The Secular City

Central to the Enlightenment is the ideal of the Secular City, in militant reply to the Civitas Dei of St Augustine. The essays in this volume, all by distinguished specialists on the 18th century, illustrate the elaboration of that vision, both in the planning and depiction of actual cities and in the speculation on social justice to which Voltaire in particular devoted himself. Yet even in him, secularization is never total, and the persistence of a displaced religious, even messianic strain in the Enlightenment is also illustrated in a variety of writers, culminating in the contradictions of the French Revolution. This work is intended for scholars of the history of ideas, especially 18th-century specialists; undergraduate and postgraduate students of French studies, history and philosophy; and informed general readers.