The nineteenth century was a turbulent period in the history of the
philosophical scrutiny of religion. Major scholars - such as Hegel, Fichte,
Schelling, Newman, Caird and Royce - sought to construct systematic responses to
the Enlightenment critiques of religion carried out by Spinoza and Hume. At the
same time, new critiques of religion were launched by philosophers such as
Schopenhauer and Nietzsche and by scholars engaged in textual criticism, such as
Schleiermacher and Dilthey. Over the course of the century, the work of Marx,
Freud, Darwin and Durkheim brought the revolutionary perspectives of political
economy, psychoanalysis, evolutionary theory and anthropology to bear on both
religion and its