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Books by Anton Matytsin

Although many historical narratives often describe the eighteenth century as an unalloyed 'Age of... more Although many historical narratives often describe the eighteenth century as an unalloyed 'Age of Reason', Enlightenment thinkers continued to grapple with the challenges posed by the revival and spread of philosophical skepticism. The imperative to overcome doubt and uncertainty informed some of the most innovative characteristics of eighteenth-century intellectual culture, including not only debates about epistemology and metaphysics but also matters of jurisprudence, theology, history, moral philosophy, and politics. Thinkers of this period debated about, established, and productively worked for progress within the parameters of the increasingly circumscribed boundaries of human reason. No longer considered innate and consistently perfect, reason instead became conceived as a faculty that was inherently fallible, limited by personal experiences, and in need of improvement throughout the course of any individual's life.

In its depiction of a complicated, variegated, and diverse Enlightenment culture, this volume examines the process by which philosophical skepticism was challenged and gradually tamed to bring about an anxious confidence in the powers of human understanding. The various contributions collectively demonstrate that philosophical skepticism, and not simply unshakable confidence in the powers of reason or the optimistic assumption about inevitable human improvement, was, in fact, the crucible of the Enlightenment process itself.

According to most scholars, the Enlightenment was a rational awakening, a radical break from a pa... more According to most scholars, the Enlightenment was a rational awakening, a radical break from a past dominated by religion and superstition. But in Let There Be Enlightenment, Anton M. Matytsin, Dan Edelstein, and the contributors they have assembled deftly undermine this simplistic narrative. Emphasizing the ways in which religious beliefs and motivations shaped philosophical perspectives, essays in this book highlight figures and topics often overlooked in standard genealogies of the Enlightenment. The volume underscores the prominent role that religious discourses continued to play in major aspects of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century thought.

The essays probe a wide range of subjects, from reformer Jan Amos Comenius’s quest for universal enlightenment to the changing meanings of the light metaphor, Quaker influences on Baruch Spinoza’s theology, and the unexpected persistence of Aristotle in the Enlightenment. Exploring the emergence of historical consciousness among Enlightenment thinkers while examining their repeated insistence on living in an enlightened age, the collection also investigates the origins and the long-term dynamics of the relationship between faith and reason.

Providing an overview of the rich spectrum of eighteenth-century culture, the authors demonstrate that religion was central to Enlightenment thought. The term "enlightenment" itself had a deeply religious connotation. Rather than revisiting the celebrated breaks between the eighteenth century and the period that preceded it, Let There Be Enlightenment reveals the unacknowledged continuities that connect the Enlightenment to its various antecedents.

Contributors: Philippe Buc, William J. Bulman, Jeffrey D. Burson, Charly Coleman, Dan Edelstein, Matthew T. Gaetano, Howard Hotson, Anton M. Matytsin, Darrin M. McMahon, James Schmidt, Céline Spector, Jo Van Cauter

The ancient Greek philosophy of Pyrrhonian skepticism spread across a wide spectrum of discipline... more The ancient Greek philosophy of Pyrrhonian skepticism spread across a wide spectrum of disciplines in the 1600s, casting a shadow over the European learned world. The early modern skeptics expressed doubt concerning the existence of an objective reality independent of human perception. They also questioned long-standing philosophical assumptions and, at times, undermined the foundations of political, moral, and religious authorities. How did eighteenth-century scholars overcome this skeptical crisis of confidence to usher in the so-called Age of Reason?

In The Specter of Skepticism in the Age of Enlightenment, Anton Matytsin describes how skeptical rhetoric forced philosophers to formulate the principles and assumptions that they found to be certain or, at the very least, highly probable. In attempting to answer the deep challenge of philosophical skepticism, these thinkers explicitly articulated the rules for attaining true and certain knowledge and defined the boundaries beyond which human understanding could not venture. Matytsin explains the dialectical outcome of the philosophical disputes between the skeptics and their various opponents in France, the Dutch Republic, Switzerland, and Prussia. He shows that these exchanges transformed skepticism by mitigating its arguments while broadening the learned world’s confidence in the capacities of reason by moderating its aspirations. Ultimately, the debates about the powers and limits of human understanding led to the making of a new conception of rationality that privileged practicable reason over speculative reason.

