Religion and the Intellectual Origins of the Eighteenth-Century Culture of Sensibility

The history of modernity's emergence has often been described as secularization, with the Enlightenment understood as a crucial chapter. Since the late twentieth century, however, the secularization paradigm has been severely undermined in various disciplines. This article intends to contribute to these historiographical debates by tracing core Enlightenment ideas to the religiously grounded philosophy of the Middle Ages, revealing major yet overlooked continuities between scholasticism and Enlightenment thought. Focusing on one especially influential stream of Enlightenment moral philosophy, which provided the intellectual basis of the eighteenth-century culture of sensibility, it demonstrates that the concept of an instinctive moral sense originated in Aristotelian-Thomist scholasticism as developed by Bonaventure. This tradition was transmitted to seventeenth- century England through John Wilkins's circle, enabling Shaftesbury's engagement with these ideas. Shaftesbury subsequently influenced Enlightenment moral philosophy both in Scotland and, via Diderot and Rousseau, in France.