The Kingdom of Darkness
Bayle, Newton, and the Emancipation of the European Mind from Philosophy

This transformative account of early modern intellectual life culminates with new interpretations of two of its leading minds: Pierre Bayle and Isaac Newton.

Dmitri Levitin (Author)

9781108837002, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 31 March 2022

980 pages
23.6 x 15.8 x 5.6 cm, 1.53 kg

'… Levitin makes a powerful case for the need to reconceptualize understanding of the Enlightenment and its subsequent history and influence on modern thought. The book is a paradigm of academic scholarship. The author's research and presentation are comprehensive and extensive … Essential.' D. B. Boersema, Choice

In 1500, speculative philosophy lay at the heart of European intellectual life; by 1700, its role was drastically diminished. The Kingdom of Darkness tells the story of this momentous transformation. Dmitri Levitin explores the structural factors behind this change: the emancipation of natural philosophy from metaphysics; theologians' growing preference for philology over philosophy; and a new conception of the limits of the human mind derived from historical and oriental scholarship, not least concerning China and Japan. In turn, he shows that the ideas of two of Europe's most famous thinkers, Pierre Bayle and Isaac Newton, were both the products of this transformation and catalysts for its success. Drawing on hundreds of sources in many languages, Levitin traces in unprecedented detail Bayle and Newton's conceptions of what Thomas Hobbes called The Kingdom of Darkness: a genealogical vision of how philosophy had corrupted the human mind. Both men sought to remedy this corruption, and their ideas helped lay the foundation for the system of knowledge that emerged in the eighteenth century.

Preface
Abbreviations and Conventions
Part I. Giving Up Philosophy: The Transformation of a System of Knowledge: 1. Giving Up Philosophy
1.1. The Emancipation of Natural Philosophy from Metaphysics
1.2. The Emancipation of Theology from Philosophy
1.3. Reconstructing the Pagan Mind in Seventeenth-century Europe: A Historico-philosophical Critique of Pure Reason
Part II. Pierre Bayle and The Emancipation of Religion from Philosophy: 2. Pierre Bayle: A Life in the Republic of Letters
2.1. Greece, Asia, and the Logic of Paganism. Cartesian Occasionalism as the only 'Christian Philosophy'
2.2. The Manichean Articles and the 'Sponge of All Religions'
2.3. Theological Method and the Foundations of Protestant Faith
2.4. Virtuous Atheism, Philosophic Sin, and Toleration
Part III. Isaac Newton and the Emancipation of Natural Philosophy from Metaphysics: 3. The Formation of Newton's Natural Philosophical Project, 1664–1687
3.1. After the Principia. Justifying a Science of Properties and the Invention of 'Newtonianism'
3.2. The Queries to the Optice (1706). An Intelligent God, the Divine Sensorium, and the Development of an Anti-metaphysical Natural Theology
3.3. The General Scholium: A Non-metaphysical Physics
3.4. Newton's Kingdom of Darkness Complete
Part IV. Conclusion: The European System of Knowledge, 1700 and Beyond: Conclusion
Bibliography.

Subject Areas: History of ideas [JFCX], Philosophy of mind [HPM], Early modern history: c 1450/1500 to c 1700 [HBLH], European history [HBJD]