Matytsin also complicates common narratives about the Enlightenment by demonstrating that most of the thinkers who defended reason from skeptical critiques were religiously devout. By attempting either to preserve or to reconstruct the foundations of their worldviews and systems of thought, they became important agents of intellectual change and formulated new criteria of doubt and certainty. This complex and engaging book offers a powerful new explanation of how Enlightenment thinkers came to understand the purposes and the boundaries of rational inquiry.

Papers by Anton Matytsin

Modern Intellectual History, 2021

This article explores continuities between the antiquarian erudition of humanist historians and E... more This article explores continuities between the antiquarian erudition of humanist historians and Enlightenment philosophical histories, showing that supposedly revolutionary developments in eighteenth-century historiography emerged from an older scholarly tradition. It focuses on the research of the Royal Academy of Inscriptions and Letters, a learned society in seventeenthand eighteenth-century France that went from serving as a propaganda tool for promoting King Louis XIV's absolutist regime to becoming the first modern historical research institute and a cradle of the Enlightenment. The article examines the emergence of what might be called "cultural history" or "the history of culture" (histoire des moeurs, as eighteenth-century authors called it). It analyzes how the academicians studied pagan beliefs and speculated about the functions of ancient myths and cults, thus transforming the views about the origin of religion and its role in society. The article also discusses how the academicians made sense of customs and daily practices and how they understood the causes of the progress and decline of civilizations.

The Long Quarrel: Past and Present in the Eighteenth Century, 2021

Recent studies on the Quarrel of the Ancients and the Moderns have revealed that, at its core, th... more Recent studies on the Quarrel of the Ancients and the Moderns have revealed that, at its core, the dispute centered on how exactly to approach the well-known works of Antiquity in a rapidly changing intellectual world.1 Seventeenthand eighteenth-century thinkers reexamined not only the stylistic forms but also the content of texts that had served as models of literary excellence. This is especially evident in how scholars engaged with ancient histories. Full of fables, myths, and inaccuracies, the texts of Herodotus, Thucydides, Livy, Plutarch, and others came under growing scrutiny from a variety of critics. While some early modern historians increasingly questioned the reliability of these ancient accounts, they also recognized that these works provided some of the only sources for a coherent picture of Antiquity. As a result, they had to reconcile the conflicting contents of these texts and reconstruct a stable narrative of ancient history. The Quarrel thus played a crucial role in the transformations of eighteenth-century historical scholarship, as erudite humanist methods faced new challenges from both historical Pyrrhonists, or skeptics, who questioned the possibility of learning about the past with any degree of certainty, and from natural philosophers, many of whom generally sided with the Moderns. The philosophical transformations of the seventeenth century thus offered new opportunities and new challenges for historical scholarship. Debates about historical certainty had raged since the Renaissance, when humanist philologists began to devise new methods of source analysis. The Reformation injected new explosive issues, such as questions about Church 1 For various interpretations of the Querelle des Anciens et des Modernes, see:

Giornale critico della filosofia italiana, 2020

La diffusion ou la divulgation de ce document et de son contenu via Internet ou tout autre moyen ... more La diffusion ou la divulgation de ce document et de son contenu via Internet ou tout autre moyen de communication ne sont pas autorisées hormis dans un cadre privé. © 2017. Classiques Garnier, Paris. Reproduction et traduction, même partielles, interdites. Tous droits réservés pour tous les pays. © Classiques Garnier RÉSUMÉ -Dans la seconde moitié du XVIII e siècle, le Dictionnaire historique et critique (1697) de Pierre Bayle était devenu le texte le plus immanquablement présent dans les bibliothèques particulières françaises. Cet article nous parle de l 'influence du Dictionnaire dans les débats savants de cette période, et examine plusieurs projets de dictionnaires concurrents qu'il met en rapport avec les arguments de Bayle. Il nous parle également des liens entre les querelles religieuses et philosophiques de l 'époque et la popularité croissante des dictionnaires en tant que format. ABSTRACT -Pierre Bayle's Dictionnaire historique et critique became the most widely owned text in French private libraries in the second half of the eighteenth century. This article describes the influence of the Dictionnaire on scholarly controversies in the eighteenth century, exploring various competing dictionary projects in relation to Bayle's arguments and the connection between the religious and philosophical controversies of the period and the increasingly popular dictionary format.

