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Unbelievers: An Emotional History of Doubt

Unbelievers: An Emotional History of Doubt Downloaded from http://read.dukeupress.edu/common-knowledge/article-pdf/27/3/482/1301564/482kors.pdf by DEEPDYVE INC user on 30 March 2022 LITTLE REVIEWS Alec Ryrie, Unbelievers: An Emotional History of Doubt (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2019), 272 pp. In Ryrie’s world, people do not believe because they are persuaded by arguments and reasons. They choose beliefs on an “emotional”— that is, arational— level and then adopt available arguments to supply their reasons. Intellectual histor- i ans seeking to solve the mystery of the death of God in our culture— as Ryrie’s Nietzsche had understood the modern age — were operating from false episte- mological and psychological premises. Metaphysicians, natural philosophers, heterodox theologians, freethinkers, and savants indeed provided the cognitive building blocks of religious unbelief, but saying that does not explain why anyone appropriated those arguments. The history of unbelief in early modern Europe was not a history of ideas, but a history of emotions. Early modern religious life led to anger at ecclesiastical corruption and anxiety over salvation, which led to a lived doubt. Unbelief in practice preceded unbelief in theory. Ryrie’s anxious and angry actors, however, beset by various and widely divergent sets of doubts, do not construct atheistic worldviews to give plausibi -l ity to any http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png Common Knowledge Duke University Press

Unbelievers: An Emotional History of Doubt

Kors, Alan Charles
Common Knowledge , Volume 27 (3) – Aug 1, 2021
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Copyright © 2021 by Duke University Press
ISSN
0961-754X
eISSN
1538-4578
DOI
10.1215/0961754x-9265311
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Abstract

Downloaded from http://read.dukeupress.edu/common-knowledge/article-pdf/27/3/482/1301564/482kors.pdf by DEEPDYVE INC user on 30 March 2022 LITTLE REVIEWS Alec Ryrie, Unbelievers: An Emotional History of Doubt (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2019), 272 pp. In Ryrie’s world, people do not believe because they are persuaded by arguments and reasons. They choose beliefs on an “emotional”— that is, arational— level and then adopt available arguments to supply their reasons. Intellectual histor- i ans seeking to solve the mystery of the death of God in our culture— as Ryrie’s Nietzsche had understood the modern age — were operating from false episte- mological and psychological premises. Metaphysicians, natural philosophers, heterodox theologians, freethinkers, and savants indeed provided the cognitive building blocks of religious unbelief, but saying that does not explain why anyone appropriated those arguments. The history of unbelief in early modern Europe was not a history of ideas, but a history of emotions. Early modern religious life led to anger at ecclesiastical corruption and anxiety over salvation, which led to a lived doubt. Unbelief in practice preceded unbelief in theory. Ryrie’s anxious and angry actors, however, beset by various and widely divergent sets of doubts, do not construct atheistic worldviews to give plausibi -l ity to any

Journal

Common Knowledge – Duke University Press

Published: Aug 1, 2021

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