The Origins of Enlightenment Radical Thought. A New Interpretation – Damien Tricoire (Trier University, Germany)

Date and time: 7 April 2026, 16.00-18.00

Location: Amsterdam, Bushuis room E1.02

Abstract

In traditional interpretations, the Enlightenment radically broke with older worldviews and introduced secularization. According to this view, the emergence of discourses on natural human rights was a consequence of the secularization of natural law initiated by seventeenth-century theorists. Focusing on the emergence of abolitionist and radical political thought in the 1760s-70s in France, this talk tells a different story. First, it traces the emergence of natural rights to medieval canon law and scholasticism. Second, it shows how these ideas became increasingly politicized in the late Middle Ages and in the Spanish discussion about colonialism. Third, it explores how seventeenth-century Catholic missionaries active in the south Atlantic invented abolitionism by drawing on the natural rights discourse of canon law and scholasticism. Fourth, it demonstrates that the Enlightenment appropriation of these ideas was deeply embedded in a religious worldview.

This event is organised by the research group Global Political Thought of the University of Amsterdam.