God In the Enlightenment, 2016

Following the revival of ancient skepticism in early-modern Europe, debates about the possibility... more Following the revival of ancient skepticism in early-modern Europe, debates about the possibility of obtaining true and certain knowledge of the world took place not only in metaphysics and in the natural sciences, but also in history and other humanities.

This article describes the polemical debate that took place between Huguenot refugees Pierre Juri... more This article describes the polemical debate that took place between Huguenot refugees Pierre Jurieu and Pierre Bayle following the publication of Bayle’s notorious Dictionnaire historique et critique (1697). It focuses specifically on the volume of letters from anonymous readers published by Jurieu in order to condemn Bayle. The article describes the philosophical, theological, and personal dimensions of their quarrel, and it considers the moral and intellectual implications posed by Jurieu’s publication of anonymous letters that condemned Bayle’s controversial text. Anonymity was a powerful epistolary device in the Republic of Letters that, while divided along confessional lines, was becoming increasingly integrated through learned journals and expanding epistolary networks. This article reflects on the multiple uses of anonymity in the context of the philosophical and theological debates of the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries.

By examining the analogies of sickness and disease used by several opponents of philosophical ske... more By examining the analogies of sickness and disease used by several opponents of philosophical skepticism (Pyrrhonism) in the early 18th century, this article will shed light on the rhetorical strategies used in attempts to undermine the revival of this ancient school of philosophy. It will look at the ways in which anti-skeptics discussed the repercussions of the spread of Pyrrhonism for society and describe how they proposed to “cure” this so-called disease. A consideration of the strategies will both reveal some of the assumptions commonly shared by authors of apologetic literature in the first half of the 18th century and explain why they saw skepticism as such a dangerous philosophical position.

Book Reviews by Anton Matytsin

Journal of Church and State , 2020

The Secular Enlightenment. By Margaret C. Jacob. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2019.... more The Secular Enlightenment. By Margaret C. Jacob. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2019. 265pp. $29.95 Providing a counterpoint to recent Enlightenment scholarship that has emphasized the religious dimensions of eighteenth-century culture, Margaret Jacob reminds us that the period saw a gradual shift "away from religious questions and toward secular ones" (p. 1). The Secular Enlightenment highlights the emergence and proliferation of discourses that either directly criticized revealed religion or indirectly decentered discussions of the afterlife by focusing on reforms to improve the human condition in the present world. The book seeks to explain how Europeans came to imagine political societies as entirely human creations that served purely temporal ends.

H- France Review, 2020

Le Vayer seeks to untangle the ambiguities and apparent contradictions inherent in the writings o... more Le Vayer seeks to untangle the ambiguities and apparent contradictions inherent in the writings of seventeenth-century humanist polymath François de La Mothe Le Vayer. Although he served as a tutor for the young Louis XIV, La Mothe Le Vayer also acquired a reputation for being a libertine and embracing the subversive philosophy of Pyrrhonian skepticism. His extensive writings included both manuals for the instruction of the dauphin and skeptical dialogues about various subjects. While he openly embraced fideism, a view that privileged the reliance on faith over reason, his writings also seemed to challenge established intellectual and political authorities. Manea offers an original reading of these texts, paying attention both to his controversial writings and works "he wrote for the powerful" (p. 13).

Renaissance Quarterly , 2019

Although many historical narratives often describe the eighteenth century as an unalloyed 'Age of... more Although many historical narratives often describe the eighteenth century as an unalloyed 'Age of Reason', Enlightenment thinkers continued to grapple with the challenges posed by the revival and spread of philosophical skepticism. The imperative to overcome doubt and uncertainty informed some of the most innovative characteristics of eighteenth-century intellectual culture, including not only debates about epistemology and metaphysics but also matters of jurisprudence, theology, history, moral philosophy, and politics. Thinkers of this period debated about, established, and productively worked for progress within the parameters of the increasingly circumscribed boundaries of human reason. No longer considered innate and consistently perfect, reason instead became conceived as a faculty that was inherently fallible, limited by personal experiences, and in need of improvement throughout the course of any individual's life.

