Bernard Le Bouyer De Fontenelle

A Prudent Rebel: The Secret & Subversive Writings of Fontenelle Bernard Le Bouyer De Fontenelle

Bernard Le Bouyer de Fontenelle (1657-1757) is considered one of the greatest popularizers of science and a herald of the French Enlightenment. While enjoying success as an author and leading officer in the French Academy of Sciences, he secretly promulgated a radical, critical philosophy questioning morality, politics, the immortality of the soul, revealed religion, and more. These ideas were disseminated in a body of anonymously circulating satires, treatises, and a utopian novel. He even gave public speeches on Christianity with ironic implications, one of which has been called one of "the boldest and most philosophical documents ever written in this country". Fontenelle was appreciated by his contemporaries as "one of the greatest philosophers on earth" (Vauvenargues), "the most universal mind of the century" (Voltaire), and the source of "the philosophical spirit" of the Age of Enlightenment (F. Grimm). This book contains ten different texts; all in their first English translations: - "On the Existence of God"- "A Letter from Fontenelle to the Marquis de La Fare on the Resurrection"- "On the Origin of the Fables"- "On the Diversity of Religions"- "An Account of the Island of Borneo"- "A Treatise on Liberty"- "On Happiness"- "A Discourse on Patience"- "The Story of the Ajaoians"- "A Fragment of what Fontenelle Called His 'Republic'"