French Enlightenment
Spinoza, Baruch (1632–77) Quick reference
Cyril Barrett
A Concise Oxford Dictionary of Politics and International Relations (4 ed.)
...was born in Amsterdam, of Spanish‐Portuguese‐Jewish origin. His family had taken refuge there to escape persecution in Spain. His thirst for knowledge led him to study under Francis van den Enden, a freethinker. By 1656 his views were so unorthodox that he was accused of atheism and banned from the synagogue. He earned his living by grinding lenses, which put him in touch with developments in optics, and hence with the advances in mathematics of the time. Meanwhile he continued his reflections and wrote many philosophical works, especially on ethics. In...
Diderot, Denis (1713–84) Quick reference
Keith Taylor
A Concise Oxford Dictionary of Politics and International Relations (4 ed.)
...that age for secular rationalism and socially progressive ideas. The Encyclopédie issued a direct challenge to royal absolutism and the religious supremacy of the Catholic Church throughout Europe. Diderot’s political ideas were rooted in his philosophical materialism and atheism, and an awareness of the link between political institutions and a society’s underlying culture and socio‐economic characteristics: a view he shared with Montesquieu and Rousseau . Diderot desired to enhance conditions of human freedom, a goal which in his view required an...
Church and State Quick reference
Lincoln Allison
A Concise Oxford Dictionary of Politics and International Relations (4 ed.)
...school whereas in the United States there were controversies about the display of religious texts on public property and expressions of belief by children in schools. In many cases these demands for religious expression were matched by more militant expressions of secularism and atheism. Generally, these controversies were more intense in secular republics than in those parts of the United Kingdom and Scandinavia which still had established churches. In the United Kingdom there was a general debate about ‘faith’ schools, raising the general question of the...
Enlightenment, French Quick reference
Carl Slevin
A Concise Oxford Dictionary of Politics and International Relations (4 ed.)
...but they all rejected authority as the basis for knowledge. Instead they accepted the rationalism developed in the previous century, whether in its deductive or empirical form. This did not automatically imply a rejection of religion, and various positions were held including atheism, deism, various forms of Protestantism, and even Catholicism. In practice, however, it meant rejecting the Church as the source of knowledge and therefore of the rules by which anyone should live. These could only be reached by the individual exercising his reason. The best...
Smith, Adam (1723–90) Quick reference
A Concise Oxford Dictionary of Politics and International Relations (4 ed.)
...as tutor to a young aristocrat enabled Smith to resign his chair in Glasgow and travel in France, where he met the physiocrats , before returning to Scotland to work for ten years on The Wealth of Nations ( 1776 : hereafter WN ). His revelation of the dying Hume’s stoical atheism in 1776 ‘brought upon me ten times more abuse than the very violent attack I had made upon the whole commercial system of Great Britain’. In 1778 he became Commissioner of Customs for Scotland. This curious choice enabled him to see at first hand the distortions of trade and...
Hume, David (1711–76) Quick reference
Lincoln Allison
A Concise Oxford Dictionary of Politics and International Relations (4 ed.)
...statements come in two forms, ‘relations of ideas’ (especially mathematics) and ‘matters of fact’. Books full of claims which fall into neither category should be ‘consigned to the flames’. This argument suggests Hume as an intellectual ancestor of the logical positivists. 2 Atheism : the Dialogues concerning Natural Religion , consistently with much of Hume’s epistemological writings, appear to favour rejection of all the established arguments in favour of religion including the ontological argument, the necessity of a Creator, and so on. 3 Causation :...
conservatism Quick reference
Lincoln Allison
A Concise Oxford Dictionary of Politics and International Relations (4 ed.)
...realists, have all been called ‘conservatives’, regarded themselves as conservative, and demonstrated the typically conservative responses to projects for change. Particular conservative writers have founded their conservatism on individualism as often as on collectivism, on atheism as much as on religious belief, and on the idealistic philosophy of Hegel as well as on profound scepticism or vulgar materialism. Furthermore conservatism has been primarily a political reaction, and only secondarily a body of ideas: those who are defending their interests...
Liberation Theology Reference library
Paul E. Sigmund
The Oxford Companion to International Relations
...initiated by the Second Vatican Council ( 1962–1965 ), the emergence of liberation theology created an opening to the left for the Latin American Church and gave religious legitimation to radical concepts and forms of analysis derived from Marxism and dependence theory. While atheism was rejected, the poor rather than the proletariat were the agents of social change, and the references to revolution were guarded and qualified, capitalism was seen as the cause of Latin American poverty, and socialism was seen as its solution. As one after another Latin American...
New Right Reference library
The Oxford Companion to Politics of the World (2 ed.)
...the “liberal consensus”—the U.S. counterpart of the European social democratic consensus—was organized through the pages of Buckley's periodical, the editor's right-wing credentials having been established in God and Man at Yale (Chicago, 1955 ), an attack on collectivism and atheism (coincidentally the concerns of New Right liberals and conservatives respectively). Many of these ideas influenced the 1964 Republican presidential candidate Barry Goldwater , whose resounding defeat by President Lyndon Johnson seemed to augur poorly for the Right. But the...
Islamic politics Quick reference
Barbara Allen Roberson
A Concise Oxford Dictionary of Politics and International Relations (4 ed.)
...with the mainstream of either the Sunni or Shi’i Islamist thought circulating in the Middle East. This region, having been dominated in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries by Tsarist rule, was subjected to the restrictive policies of the Soviet government which promoted atheism and limited Muslim education and Qur’anic knowledge at the local level. The number of mosques was reduced and imams were officially appointed with the result that the development of traditional religious‐philosophical thought was undermined and the modernist Islamic trends...
