19th-Century
A01=Espen Hammer
Appreciation
Aspirations
Author_Espen Hammer
Category=QDHR
Category=QRAB
Community
Conflicts
Debunked
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
Ethics
Feuerbach
Fundamentalists
Generous
German
Hegel
Marx
Modernity
Persistence
Philosophy
Rationality
Religion
Secularists
Thesis
Thought
Transformation
Product details
- ISBN 9780226838502
- Weight: 340g
- Dimensions: 152 x 229mm
- Publication Date: 22 Mar 2025
- Publisher: The University of Chicago Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Paperback
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A fresh history of nineteenth-century philosophy’s many ideas about secularization.
The secularization thesis, which held that religious belief would gradually yield to rationality, has been thoroughly debunked. What, then, can we learn from philosophers for whom the death of God seemed so imminent? In this book, Espen Hammer offers a sweeping analysis of secularization in nineteenth-century German philosophy, arguing that the persistence of religion (rather than its absence) animated this tradition. Hammer shows that Kant, Hegel, Feuerbach, Marx, and Nietzsche, each in their own way, sought to preserve and transform religion’s ethical and communal aspirations for modern life. A renewed appreciation for this tradition’s generous thought, Hammer argues, can help us chart a path through needlessly destructive conflicts between secularists and fundamentalists today.
The secularization thesis, which held that religious belief would gradually yield to rationality, has been thoroughly debunked. What, then, can we learn from philosophers for whom the death of God seemed so imminent? In this book, Espen Hammer offers a sweeping analysis of secularization in nineteenth-century German philosophy, arguing that the persistence of religion (rather than its absence) animated this tradition. Hammer shows that Kant, Hegel, Feuerbach, Marx, and Nietzsche, each in their own way, sought to preserve and transform religion’s ethical and communal aspirations for modern life. A renewed appreciation for this tradition’s generous thought, Hammer argues, can help us chart a path through needlessly destructive conflicts between secularists and fundamentalists today.
Espen Hammer is professor of philosophy at Temple University. He has published numerous books, including Adorno’s Modernism: Art, Experience, and Catastrophe.
