An Irish Theologian in Enlightenment France1714 - 96: Lukejospeh Hooke - Hardcover

O'Connor, Thomas

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1851821392 ISBN 13: 9781851821396

Publisher: Four Courts Pr Ltd, 1995

Synopsis

Luke Joseph Hooke (1714-96) was an eighteenth-century Irish theologian who tried to express the Catholic faith in a way that was both adequate to the tradition of the faith and appropriate to the intellectual circumstances of the French Enlightenment. This was an ambitious project never more than partially realized.
However, more important than the success or failure of his intellectual effort is the insight his life and work provide into an exciting but troubled era which continues to mark our own. In attempting to bridge the gap between what the eighteenth century believed to be faith and argued to be reason Hooke ensured for himself a life crowded with event and controversy.
This study of his intellectual achievement takes us to the heart of the French ancien regime in its final decades. We discover a re-gime in crisis. Bourbon political stability is prey to international war, rapid economic change and institutional conservatism. French Catholicism is unable to cope creatively with a whole range of new forces: the demand for religious toleration, the decline of theology, the harshness of deist criticism, the discovery of other world religions, the encroachment of the secular power.

Edition details

• Publisher: Four Courts Pr Ltd
• Publication date: 1995
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1851821392
• ISBN 13: 9781851821396
• Binding: Hardcover