The ambition is of this volume to study the role censorship played in the intellectual culture of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, how it was implemented, and how it affected the development philosophy and literary writing. It contains contributions by intellectual historians, philosophers and literary theorists. The first section studies how Enlightenment thinkers were submitted to censorship, in particular the German Spinozists, Pierre Bayle, and the French Encylopedists. The second section on the institutional aspects of censorship contains an analysis of the breakdown of censorship in England around 1640 and a discussion of the impact of censorship on philosophy in the Netherlands. The final section studies the stand three Enlightenment thinkers, namely John Toland, Denis Diderot, and G. W. Leibniz, took on the issue of censorship.
Mogens Lærke, Ph.D. (2003) in History of Philosophy, University of Paris - Sorbonne, is a Harper Fellow at the University of Chicago. He has published extensively on early modern philosophy, notably Leibniz lecteur de Spinoza. La genèse d’une opposition complexe (Champion, 2008).
"Die Beiträge des Bandes erschließen auf hohem Niveau zentrale Fragestellungen und Themen, die jeder, der sich für die geistigen Konstellationen der frühen Neuzeit interessiert, mit Gewinn konsultieren wird. [...] Die Beiträge des gelungenen Bandes bieten spannende Befunde und Einsichten zu einer Thematik, die nicht nur geistesgeschichtlich, sondern auch philosophisch und politisch von Bedeutung ist. Eine Kulturwissenschaft, die sich mit der Archäologie literarischen Kommunikation in allen ihren Formen befaßt, wird ebenfalls von den konzisen Beiträgen dieses Bandes profitieren."
Till Kinzel, Informationsmittel (IFB) : digitales Rezensionsorgan für Bibliothek und Wissenschaft
Acknowledgements
List of contributors
Introduction
PART ONE CENSORING THE ENLIGHTENMENT
Suppress or refute? Reactions to Spinoza in Germany around 1700, Manfred Walther
Pierre Bayle and censorship, Hubert Bost
French royal censorship and the battle to suppress the Encyclopédie of Diderot and D’Alembert, 1751-1759, Jonathan Israel
PART TWO INSTITUTIONS AND PRACTICES OF CENSORSHIP
Between lies and real books: The breakdown of censorship and the modes of printed discourse during the English Civil War, Tue Andersen Nexø
Censorship of philosophy in the seventeenth-century Dutch Republic, Wiep van Bunge
PART THREE ENLIGHTENMENT REFLECTIONS ON CENSORSHIP
Diderot and the publicising of censorship, Colas Duflo
Toland and the censorship of atheism, Tristan Dagron
G. W. Leibniz: Moderation and Censorship, Mogens Lærke
Bibliography
Index
All those interested in intellectual history, the history of the Enlightenment, Early Modern Philosophy, and the notions of censorship, tolerance and freedom of expression.