No such lazy skipping for Trombley, who fills the gaps with a greater than usual emphasis on the place of religion in the development of western thought. Increasingly familiar is the role of the golden age of Islam in the development of philosophy, both in the transmission of ancient Greek texts to Europe and in its own innovations. More unusual is the extent to which Trombley discusses the development of Christian thought. This enables us to see the later French, German and Scottish enlightenments (no simplistic reduction to the Enlightenment here) as emerging from a gradual growth of the importance of the individual that has its roots in Christian theology.
This theme of the "liberation of the individual" is what comes closest to giving the book a central narrative. Trombley identifies Augustine'sConfessions as "the first text in which the first-person singular voice, the I, comes into play" in spiritual and intellectual discourse. A thousand years later, this seed would flower in the Reformation's emphasis on the individual's direct relationship to God.
---SPSmith
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