is left
stranded on a desert island, which forces him to dig deep into his own intellectual resources to
survive. The traditions of the outside world and the authority they have over men no longer
exert any real influence over Crusoe in this strange, exotic environment. He needs to start from
the beginning, as it were, to rely on his own powers of perception and reason to make sense of
his new surroundings. Slowly but surely, he builds up a picture of the world around him, one
that leads to a profound spiritual awakening, albeit one based upon impeccably rational
foundations.
The Enlightenment is often construed as inimically hostile to
religion, yet that's far from being the case. Most thinkers of the era adhered to some kind of
religious belief; it was simply the nature of that belief which set them apart from more
orthodox theists. Robinson Crusoe is almost the prototypical Lockean, someone who's used his
powers of perception and reasoning to arrive at a higher...
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