Barbarism and religion, v.4

This fourth volume in John Pocock?s great sequence on Barbarism and Religion focuses on the idea of barbarism. Barbarism was central to the history of western historiography, to the history of the enlightenment, and to Edward Gibbon himself; as a concept it was deeply problematic to enlightened historians seeking to understand their own civil societies in the light of exposure to newly-discovered civilisations hitherto beyond the reach of history. The troubled relationship between philosophy and history is addressed squarely in this fourth volume, and John Pocock grounds his arguments in intensive analysis of a number of major texts by which Gibbon was particularly influenced. As 'Barbarism and Religion' develops, its full stature becomes apparent; in the end, it will stand not just as a remarkable analysis of the making of Gibbon?s Decline and Fall, but as the definitive history of history-writing in what David Hume famously called ?the historical age?.