ABSTRACT
Through a series of illustrations, rather than a detailed intellectual history, the first part of this chapter sketches the contribution to the unmasking style made by radical critics of religion during the Enlightenment and nineteenth century. The popular belief in divine powers and an otherworldly order strikes at the heart of the theorist’s claim to uncover the fundaments of reality. God is thus the first pillar that unmaskers such as Baron d’Holbach, Feuerbach, Marx and Nietzsche must topple before their own vision of enlightenment can prevail.
Social conformity was a related evil exposed by radical critics. It incited in the work of Jean-Jacques Rousseau the most powerful analysis of fakery ever written. Robespierre, Saint-Just and the Jacobin movement more generally were inspired by it. The second part of this chapter considers Rousseau’s unmasking critique of society and aspects of its violent legacy in the Jacobin-led phase of the French Revolution.
