Anticlerical legacies

This book offers a new study of Hobbes’s reception among seventeenth- and eighteenth- century deists and freethinkers, showing how influential Hobbes was for anticlerical thinking through a close analysis of the works of a large number of writers, including Charles Blount, John Toland, Antony Collins, Matthew Tindal, Thomas Morgan, and many others.

Elad Carmel is a Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Jyväskylä.

'A careful examination of Hobbes’s influence on early debates about Deism, the place of reason in religion, and the place of religion in society'
J. H. Spence, Adrian College, CHOICE Reviews

'[An] important and fluently crafted study... [which] relies on the perceptive analysis of abundant textual evidence within specific intellectual and political contexts'
Heikki Haara, History of European Ideas

'Carmel’s valuable study contributes to the enriching of our understanding of the intellectual traditions which fostered the radical ideas of the Enlightenment in England.'
Katherine A. East, Intellectual History Review

'In tracing out the Hobbesian roots of [Anthony] Collins’s manifesto, and the deist program on which it drew, Anticlerical Legacies succeeds magnificently. We are left with a greater appreciation of both Hobbes – whose profound and continuing legacy continued to unsettle public discourse well into the next century – and the deists for whom he served as such a powerful role model.'
Andrew R. Murphy, Hobbes Studies

'A groundbreaking exploration of the reception of Hobbes's ideas among English deists and freethinkers. It’s a fascinating window into how Hobbes’s intellectual legacy evolved in a context often overshadowed by his more famous contributions to political theory.'
Jerónimo Rilla, European Hobbes Society