How much of our own self- interest should we be willing to sacrifice for love of another? The Quietists answered, all of it, even the salvation of our own soul. Opposing them were the Jansenists, including Arnauld, who saw self-interest as inescapable. The debate swept across French society in the 17th century, with Bossuet and Fénelon on opposite sides, and was multi- dimensional, with political and ecclesiastical intrigue, charges of heresy, and many shenanigans. Initially theological, the debate’s basis lay in differing philosophical concepts of freewill, with both sides claiming support from Descartes’s views. The debate thus highlights interpretation of the Cartesians, especially Malebranche, a prominent participant in it. Nevertheless, this is the first book on the debate in English.

Behind the Story: Ethical Readings of Qurʾānic Narratives is a pivotal work that presents groundbreaking research on the Qurʾānic narrative as a literary genre with profound moral significance. It underscores the genre's integral role in shaping Islamic moral thought, as manifested in areas like Islamic law, theology, Sufism, politics, and art. The book offers insightful interpretations of various Qurʾānic narratives, delving into their ethical dimensions and challenges. It also examines their historical reception and influence across both Muslim and non-Muslim scholarship, covering diverse disciplines such as mysticism, art, and applied ethics. This volume stands as an invaluable resource for scholars and students seeking a deeper understanding of the Qurʾānic narrative and its multifarious interpretations in the context of Islamic Studies and beyond. Contributors Taira Amin, Halla Attallah, Bilal Badat, Fatih Ermiş, Mohammad Fadel, Hannelies Koloska, Samer Rashwani, Emmanuelle Stefanidis, and Devin Stewart. ما وراء الحكاية: دراسات أخلاقية في القصة القرآنية، يعالج هذا الكتاب القَصص القرآني من حيث هو نوعٌ أدبي ذو مضمون أخلاقي في المقام الأول، الأمر الذي لم يَحظَ بالنظر العلمي والمنهجي من قبل؛ على الرغم من تأثيره العميق في حقول الفقه والكلام والتصوف والسياسة والأخلاق والفن، وغيرها. يقدم القسم الأول قراءات تأويلية تسعى للكشف عن المفاهيم والمبادئ والأسئلة الأخلاقية التي يثيرها القصص القرآني، بينما يكشف القسم الثاني عن تاريخ تلقيها وتأثيرها في فنون عديدة تشمل التصوف والأدب والعمارة والأخلاق التطبيقية. هذا الكتاب لبنة جديدة في منهج دراسة القصص القرآني، ويطمح إلى أن يكون مرجعاً لا غنى عنه للباحثين والطلاب المشتغلين في حقول الدراسات القرآنية، والأخلاق النظرية والتطبيقية، والتصوف، والفنون، والدراسات الإسلامية عمومًا. المساهمون فاتح إرمش، وطاهرة أمين، وبلال بادات، وسامر رشواني، وإيمانويلا ستيفانيديس، وديفين ستيوارت، وهالة عطاء الله، ومحمد فاضل، وهانيليس كولوسكا.

The age of Enlightenment – the so-called age of reason – was also, paradoxically, the age of the Eleusinian mysteries. By attempting to reveal Demeter's secret cult, British, French, and German thinkers and freemasons of the eighteenth century revealed more than they bargained for: the pagan origins of Christian doctrines such as the Trinity and the afterlife, and through the mythical gift of law and agriculture to Eleusis an alternative narrative of the origins of civilisation to that found in the Bible.

In contrast to traditional Enlightenment studies that focus solely on authors and ideas, Gary Kates' employs a literary lens to offer a wholly original history of the period in Europe from 1699 to 1780. Each chapter is a biography of a book which tells the story of the text from its inception through to the revolutionary era, with wider aspects of the Enlightenment era being revealed through the narrative of the book's publication and reception. Here, Kates joins new approaches to book history with more traditional intellectual history by treating authors, publishers, and readers in a balanced fashion throughout. Using a unique database of 18th-century editions representing 5,000 titles, the book looks at the multifaceted significance of bestsellers from the time. It analyses key works by Voltaire, Adam Smith, Madame de Graffigny, Jean-Jacques Rousseau and David Hume and champions the importance of a crucial innovation of the age: the rise of the 'erudite blockbuster', which for the first time in European history, helped to popularize political theory among a large portion of the middling classes. Kates also highlights how, when, and why some of these books were read in the European colonies, as well as incorporating the responses of both ordinary men and women as part of the reception histories that are so integral to the volume.

