Nineteenth-Century

became nineteenth-century philosophy simply an alternative to faith? the american logician Richard Rorty once argued precisely that. Rorty saw intellectuals of the long nineteenth-century (c 1789-1914) as being preoccupied by using secular worries: and in the
beginning his declaration
does appear plausible. From Immanuel Kant and G W F Hegel to F H Bradley and Charles Peirce, philosophers of the length tried to discuss information, morality, freedom and ethics on terms that made no enchantment to any unique revelation or divinity beyond purpose. however this active survey argues otherwise: that Rorty's declare isn't most effective an over-simplification, however wrong. The thoughts of the main 19th-century thinkers were not mere substitutions for religion: they had been motivated by means of deep religious concerns. Soren Kierkegaard famously grappled with God, reality and doubt whilst he lambasted the Danish church. If Nietzsche is the exquisite exception then he proves the rule of thumb in view that, as he remarked himself, one noticed 'the theologian instinct' anywhere within the spirit of his age. Joel Rasmussen deftly charts the key discussions of an generation while the hassle of God refused to die.