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Salvation at Stake: Christian Martyrdom in Early Modern Europe

Salvation at Stake: Christian Martyrdom in Early Modern Europe Page 341 Susan Neiman, Evil in Modern Thought: An Alternative History of Philosophy (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2002), 358 pp. We badly need alternative histories of philosophy. The story told (by me, among others) about philosophy from Descartes to Hegel being dominated by the problematic of epistemological skepticism cries out for supplementation, though not necessarily for replacement. Neiman sees the great figures of this period as worrying more about evil than about knowledge. Ever since Plato, she says, “the worry that fueled debates about the difference between appearance and reality was not the fear that the world might not turn out to be the way it seems to us — but rather the fear that it would.” That is a good example of Neiman’s snazzy prose, which makes this book a pleasure to read, as well as an immensely welcome change from the sort of history of philosophy to which we Anglophones have grown accustomed. (The Germans, as she points out, are better at this sort of thing; compare Copleston to Blumenberg, for example.) Neiman is very successful at reminding us that everybody down to Hegel took theodicy very seriously, but less so when she suggests that http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png Common Knowledge Duke University Press

Salvation at Stake: Christian Martyrdom in Early Modern Europe

Holland, Glenn
Common Knowledge , Volume 9 (2) – Apr 1, 2003
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Publisher
Duke University Press
Copyright
Copyright 2003 by Duke University Press
ISSN
0961-754X
eISSN
1538-4578
DOI
10.1215/0961754X-9-2-344-a
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Abstract

Page 341 Susan Neiman, Evil in Modern Thought: An Alternative History of Philosophy (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2002), 358 pp. We badly need alternative histories of philosophy. The story told (by me, among others) about philosophy from Descartes to Hegel being dominated by the problematic of epistemological skepticism cries out for supplementation, though not necessarily for replacement. Neiman sees the great figures of this period as worrying more about evil than about knowledge. Ever since Plato, she says, “the worry that fueled debates about the difference between appearance and reality was not the fear that the world might not turn out to be the way it seems to us — but rather the fear that it would.” That is a good example of Neiman’s snazzy prose, which makes this book a pleasure to read, as well as an immensely welcome change from the sort of history of philosophy to which we Anglophones have grown accustomed. (The Germans, as she points out, are better at this sort of thing; compare Copleston to Blumenberg, for example.) Neiman is very successful at reminding us that everybody down to Hegel took theodicy very seriously, but less so when she suggests that

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Common Knowledge – Duke University Press

Published: Apr 1, 2003

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