Enlightenment Underground2015

Martin Mulsow's seismic reinterpretation of the origins of the Enlightenment in Germany won awards and renown in its original German edition, and now H.C. Erik Midelfort's translation makes this sensational book available to English-speaking readers. In Enlightenment Underground, Muslow shows that even in the late seventeenth century some thinkers in Germany ventured to express extremely dangerous ideas, but did so as part of a secret underground. Scouring manuscript collections across northern Europe, Muslow studied the writings of countless hitherto-unknown radical jurists, theologians, historians, and dissident students who pushed for the secularization of legal, political, social, and religious knowledge. Often their works circulated in manuscript, anonymously, or as clandestinely...