Are You Alone Wise? Paperback

Susan Schreiner

The topic of certitude is much debated today. On one side, commentators such as Charles Krauthammer urge us to achieve "moral clarity." On the other, those like George Will contend that the greatest present threat to civilization is an excess of certitude. To address this uncomfortable debate, Susan Schreiner turns to the intellectuals of early modern Europe, a period when thought was still fluid and had not yet been reified into the form of rationality demanded by the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Schreiner argues that Europe in the sixteenth century was preoccupied with concerns similar to ours; both the desire for certainty ― especially religious certainty ― and warnings against certainty permeated the earlier era. Digging beneath overt theological and philosophical problems, she tackles the underlying fears of the period as she addresses questions of salvation, authority, the rise of skepticism, the outbreak of religious violence, the discernment of spirits, and the ambiguous relationship between appearance and reality.

0199964475

9780199964475

English

Oxford University Press

12-Nov-2012

500

Susan E. Schreiner is Professor of the History of Christianity and Theology, University of Chicago Divinity School. Her teaching and research focus on the early modern era in Europe, including the Protestant and Catholic Reformations and the Renaissance.