‘Idolatry’ and Religious Diversity: Thinking about the Other in Early Modern Europe

Idolatry is a key concept in the history of Western thinking about religion, as an all-encompassing category in which all religions more or less alien to the Christian tradition could be subsumed. From Late Antiquity to the Modern period, we can follow how the notion was put to work within Christian discourse to think about the religious “other. ” In fact, the word is almost ubiquitous in pre-modern debates on religion and the origins of religion. Theories on the nature and causes of “idolatry” framed much of the issue of “Religion” vs. the “religions,” and largely provided the conceptual space, in early modern Europe, in which religious anthropology would emerge. The present paper will investigate some aspects of the early modern discourse on idolatry, and its place in early modern discussions on the “diversity” of religions.