ABSTRACT

From Carl Becker’s The Heavenly City of the Eighteenth-Century Philosophers to recent work on religion in the Enlightenment, it has been argued that the Enlightenment has significant religious elements, and that in many ways it represents a secularization of Christian values. This article argues that while, broadly speaking, the Christian view of the world is dualistic, the Enlightenment developed a pluralistic outlook in which values such as humanity and toleration took on a new force, and that between ages of confessionalism and nationalism, Enlightenment thought was distinguished by a more comprehensive and inclusive ideal of humanity. The article begins by looking at differences between theologically grounded religions and deism, then turns to recent historiography on the role of religion in the Enlightenment. It goes on to examine d’Alembert’s article on Geneva in the Encyclopédie and eighteenth-century attitudes towards Jews to see how they reflect contemporary views on religion and Enlightenment, and more specifically, on toleration and humanity in a view of the world that had moved beyond the dualisms of chosen and not-so-chosen, saved and not-so-saved. It is also suggested that Becker’s point in his Heavenly City is as much the difference between the loss of values reflected in the subjectivism and nihilism of his time and the assertions of objective truths in both Christian and the Enlightenment outlooks, as it is the hitherto neglected similarities between Christianity and the Enlightenment.

摘要

出自卡尔·贝克尔的《十八世纪哲学家的天堂之城》对于启蒙运动中最近关于宗教的工作，有人认为启蒙运动具有重要的宗教元素，并且在许多方面代表了基督教价值观的世俗化。本文认为，虽然广义上讲，基督教的世界观是二元的，但启蒙运动发展了多元观，其中人性和宽容等价值观焕发出新的力量，在忏悔主义和民族主义时代之间，启蒙思想是以更全面和包容的人类理想为特色。这篇文章首先考察以神学为基础的宗教和自然神论之间的差异，然后转向最近关于宗教在启蒙运动中的作用的史学。它继续检查 d'Alembert 在《百科全书》中关于日内瓦的文章18 世纪对犹太人的态度，以了解他们如何反映当代对宗教和启蒙运动的看法，更具体地说，是在超越了被选中和未被选中、被拯救和被选中的二元论的世界观中，对宽容和人性的看法。不那么保存。也有人认为，贝克尔在其《天城》中的观点既是他那个时代主观主义和虚无主义所反映的价值观的丧失与基督教和启蒙运动观点中对客观真理的主张之间的区别，也是迄今为止被忽视的。基督教与启蒙运动的相似之处。