In its depiction of a complicated, variegated, and diverse Enlightenment culture, this volume examines the process by which philosophical skepticism was challenged and gradually tamed to bring about an anxious confidence in the powers of human understanding. The various contributions collectively demonstrate that philosophical skepticism, and not simply unshakable confidence in the powers of reason or the optimistic assumption about inevitable human improvement, was, in fact, the crucible of the Enlightenment process itself.

According to most scholars, the Enlightenment was a rational awakening, a radical break from a pa... more According to most scholars, the Enlightenment was a rational awakening, a radical break from a past dominated by religion and superstition. But in Let There Be Enlightenment, Anton M. Matytsin, Dan Edelstein, and the contributors they have assembled deftly undermine this simplistic narrative. Emphasizing the ways in which religious beliefs and motivations shaped philosophical perspectives, essays in this book highlight figures and topics often overlooked in standard genealogies of the Enlightenment. The volume underscores the prominent role that religious discourses continued to play in major aspects of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century thought.

The essays probe a wide range of subjects, from reformer Jan Amos Comenius’s quest for universal enlightenment to the changing meanings of the light metaphor, Quaker influences on Baruch Spinoza’s theology, and the unexpected persistence of Aristotle in the Enlightenment. Exploring the emergence of historical consciousness among Enlightenment thinkers while examining their repeated insistence on living in an enlightened age, the collection also investigates the origins and the long-term dynamics of the relationship between faith and reason.

Providing an overview of the rich spectrum of eighteenth-century culture, the authors demonstrate that religion was central to Enlightenment thought. The term "enlightenment" itself had a deeply religious connotation. Rather than revisiting the celebrated breaks between the eighteenth century and the period that preceded it, Let There Be Enlightenment reveals the unacknowledged continuities that connect the Enlightenment to its various antecedents.

Contributors: Philippe Buc, William J. Bulman, Jeffrey D. Burson, Charly Coleman, Dan Edelstein, Matthew T. Gaetano, Howard Hotson, Anton M. Matytsin, Darrin M. McMahon, James Schmidt, Céline Spector, Jo Van Cauter

The ancient Greek philosophy of Pyrrhonian skepticism spread across a wide spectrum of discipline... more The ancient Greek philosophy of Pyrrhonian skepticism spread across a wide spectrum of disciplines in the 1600s, casting a shadow over the European learned world. The early modern skeptics expressed doubt concerning the existence of an objective reality independent of human perception. They also questioned long-standing philosophical assumptions and, at times, undermined the foundations of political, moral, and religious authorities. How did eighteenth-century scholars overcome this skeptical crisis of confidence to usher in the so-called Age of Reason?

In The Specter of Skepticism in the Age of Enlightenment, Anton Matytsin describes how skeptical rhetoric forced philosophers to formulate the principles and assumptions that they found to be certain or, at the very least, highly probable. In attempting to answer the deep challenge of philosophical skepticism, these thinkers explicitly articulated the rules for attaining true and certain knowledge and defined the boundaries beyond which human understanding could not venture. Matytsin explains the dialectical outcome of the philosophical disputes between the skeptics and their various opponents in France, the Dutch Republic, Switzerland, and Prussia. He shows that these exchanges transformed skepticism by mitigating its arguments while broadening the learned world’s confidence in the capacities of reason by moderating its aspirations. Ultimately, the debates about the powers and limits of human understanding led to the making of a new conception of rationality that privileged practicable reason over speculative reason.

Matytsin also complicates common narratives about the Enlightenment by demonstrating that most of the thinkers who defended reason from skeptical critiques were religiously devout. By attempting either to preserve or to reconstruct the foundations of their worldviews and systems of thought, they became important agents of intellectual change and formulated new criteria of doubt and certainty. This complex and engaging book offers a powerful new explanation of how Enlightenment thinkers came to understand the purposes and the boundaries of rational inquiry.

