Journal of the History of Ideas

Departing from Pierre Bayle's discussion of Spinoza in the entry 'Japan' in his Dictionaire, this article discusses how debates about the Far East functioned as a foil for the polemics generated by the Radical Enlightement. The central point of investigation is a debate between Gerard Vossius and Georg Hornius, integrating three main issues where ideas about the East challenged accepted European authority: sacred history, republicanism, and natural philosophy. The article demonstrates that the onset of radicalism involved a plethora of old, new and exotic ideas, from logic to linguistics and Hermeticism, before crystallizing into the scientific and political notions now associated with modernity.