Barbarism and Religion: Volume 2
Cambridge University Press
Edition: New Ed, 6/1/2009
EAN 9780521797603, ISBN10: 0521797608
Paperback, 440 pages, 22.9 x 15.2 x 2.8 cm
Language: English
The second volume in the acclaimed sequence of Barbarism and Religion explores the historiography of Enlightenment. John Pocock investigates a series of major authors who wrote Enlightened histories on a grand narrative scale, were known to Edward Gibbon and were important in the latter's own work: Giannone, Voltaire, Hume, Robertson, Ferguson and Adam Smith. With his recognition that the subject of the Decline and Fall demanded treatment of both the patristic as well as the papal church, Edward Gibbon's intellectual trajectory is both similar but at points crucially distinct from the dominant Latin 'Enlightened narrative' these writers developed. This volume is also informed by the perception that the interaction of philosophy, erudition and narrative is central to the development of enlightened historiography: once again John Pocock shows how the Decline and Fall is both akin to but distinct from the historiographical context within which Gibbon wrote his great work.
Introduction
Prelude
the varieties of early modern historiography
Part I. Constructing The Enlightened Narrative
Section I. Pietro Giannone
Jurist and Libertin in the Central Mediterranean
1. Civil and ecclesiastical history
2. Popes and emperors
from the Isaurians to the Hohenstaufen
3. Angevins, Spaniards and Gallicans
to the brink of enlightenment
4. Gibbon and Giannone
narrative, philosophy, erudition
Section II. Voltaire
Neo-Classicst and Philosophe in the Enlightened World-Picture
1. On the horizons of Europe
the kings of the north
2. Courtly monarchy as the instrument of Englightenment
the Siecle de Louis XIV
3. Asia and the dechristianisation of history
the Siecle and the Essai sur les Moeurs
4. The Christian millennium in Europe
the Essai sur les Moeurs
5. The recovery of civil government, the rebirth of fanaticism, and the return to the Siecle
6. Voltaire
the exasperating predecessor
Part II. The Historical Age and the Historical Nation
Section III. David Hume and the Philosophical History of England
1. The problems of history in the Hanoverian kingdoms
2. David Hume
the Essays as contemporary history
3. The History of Great Britain
Hume's modern history
4. England under the House of the Tudor
monarchy, Europe and enthusiasm
5. Hume's History of England
the Enlightened narrative in retrospect
Section IV. William Robertson and the History of Europe
1. The problems of history
the Scottish perspective
2. Scotland and the progress of society
3. The Reign of Charles V and the emergence of the European States
4. Robertson
histories written and unwritten
Part III. The Progress of Civil Society
Section V. Adam Smith
Jurisprudence into History
1. Moral philosophy and the stages of society
2. Smith's Glasgow lectures
narrative and philosophical history
Section IV. Adam Ferguson
the Moderate as Machiavellian
1. Ferguson's Essay
Siberia as the cradle of World history
2. The Memoires Litteraires and the Remains of Japhet
3. Scottish narrative
theoretical and civil history
Part IV. Intending the Decline and Fall
1. The Enlightened narrative and the project of 1776
2. 'Gibbon's dark ages:' the writings of 1765–72
3. Beginning to write
the evidence of the autobiographies
Bibliographies
Index.