The Secular City

Norma Perry

ISBN 10: 0859894169 / ISBN 13: 9780859894166

Published by University of Exeter, GB, 1994

About this Item

Central to the Enlightenment is the ideal of the Secular City, in militant reply to the Civitas Dei of St Augustine. The essays in this volume, all by distinguished eighteenth century specialists, illustrate the elaboration of that vision, both in the planning and depiction of actual cities and in the speculation on social justice to which Voltaire in particular devoted himself. Yet even in him, secularization is never total, and the persistence of a displaced religious, even messianic strain in the Enlightenment is also illustrated in a variety of writers, culminating in the contradictions of the French Revolution.

Seller Inventory # LU-9780859894166

Bibliographic Details

• Title: The Secular City
• Publisher: University of Exeter, GB
• Publication Date: 1994
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0859894169
• ISBN 13: 9780859894166
• Binding: Hardback
• Condition: New

About this title

Synopsis

Central to the Enlightenment is the ideal of the Secular City, in militant reply to the Civitas Dei of St Augustine. The essays in this volume, all by distinguished eighteenth century specialists, illustrate the elaboration of that vision, both in the planning and depiction of actual cities and in the speculation on social justice to which Voltaire in particular devoted himself. Yet even in him, secularization is never total, and the persistence of a displaced religious, even messianic strain in the Enlightenment is also illustrated in a variety of writers, culminating in the contradictions of the French Revolution.

From the Back Cover

The City is for the Enlightenment a central preoccupation, that social space where both the utopian and the pragmatic concerns of the eighteenth century come together in a typical tension. Unlike St Augustine's Civitas Dei, this is to be a city of men and women, planning their social geometry, interacting commercially, elaborating, as far as possible, human and secular principles of justice. This collection of specially commissioned essays, all by distinguished eighteenth-century specialists, charts the process from a variety of angles.