The Clandestine and Heterodox Underground of Early Modern European Philosophy, 17th–18th Centuries

—a conference organized by Margaret Jacob, University of California, Los Angeles; Gianni Paganini, Università del Piemonte Orientale; and John Christian Laursen, University of California, Riverside

co-sponsored by the UCLA Department of History; Università del Piemonte Orientale, Vercelli; and Centro di Ricerca della Accademia dei Lincei, Rome

This conference explores philosophical writings that circulated clandestinely in the early modern era—a corpus of some 250 texts in some 2,000 manuscript copies. At its most radical, the clandestine philosophical tract remained rigorously anonymous. These tracts offered a rationalist criticism of philosophy and religion, drawing on classical and Renaissance alternative traditions while providing critical readings of mainstream texts to bring out their errors and ideological slight of hand. Many of the ideas expressed in the manuscripts emerged in print in the works of Voltaire, Hume, d’Holbach, and Diderot. The conference examines how these manuscripts enable a reading of European intellectual history beyond the official professions of faith promoted by the schools and established authors.

Speakers

Jeffrey D. Burson, Georgia Southern University
Sabrina Ebbersmeyer, Københavns Universitet
Karen Hollewand, University of Oxford
Jonathan Israel, Institute for Advanced Study
John Christian Laursen, University of California, Riverside
Inger Leemans, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam
Whitney Mannies, University of California, Riverside
John Marshall, Johns Hopkins University
Gianni Paganini, Università del Piemonte Orientale
Winfried Schröder, Philipps-Universität Marburg
Maria Susana Seguin, Université Paul-Valery Montpelier III
Rienk Vermij, University of Oklahoma