Les Lumières radicales de la Révolution anglaise

This is a volume that gives us a meticulous inspection of the ideas and ideologies behind the utopian and apocalyptic agendas of Samuel Hartlib the ‘intelligencer’ in the early to mid-seventeenth century. Hartlib once described himself to his readers as ‘a traveller ... [who] can tell you strange newes, and much knowledge’ and this, alongside his penchant for reform and preaching of Christian solidarity, is broadly how Stéphane Haffemayer sees him too, in addition to arguing that Hartlib was an essential part of a ‘radical’ early modern Enlightenment and the solid creator of a broad network of correspondence across Europe. The ‘moment hartlibien’, as Haffemayer calls it, was mainly dependent upon Hartlib’s own greed for useful knowledge, this being partly a result of his keenness on the methods of a ‘vulgar Baconianism’ and, more significantly perhaps, it was governed by Hartlib’s ideas on a somewhat utopian Protestant unity: ‘our ayme is mainly to lay the grounds of the Reformation in this change of our Affairs, which may reach the Spirits of Men to affect them with a Gospel-frame’, as he remarked. This could be mainly achieved in his eyes by concerted actions to unify and to share knowledge of all sorts; knowledge being part of God’s blessing on humanity

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