Epistemic Perspectives on Enthusiasm in Late Seventeenth-Century England

This study examines the late seventeenth-century reception of enthusiasm in England in the context of the contemporary epistemological debate. Challenging characterizations of responses to enthusiasm as partitioned along the rationalist-empiricist divide, I show how parallel critiques of enthusiasm...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Pannese, Alessia (Author)
Format: Electronic Article
Language:English
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Published: Cambridge Univ. Press 2022
In: Harvard theological review
Year: 2022, Volume: 115, Issue: 2, Pages: 243-273
Standardized Subjects / Keyword chains:B England / Enthusiasm / Criticism / Cognition theory / History 1600-1700
IxTheo Classification:CB Christian life; spirituality
KAH Church history 1648-1913; modern history
KBF British Isles
NAB Fundamental theology
VA Philosophy
Further subjects:B Rationalism
B seventeenth-century England
B enthusiasm
B natural philosophy
B Epistemology
B Empiricism
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Summary:This study examines the late seventeenth-century reception of enthusiasm in England in the context of the contemporary epistemological debate. Challenging characterizations of responses to enthusiasm as partitioned along the rationalist-empiricist divide, I show how parallel critiques of enthusiasm by natural philosophers and theologians suggest shared epistemic commitments across methodological and disciplinary boundaries, reflecting evolving concerns in the broader epistemological debate, rather than fixed, domain- or ideology-specific positions. By challenging a crude rationalist-empiricist division, this study aligns itself with previous literature, while also departing from it, in that it locates in the critique of enthusiasm a previously under-examined facet of that debate. By showing that both natural philosophers and theologians rejected enthusiasm for its irrationality, this work also sharpens the current understanding of the epistemic significance of enthusiasm, in that it identifies the crux of the critique of enthusiasm in its lack of reason, and not of an empirical foundation.
ISSN:1475-4517
Contains:Enthalten in: Harvard theological review
Persistent identifiers:DOI: 10.1017/S0017816022000165