Enlightenment’s empire and apocalyptic modernity: religion and education revisited

Book section : Chapter

This chapter provides a necessarily rudimentary outline of what were world-changing events, particularly focusing on the intellectual and political milieu of what is framed as the Enlightenment’s Empire. In this intellectual and political milieu is an all-pervasive critique of religion which will entirely transform education; one which will make the very conjoining of religion and education entirely contentious. Yet, within and beyond classroom and lecture hall, seminar room and tutorial, pervasive rationalism and progressivism seem to have led Enlightenment’s Empire to an equally pervasive existential angst. Following Arendt’s prescient Preface to The Origins of Totalitarianism, this same modernity seems to have brought human civilization to the brink, a hardly spectral apocalypse, one rather possessed of the far-from-abstract realities of atomic science and nuclear warfare, that is, apocalyptic modernity. Key words: education, empire, Enlightenment history and philosophy, nuclear apocalypse, religion and modernity

Authors: Gearon, LF

• Publication status: Published
• Peer review status: Peer reviewed
• Publisher: Oxford University Press
• Host title: The Oxford Handbook of Religion and Education
• Pages: 3-34
• Chapter number: 1
• Series: Oxford Handbooks
• Place of publication: Oxford
• Publication date: 2025-05-22
• Edition: 1
• DOI: 10.1093/oxfordhb/9780198869511.013.59
• EISBN: 9780191905841
• ISBN-10: 0198869517
• ISBN-13: 9780198869511
• Language: English
• Keywords: education; empire; Enlightenment history and philosophy; nuclear apocalypse; religion and modernity
• Subtype: Chapter