Was nineteenth-century philosophy merely a substitute for religion? The
American philosopher Richard Rorty once argued precisely that. Rorty saw
intellectuals of the long nineteenth-century (c 1789-1914) as being
preoccupied by secular concerns: and at first his assertion does seem
plausible. From Immanuel Kant and G W F Hegel to F H Bradley and Charles
Peirce, philosophers of the period attempted to discuss knowledge,
morality, freedom and ethics on terms that made no appeal to any special
revelation or divinity beyond reason. But this lively survey argues
otherwise: that Rorty's claim is not only an over-simplification, but
wrong. The ideas of the leading nineteenth-century thinkers were not
mere substitutions for religion: they were motivated by deep religious
concerns. Søren Kierkegaard famously grappled with God, truth and doubt
even as he lambasted the Danish church. If Nietzsche is the notable
exception then he proves the rule since, as he remarked himself, one saw
'the theologian instinct' everywhere in the spirit of his age. Joel
Rasmussen deftly charts the key discussions of an era when the problem
of God refused to die.
