Intellectual history on the political impact of early Christianity

Review of Inventing the Individual: The Origins of Western Liberalism by Larry Siedentop

This book offers a detailed interpretation of what Christianity meant and the political impact that it had. Siedentop takes the reader on a long historical inquiry, from before the Bronze Age to the end of the Middles Ages and supposedly to the present day. While disagreeing with much of it, I was riveted by the ideas from the first page.

The book begins…