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Abraham Anderson. The Treatise of the Three Impostors and the Problem of Enlightenment: A New Translation of the Traite des trois Imposteurs. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 1997. Pp. xiv + 165. Cloth, $52.50. Paper, $21.95.
This work results from a seminar, organized by Richard H. Popkin, sponsored by the Foundation for Intellectual History, and held in Leiden in 1990 in which various aspects of the history and significance of the Traite de trois Imposteurs were studied. As the title of the work indicates, it contains an English translation of the Traite. It also contains three short essays of commentary (the second of which is a modified version of Anderson's contribution to the volume of essays which resulted from the Leiden seminar, Heterodoxy, Spinozism and Free Thought in Early Eighteenth Century Europe: Studies on the Traite des trois Imposteurs, edited by S. Berti, F. Charles-Daubert, and R. H. Popkin). There is a select bibliography, but no index.
The Treatise consists of a critique of revelation (which is exposed as a fiction of the imagination), along with a discussion of the ways in which claims to revelation made by crafty politicians have enslaved humankind. It also includes scurrilous stories about three...