The fascinating life of Frances Jennings, elder sister of Sarah, Duchess of Marlborough, charting her marriages and changes of fortune, her exile and return, her ambition, political manoeuvring and sincere piety.Frances Jennings, elder sister of Sarah, duchess of Marlborough, had an interesting and eventful life, most notably as the influential wife of Richard Talbot, earl of Tyrconnell, Catholic viceroy of Ireland under James II. Born circa 1649 into a Hertfordshire gentry family, she was a noted beauty at the Restoration court. There, she met and married George Hamilton, a Catholic officer who, after 1667, served in Louis XIV's army. In Paris, Frances raised three daughters, converted to Catholicism, and became an active member of the English Catholic émigré community. Following Hamilton's death, she remarried to Richard Talbot. As vicereine of Ireland, Frances helped re-establish Catholic hegemony, assisting in the foundation of convents and re-consecration of Christ Church cathedral. During the Williamite-Jacobite War in Ireland (1689-91), Frances fled to James II's exiled court in France. In 1691, she received word that her husband, now Jacobite duke of Tyrconnell, had died. Attainted for high treason, she used the Marlboroughs' influence to recover her Irish estates. In 1708, she returned to Dublin, where she died in 1731. Highlighting Frances's political manoeuvrings, religious identity and deep family attachments, this book portrays a complex and contested figure, a woman who acted on multiple stages, in diverse roles, challenging expectations of rank, gender, and 'nationality' in unexpected ways.te-Jacobite War in Ireland (1689-91), Frances fled to James II's exiled court in France. In 1691, she received word that her husband, now Jacobite duke of Tyrconnell, had died. Attainted for high treason, she used the Marlboroughs' influence to recover her Irish estates. In 1708, she returned to Dublin, where she died in 1731. Highlighting Frances's political manoeuvrings, religious identity and deep family attachments, this book portrays a complex and contested figure, a woman who acted on multiple stages, in diverse roles, challenging expectations of rank, gender, and 'nationality' in unexpected ways.te-Jacobite War in Ireland (1689-91), Frances fled to James II's exiled court in France. In 1691, she received word that her husband, now Jacobite duke of Tyrconnell, had died. Attainted for high treason, she used the Marlboroughs' influence to recover her Irish estates. In 1708, she returned to Dublin, where she died in 1731. Highlighting Frances's political manoeuvrings, religious identity and deep family attachments, this book portrays a complex and contested figure, a woman who acted on multiple stages, in diverse roles, challenging expectations of rank, gender, and 'nationality' in unexpected ways.te-Jacobite War in Ireland (1689-91), Frances fled to James II's exiled court in France. In 1691, she received word that her husband, now Jacobite duke of Tyrconnell, had died. Attainted for high treason, she used the Marlboroughs' influence to recover her Irish estates. In 1708, she returned to Dublin, where she died in 1731. Highlighting Frances's political manoeuvrings, religious identity and deep family attachments, this book portrays a complex and contested figure, a woman who acted on multiple stages, in diverse roles, challenging expectations of rank, gender, and 'nationality' in unexpected ways.achments, this book portrays a complex and contested figure, a woman who acted on multiple stages, in diverse roles, challenging expectations of rank, gender, and 'nationality' in unexpected ways.

Jansenism: An International Anthology is the first comprehensive anthology of Jansenist texts in English translation. Covering the full sweep of the Jansenist movement from the 1630s until the early nineteenth century, this anthology is a major asset to historians of early modernity, theologians, advanced and beginner students, and interested non-specialists. Readers of English can now directly hear the voices of the women and men, nuns and priests, and politicians and pamphleteers embroiled in some of the most dynamic controversies of early modern Christianity. While giving due attention to France, the anthology showcases the geographic breadth of Jansenism, from Portugal to Lebanon. Consequently, a team of translators have provided texts translated not just from French and Latin; selections from German, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, and Arabic also appear here. Blanchard and Yoder present a diverse range of texts, including letters, tracts, periodical excerpts, books, treatises, and synodal documents. These readings cover the controversies over divine grace and penance for which Jansenism is infamous, but they also show the widening scope of Jansenists' reformist concerns as the movement developed and changed. They address issues such as liturgical reform, devotion to Mary and the saints, politics, religious toleration, prayer, gender and the role of women in the Church, polemics, and ecclesiastical reform. The whole volume is introduced by an essay introducing Jansenism, exposing the important themes, summarizing the relevant scholarship, and contextualizing the content that will follow. Jansenism: An International Anthology provides the first port-of-call for the study of Jansenism in English. The anthology presents a diverse and rich selection of primary source texts and draws on the best recent research into the fascinating and controversial transnational phenomena called "Jansenism."

