjoyed. |
Format: | Mode of access: Internet via World Wide Web. |
ISBN: | 9780691184944 9783110737769 9783110604252 9783110603255 9783110610765 9783110664232 9783110604030 9783110603149 9783110610178 9783110606195 9783110606591 |
DOI: | 10.1515/9780691184944?locatt=mode:legacy |
Access: | restricted access |
Hierarchical level: | Monograph |
Statement of Responsibility: | Ethan H. Shagan. |