Abstract
Heresy. Blasphemy. Deviance. Evil. These words evoke fear and fascination. They have always represented much that is threatening, and nevertheless much that attracts our curiosity. They are also very much the products of and participants in history. What counts as heresy, blasphemy, deviance, and evil, and what should be done about them, have changed over time, and probably will continue to change. That process of change is one of the most interesting things about these terms and the concepts they represent. This volume explores the ways in which the writing of the history of heresy contributed to the understanding of the term and its related concepts in Europe in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.
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Notes
Alan Ryan, “A More Tolerant Hobbes?” in Susan Mendus, ed., Justifying Toleration ( Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988 );
Richard Rothman, Thomas Hobbes: Skepticism, Individuality and Chastened Politics (Newbury Park: Sage, 1993); see also Glenn Burgess, “Thomas Hobbes: Religious Tolerance or Religious Indifference?” in Nederman and Laursen, eds., Difference and Dissent, pp. 139–161.
See, e.g., Melvin Richter, The History of Political and Social Concepts ( New York: Oxford University Press, 1995 ).
Richard Rorty, Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), p. xv.
John Rawls, The Law of Peoples ( Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1999 ), p. 22.
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© 2002 John Christian Laursen
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Laursen, J.C. (2002). Introduction Histories of Heresy in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries. In: Laursen, J.C. (eds) Histories of Heresy in Early Modern Europe. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230107496_1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230107496_1
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, New York
Print ISBN: 978-1-349-63456-9
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