This thought provoking book deals with religious scholarship and important controversies of the early modern period, specifically those relating to the question of the salvation of the pagans and the afterlife. From the Reformation, through the Renaissance and on to the seventeenth and eighteenth century, this was a time when religious scholarship was updated with the discoveries of the New World and colonial expansion. These chapters present new work, shedding light on the interplay of philosophy and theology in key thinkers such as Montaigne, Leibniz, Bayle and Spinoza, but also in less known authors such as Gianfrancesco Pico della Mirandola and Sebastian Castellio. Readers will discover analysis of the reshaping of specific theological issues, focussing on the reception of ancient philosophical traditions such as Platonism, Aristotelianism, Stoicism, Epicureanism, and scepticism. The authors investigate the relationship between the ethical models inspired by the heroes and philosophers of antiquity and the ‘new philosophy’. Above all, this book enables exploration of the ways in which discussions of the salvation and virtues of pagans intersected with the early modern reception of ancient philosophy, including a reassessment of the question of the moral status of unbelievers in the early modern period. Students and faculty working on early modern intellectual history will find that this book both inspires and enriches their knowledge. Those with an interest in Renaissance humanism, the history of early modern philosophy and science, in theology, or the history of religion will also appreciate the new contributions that it makes.

This book explores the main currents of European thought between 1350 and 1992, which it approaches in two principal ways: culture as produced by place and the progressive unmooring of thought from previously set religious and philosophical boundaries. The book reads the period against spatial thought’s history (spatial sciences such as geography or Euclidean geometry) to argue that Europe cannot be understood as a continent in intellectual terms or its history organized with respect to traditional spatial-geographic categories. Instead we need to understand European intellectual history in terms of a culture that defined its own place, as opposed to a place that produced a given culture. It then builds on this idea to argue that Europe’s overweening drive to know more about humanity and the cosmos continually breached the boundaries set by venerable religious and philosophical traditions. In this respect, spatial thought foregrounded the human at the unchanging’s expense, with European thought slowly becoming unmoored, as it doggedly produced knowledge at wisdom’s expense. Michael J. Sauter illustrates this by pursuing historical themes across different chapters, including European thought’s exit from the medieval period, the Renaissance, the Reformation, the Scientific Revolution, the Enlightenment and Romanticism, the Industrial Revolution, and war and culture, offering a thorough overview of European thought during this period. The book concludes by explaining how contemporary culture has forgotten what early modern thinkers such as Michel de Montaigne still knew, namely, that too little skepticism toward one’s own certainties makes one a danger to others. Offering a comprehensive introduction to European thought that stretches from the late fourteenth to the late twentieth century, this is the perfect one-volume study for students of European intellectual history.

Despite its many crises, especially in Western Europe, there are 1.3 billion Catholics in the world today. The Church remains a powerful but controversial institution. In Losing a Kingdom, Gaining the World, Ambrogio A. Caiani explores the epic history of the Roman Catholic Church. Throughout the early modern period, the Pope was a secular prince in central Italy. Catholicism was not merely a religion but also a political force to be reckoned with. After the French Revolution, the Church retreated into a fortress of unreason and denounced almost every aspect of modern life. The Pope proclaimed his infallibility; the cult of the Virgin Mary and her apparitions became articles of faith; the Vatican refused all accommodation with the modern state, until a disastrous series of concordats with fascist states in the 1930s. These dark days threatened the very existence of the Church. But as Catholicism lost its temporal power, it made significant spiritual strides and expanded across continents. Between 1700 and 1903, it lost a kingdom but gained the world. Ambitious and authoritative, this is an account of the Church's fraught encounter with modernity in all its forms: from liberalism, socialism and democracy, to science, literature and the rise of secular culture.

This volume explores the notion of the ‘self’ as it was elaborated and expressed by philosophers, novelists, churchmen, poets and diarists in the Enlightenment. The questions raised by the twelve essays and the introduction, explore the unity, diversity and fragility of a recognisably modern self.