Atheists and Atheism before the Enlightenment by Michael Hunter

Atheists and Atheism before the Enlightenment by Michael Hunter

Anxiety about the threat of atheism was rampant in the early modern period, yet fully documented examples of openly expressed irreligious opinion are surprisingly rare. England and Scotland saw only a handful of such cases before 1750, and this book offers a detailed analysis of three of them. Thomas Aikenhead was executed for his atheistic opinions at Edinburgh in 1697; Tinkler Ducket was convicted of atheism by the Vice-Chancellor's court at the University of Cambridge in 1739; whereas Archibald Pitcairne's overtly atheist tract, Pitcairneana, though evidently compiled very early in the eighteenth century, was first published only in 2016. Drawing on these, and on the better-known apostacy of Christopher Marlowe and the Earl of Rochester, Michael Hunter argues that such atheists showed real 'assurance' in publicly promoting their views. This contrasts with the private doubts of Christian believers, and this book demonstrates that the two phenomena are quite distinct, even though they have sometimes been wrongly conflated.

Michael Hunter is Emeritus Professor of History at Birkbeck, University of London, and a Fellow of the British Academy. He is well known for his publications on Robert Boyle and on the early Royal Society and its milieu. His most recent book is The Decline of Magic: Britain in the Enlightenment (2020).

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9781009268776
ISBN 10	1009268775
Title	Atheists and Atheism before the Enlightenment
Author	Michael Hunter
Condition	Unavailable
Publisher	Cambridge University Press
Year published	2023-07-27
Number of pages	280
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.
Note	Unavailable