Modern Intellectual History, 2021

This article explores continuities between the antiquarian erudition of humanist historians and E... more This article explores continuities between the antiquarian erudition of humanist historians and Enlightenment philosophical histories, showing that supposedly revolutionary developments in eighteenth-century historiography emerged from an older scholarly tradition. It focuses on the research of the Royal Academy of Inscriptions and Letters, a learned society in seventeenthand eighteenth-century France that went from serving as a propaganda tool for promoting King Louis XIV's absolutist regime to becoming the first modern historical research institute and a cradle of the Enlightenment. The article examines the emergence of what might be called "cultural history" or "the history of culture" (histoire des moeurs, as eighteenth-century authors called it). It analyzes how the academicians studied pagan beliefs and speculated about the functions of ancient myths and cults, thus transforming the views about the origin of religion and its role in society. The article also discusses how the academicians made sense of customs and daily practices and how they understood the causes of the progress and decline of civilizations.

The Long Quarrel: Past and Present in the Eighteenth Century, 2021

Recent studies on the Quarrel of the Ancients and the Moderns have revealed that, at its core, th... more Recent studies on the Quarrel of the Ancients and the Moderns have revealed that, at its core, the dispute centered on how exactly to approach the well-known works of Antiquity in a rapidly changing intellectual world.1 Seventeenthand eighteenth-century thinkers reexamined not only the stylistic forms but also the content of texts that had served as models of literary excellence. This is especially evident in how scholars engaged with ancient histories. Full of fables, myths, and inaccuracies, the texts of Herodotus, Thucydides, Livy, Plutarch, and others came under growing scrutiny from a variety of critics. While some early modern historians increasingly questioned the reliability of these ancient accounts, they also recognized that these works provided some of the only sources for a coherent picture of Antiquity. As a result, they had to reconcile the conflicting contents of these texts and reconstruct a stable narrative of ancient history. The Quarrel thus played a crucial role in the transformations of eighteenth-century historical scholarship, as erudite humanist methods faced new challenges from both historical Pyrrhonists, or skeptics, who questioned the possibility of learning about the past with any degree of certainty, and from natural philosophers, many of whom generally sided with the Moderns. The philosophical transformations of the seventeenth century thus offered new opportunities and new challenges for historical scholarship. Debates about historical certainty had raged since the Renaissance, when humanist philologists began to devise new methods of source analysis. The Reformation injected new explosive issues, such as questions about Church 1 For various interpretations of the Querelle des Anciens et des Modernes, see:

Giornale critico della filosofia italiana, 2020

La diffusion ou la divulgation de ce document et de son contenu via Internet ou tout autre moyen ... more La diffusion ou la divulgation de ce document et de son contenu via Internet ou tout autre moyen de communication ne sont pas autorisées hormis dans un cadre privé. © 2017. Classiques Garnier, Paris. Reproduction et traduction, même partielles, interdites. Tous droits réservés pour tous les pays. © Classiques Garnier RÉSUMÉ -Dans la seconde moitié du XVIII e siècle, le Dictionnaire historique et critique (1697) de Pierre Bayle était devenu le texte le plus immanquablement présent dans les bibliothèques particulières françaises. Cet article nous parle de l 'influence du Dictionnaire dans les débats savants de cette période, et examine plusieurs projets de dictionnaires concurrents qu'il met en rapport avec les arguments de Bayle. Il nous parle également des liens entre les querelles religieuses et philosophiques de l 'époque et la popularité croissante des dictionnaires en tant que format. ABSTRACT -Pierre Bayle's Dictionnaire historique et critique became the most widely owned text in French private libraries in the second half of the eighteenth century. This article describes the influence of the Dictionnaire on scholarly controversies in the eighteenth century, exploring various competing dictionary projects in relation to Bayle's arguments and the connection between the religious and philosophical controversies of the period and the increasingly popular dictionary format.