Liberation Theology Reference library
The Oxford Companion to Politics of the World (2 ed.)
...months each year over a period of four years, and its effort to modernize the church culminated in the adoption of “The Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World” ( Gaudium et Spes ), which opened the church to other religions and points of view, including those of atheism and Marxism . In Latin America the challenge of the Cuban Revolution and the pressures for reform promoted by the Alliance for Progress created a ferment among intellectuals and students that led to an increasingly revolutionary outlook. When the former Catholic chaplain at...
Homosexuality Under Socialism in the German Democratic Republic Reference library
Josh W. Armstrong
The Oxford Encyclopedia of LGBT Politics and Policy
...patriotically defending the GDR as the Arbeiter-und Bauern-Staat (Workers’ and Farmers’ State); and raise their children to be educated, peace-loving, and toughened for the work of continually building socialism. Theoretically at least, GDR socialism was based on equality, atheism, nondiscrimination, and mutual respect for others’ work efforts. Striving as it was to construct a socialist future, the GDR was heavily pronatalist, which in turn produced policies that benefited the nuclear, heterosexual family and encouraged having children. Many of these...
LGBT Movements in Taiwan, Hong Kong, and China Reference library
Travis S. K. Kong, Hsiao-wei Kuan, Sky H. L. Lau, and Sara L. Friedman
The Oxford Encyclopedia of LGBT Politics and Policy
...of tongzhi identities and activism have been heavily shaped by the political ideology of the Communist party-state, a Western biomedical model of sexuality, and patriarchal family and marriage institutions. Due to the post- 1949 state’s affiliation with Marxist-inspired atheism, religion has not played a crucial role in regulating homosexuality. Beginning with the 1950 Marriage Law, official state discourses on sexuality privileged a norm of reproductive sex within monogamous heterosexual marriage ( Evans, 1997 ). Through the end of the Cultural...
Engel v. Vitale Reference library
Kermit L. Hall
The Oxford Encyclopedia of American Political and Legal History
...beliefs. President John F. Kennedy supported the Court by noting that Americans were still free to pray at home with their children. Yet fundamentalist religious groups charged that the Court in Engel had erected too high a barri-er between church and state and had promoted atheism, agnosticism, and secularization. [ See also Bill of Rights ; Black, Hugo ; Christian Coalition ; Civil Liberties ; Kennedy, John F. ; Moral Majority; Supreme Court, U.S. ; and Warren, Earl . ] Bibliography Hall, Kermit L. The Magic Mirror: Law in American History ....
Religious Regulation in China Reference library
Lawrence C. Reardon
The Oxford Encyclopedia of Politics and Religion
...atheism. In 1949 , the CCP established a totalitarian state based on a comprehensive Stalinist paradigm in which its top-down leadership enjoyed hegemonic control over the state, the economy, and the society ( Linz & Stepan, 1996 ). While eliminating foreign influence and religious opponents, communist elites adopted an enlightenment atheism, which “hopes for a decline in religious doctrine through scientific development, mass education, and propaganda.” Tiring of this slower-paced assimilationist strategy, Mao Zedong promoted a militant atheism to...
New Right Reference library
Desmond King
The Oxford Companion to Comparative Politics
...to the “liberal consensus”—the US counterpart of the European social democratic consensus—was organized through the pages of Buckley's periodical, the editor's right-wing credentials having been established in God and Man at Yale ( 1951 ) , an attack on collectivism and atheism (coincidentally the concerns of New Right liberals and conservatives, respectively). Many of these ideas influenced the 1964 Republican presidential candidate Barry Goldwater, whose resounding defeat by President Lyndon Johnson seemed to augur poorly for the Right. But the...
Kishk, ʿAbd al-ḥamīd (1933–1996) Reference library
Johannes J. G. Jansen and Joseph A. Kéchichian
The Oxford Encyclopedia of Islam and Politics
...In these, he continued to criticize sharply any behavior that he regarded as a deviation from the norms of Islam. However, the regime was a little more tolerant of such criticisms, since it needed the support of the Islamic movement in the struggle against “communism and atheism.” Nevertheless, Shaykh Kishk, unlike Islamists such as Shaykh al-Shaʿrāwī, did not appear on state-run television or publish in the official printed media. In spite of the official media boycott, Kishk's sermons were widely distributed on cassette tapes, as in the same period were...
New Right Reference library
Desmond King
The Oxford Companion to American Politics
...to the “liberal consensus”—the US counterpart of the European social democratic consensus—was organized through the pages of Buckley’s periodical, the editor’s right-wing credentials having been established in God and Man at Yale ( 1951 ), an attack on collectivism and atheism (coincidentally the concerns of New Right liberals and conservatives, respectively). Many of these ideas influenced the 1964 Republican presidential candidate Barry Goldwater, whose resounding defeat by President Lyndon Johnson seemed to augur poorly for the Right. But the...
Religious Regulation in Autocracies Reference library
Lawrence C. Reardon
The Oxford Encyclopedia of Politics and Religion
...atheism, which permitted the reconstitution of the church leadership, the establishment of state organizations to monitor religious activities, the reopening of churches and theological seminaries, and a limited practice of religion ( Walters, 1986 ). Recognizing that the Soviet people adamantly embraced their religious beliefs, Stalin employed positive religious regulations to revive the Russian Orthodox Church and to harness its fervent and pious believers to fight for the motherland to oppose Hitler. Stalin’s militant scientific atheism failed to...
