Thanks to a considerable range of excellent recent English studies Christian Thomasius (1655–1728) is no longer an unknown figure in this part of the world. On the contrary, together with Samuel Pufendorf, Thomasius has at last been recognised by English-speaking scholars, as one of the leading intellectual figures, of similar standing as Leibniz or Wolff. The achievements of the German Enlightenment, associated with pivotal thinkers like Lessing and Kant, seem unthinkable without the groundwork of Thomasius and Pufendorf. Any attempt to establish such a canon of (political) thought is, of course, necessarily a reduction and Thomas Ahnert certainly makes a valuable contribution to the current research by examining Thomasius' role in this evolution of thought. He rightly asserts that Thomasius felt the need to engage with religious and doctrinal debates – although actually nobody ever denied that. The crucial question is why he did so and what his intentions were in doing so. So far scholarship has emphasised the advance of secularisation or at least ‘de-confessionalisation’ in the context of Thomasius' thought. Ahnert tries to challenge this dominant view and attempts to reassess Thomasius' place in this development. He stresses the importance of religion in Thomasius' thought as a genuine concern, rather than just a way of curtailing the influence of the orthodox Lutheran clergy. The author certainly manages to illuminate some contextual aspects, such as Thomasius' relationship to the Pietists, by drawing on a range of important and heretofore insufficiently considered primary material. However, it is not clear to what extent his claim does in fact challenge the prevailing assumption that Thomasius was a champion of, on the one hand, freedom of conscience and, on the other, a wider scope of princely authority and rule over the Lutheran clergy. Thomas Ahnert's repeated insistence on the negligible role of reason in Thomasius' thought is not convincing. On the contrary: in his preface to the first German translation of Grotius' De jure belli ac pacis, Thomasius pointed out that ‘man becomes the creator of his own sufferings … because he mixes up reason and divine revelation so that his knowledge becomes confused’. His endeavour to provide a sphere where right reason is the dominating and essential source of human knowledge was directly aimed against the influence of the clergy. He asserts that ‘hitherto, the subjection of reason was one of the secret tricks of political popery’. Thomasius saw himself in the tradition of Grotius, Hobbes and Pufendorf, who first introduced right reason into politics in order to break up the orthodox tenets of theological scholasticism. Thus his natural law theory put reason prominently at the heart of the argument in order to do away with revelation as the source for natural law. The later consequences towards the end of the enlightenment period might not have been envisaged or intended by Thomasius. However, his œuvre – and it is important to stress that, contrary to the picture Ahnert suggests, Thomasius' pleas for toleration and his writings on natural law, the relation between the individual, the State and the Church were his most influential works – does nevertheless play a crucial part in this development and he himself was certainly aware of the effect his writings had already had during his lifetime. Thus, Thomasius was concerned about the individual's freedom, but whenever he thought restriction of the people necessary, he opted for sovereign princely authority and not for enforcement of religious doctrine to bridle the people. His attacks on the clergy and orthodox Lutheran doctrine clearly served an emancipatory purpose. It would be misleading to downplay this underlying reasoning in Thomasius' thought.