Enlightenment and Secularism: Essays on the Mobilization of Reason

Enlightenment and Secularism is a collection of twenty eight essays that seek to understand the connection between the European Enlightenment and the emergence of secular societies, as well as the character or nature of those societies. The contributors are drawn from a variety of disciplines including History, Sociology, Political Science, and Literature. Most of the essays focus on a single text from the Enlightenment, borrowing or secularizing the format of a sermon on a text, and are designed to be of particular use to those teaching and studying the history of the Enlightenment within a liberal arts curriculum.

Christopher Nadon is Associate Professor in the Government Department at Claremont McKenna College. He is author of Xenophon’s Prince: Republic and Empire in the Cyropaedia, and articles on the separation of church and state in the early modern era.