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REVIEWS

change the way people thought" and thus to change the world
order. The Enlightenment was "the laboratory of modernity." History was, in effect, the laboratory of the philosophers.
Ferrone argues that the unifying principle and defining trait
of the Enlightenment is the idea of "the emancipation of man
through man." The Enlightenment was an "emancipation project"
intended to create a "new civilization" grounded in the autonomy
and centrality of man. First and foremost, then, it is the emancipation from religion and the elimination of transcendence in favor
an "entirely immanent standpoint." Voltaire, for example, saw no
need for a religious foundation based on revelation in order to
establish the new universal morality. Jesus Christ was a great and
admirable man, but only a man.
Yet most Enlightenment philosophers did recognize the need
for religion as a support for the social bond. Christianity is to be
replaced by a new universal and natural religion that is purely
instrumental. Rousseau's civil religion, for example, has no doctrines except toleration and sociability. It is designed to support
the "general will," not to create a community of worship of a transcendent God. Religious sentiment and belief must remain hidden in one's heart. Christianity becomes a private matter never
to appear in public life.
Ferrone, I believe, does not realize that civil religion cannot
be a real bond among men, because the sacred cannot be a
human invention and the natural divisions among men cannot
be overcome by a "new idea." Civil religion cannot replace tradition, which permeates everyday life with the sacred. Tradition is
not an idea or a system of ideas, but a fundamental orientation
of the whole person, his beliefs, sensibilities, sympathies. Kant's
Religion within the Limits of Reason Alone, with its elimination of
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Modern Age - Spring 2016

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Modern Age - Spring 2016

Contents
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