Sorkin D. The Religious Enlightenment: Protestants, Jews and Catholics from London to Vienna. Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2008. - 339 p. David Sorkin, in" Religious Enlightenment: Protestants, Jews, and Catholics from London to Vienna, " attempts to fill in our understanding of the Enlightenment with a story about a once influential but now largely forgotten intellectual movement.- page 261 It has a rather paradoxical name - "religious enlightenment". The paradox-and this is what the first pages of the book are devoted to-is that both in the academic community and in wider circles, the Enlightenment is usually interpreted as a purely secular phenomenon. Moreover, the Enlightenment is considered to be "the cornerstone of modern secular culture" (p. 2). This interpretation fits perfectly into the standard theory of modernization, which describes the process of transition of Western societies from the traditional state to the modern one: on the one hand, urbanization, industrialization and democratization (socio-economic component), and on the other - the parallel processes of secularization of ideas and strengthening of scientific and rational principles (intellectual component). The same interpretation is shared by both sides of today's culture wars between progressives and fundamentalist conservatives. The former advocate a return to the ideals of the Enlightenment, a "new Enlightenment", while the latter advocate overcoming the destructive dynamics of the Enlightenment and returning to traditional forms of socio - political organization. The understanding of the Enlightenment is the same (it is a secular, anti-clerical and anti-religious project), only the attitude towards it is different. With his work, D. Sorkin tries to shake such well-established ideas about the Enlightenment. It shows that within this intellectual project there was also a "religious enlightenment", which was a powerful current represented by many influential intellectuals ... Read more