Charly J. Coleman

Sen. Charly Coleman, professor of history, specializes in the European Enlightenment and the French Revolution, with an emphasis on the intersections of religion, philosophy, and political economy. His latest monograph, The Spirit of French Capitalism: Economic Theology in the Age of Enlightenment, uncovers a distinctly Catholic ethic of commodity culture that in contrast to Weber’s famous “Protestant ethic” privileged the marvelous over the mundane, consumption over production, and the pleasures of enjoyment over the rigors of delayed gratification. He is also the author of The Virtues of Abandon: An Anti-Individualist History of the French Enlightenment, which examines the relationship between personhood and property through the study of a culture of dispossession that drew together heretical mystics and radical materialists during the long eighteenth century. His research on selfhood, political economy, and economic theology has appeared in The Journal of Modern History, Modern Intellectual History, French Historical Studies, French History, Aeon, and various edited volumes. He is currently at work on The Enlightenment and the Politics of Resacralization, a volume in The Oxford History of Political Thought.