God In the Enlightenment, 2016

Following the revival of ancient skepticism in early-modern Europe, debates about the possibility... more Following the revival of ancient skepticism in early-modern Europe, debates about the possibility of obtaining true and certain knowledge of the world took place not only in metaphysics and in the natural sciences, but also in history and other humanities.

This article describes the polemical debate that took place between Huguenot refugees Pierre Juri... more This article describes the polemical debate that took place between Huguenot refugees Pierre Jurieu and Pierre Bayle following the publication of Bayle’s notorious Dictionnaire historique et critique (1697). It focuses specifically on the volume of letters from anonymous readers published by Jurieu in order to condemn Bayle. The article describes the philosophical, theological, and personal dimensions of their quarrel, and it considers the moral and intellectual implications posed by Jurieu’s publication of anonymous letters that condemned Bayle’s controversial text. Anonymity was a powerful epistolary device in the Republic of Letters that, while divided along confessional lines, was becoming increasingly integrated through learned journals and expanding epistolary networks. This article reflects on the multiple uses of anonymity in the context of the philosophical and theological debates of the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries.

By examining the analogies of sickness and disease used by several opponents of philosophical ske... more By examining the analogies of sickness and disease used by several opponents of philosophical skepticism (Pyrrhonism) in the early 18th century, this article will shed light on the rhetorical strategies used in attempts to undermine the revival of this ancient school of philosophy. It will look at the ways in which anti-skeptics discussed the repercussions of the spread of Pyrrhonism for society and describe how they proposed to “cure” this so-called disease. A consideration of the strategies will both reveal some of the assumptions commonly shared by authors of apologetic literature in the first half of the 18th century and explain why they saw skepticism as such a dangerous philosophical position.

Journal of Church and State , 2020

The Secular Enlightenment. By Margaret C. Jacob. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2019.... more The Secular Enlightenment. By Margaret C. Jacob. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2019. 265pp. $29.95 Providing a counterpoint to recent Enlightenment scholarship that has emphasized the religious dimensions of eighteenth-century culture, Margaret Jacob reminds us that the period saw a gradual shift "away from religious questions and toward secular ones" (p. 1). The Secular Enlightenment highlights the emergence and proliferation of discourses that either directly criticized revealed religion or indirectly decentered discussions of the afterlife by focusing on reforms to improve the human condition in the present world. The book seeks to explain how Europeans came to imagine political societies as entirely human creations that served purely temporal ends.

H- France Review, 2020

Le Vayer seeks to untangle the ambiguities and apparent contradictions inherent in the writings o... more Le Vayer seeks to untangle the ambiguities and apparent contradictions inherent in the writings of seventeenth-century humanist polymath François de La Mothe Le Vayer. Although he served as a tutor for the young Louis XIV, La Mothe Le Vayer also acquired a reputation for being a libertine and embracing the subversive philosophy of Pyrrhonian skepticism. His extensive writings included both manuals for the instruction of the dauphin and skeptical dialogues about various subjects. While he openly embraced fideism, a view that privileged the reliance on faith over reason, his writings also seemed to challenge established intellectual and political authorities. Manea offers an original reading of these texts, paying attention both to his controversial writings and works "he wrote for the powerful" (p. 13).

Renaissance Quarterly , 2019

The Journal of Religion, 2019

Journal of Jesuit Studies , 2019

Modern Language Review , 2018

The American Historical Review , 2017

As Sarah Ferber observes in her essay, there has been a tendency to treat what Cameron has called... more As Sarah Ferber observes in her essay, there has been a tendency to treat what Cameron has called "enchanted Europe" as a homogenous whole and to make the tacit assumption that magic practice or approaches to the numinous are more or less unified across Europe. Ferber and Edwards instead insist on the importance of the more localized and focused studies that this collection provides. This is where the collection makes its most significant contribution to the field. Taken as a whole, Everyday Magic suggests that rather than seeking to trace a broad process or disenchantment or repression of superstition in the early modern period we should be considering the ways the practice of magic and the conceptualization of the supernatural were reconfigured in diverse ways across Europe in response to varying religious, social, and political conditions. FRANK KLAASSEN University of Saskatchewan GEORGE MAKARI. Soul Machine: The Invention of the Modern Mind.