This fourth volume of Barbarism and Religion focuses on the idea of barbarism, which was central to the history of western historiography, to the history of the enlightenment, and indeed to Edward Gibbon himself. As Barbarism and Religion develops, its full stature as one of the great scholarly projects of our time becomes apparent: in the end, it will stand not just as a remarkable analysis of the making of Gibbon's Decline and Fall, but as the definitive history of history-writing in what David Hume famously called 'the historical age'.
Read More