A Short History of Freethought Ancient and Modern, Volume 1 of 2: Third edition, Revised and Expanded, in two volumesRobertson, J. M. (John Mackinnon)
Religion
A Short History of Freethought Ancient and Modern, Volume 1 of 2: Third edition, Revised and Expanded, in two volumes
Robertson, J. M. (John Mackinnon)
Free thought -- History
In excuse of Maréchal's method, it may be noted that the prevailing
practice of Christian apologists had been to impute atheism to
heterodox theistic thinkers of all ages. The Historia universalis
Atheismi et Atheorum falso et merito suspectorum of J. F. Reimmann
(Hildesiæ, 1725) exhibits this habit both in its criticism and
in its practice, as do the Theses de Atheismo et Superstitione
of Buddeus (Trajecti ad Rhenum, 1716). These were the standard
treatises of their kind for the eighteenth century, and seem to
be the earliest systematic treatises in the nature of a history
of freethought, excepting a Historia Naturalismi by A. Tribbechov
(Jenæ, 1700) and a Historia Atheismi breviter delineata by Jenkinus
Thomasius (Altdorf, 1692; Basileæ, 1709; London, 1716). In the same
year with Reimmann's Historia appeared J. A. Fabricius's Delectus
Argumentorum et Syllabus scriptorum qui veritatem religionis
Christianæ adversus Atheos, Epicureos, Deistas, seu Naturalistas
... asseruerunt (Hamburghi), in which it is contended (cap. viii)
that many philosophers have been falsely described as atheists;
but in the Freydenker Lexicon of J. A. Trinius (Leipzig, 1759),
planned as a supplement to the work of Fabricius, are included
such writers as Sir Thomas Browne and Dryden.
The works of the late Rev. John Owen, Evenings with the Skeptics,
Skeptics of the Italian Renaissance, and Skeptics of the French
Renaissance, which, though not constituting a literary whole,
collectively cover a great deal of historical ground, must be
expressly excepted from the above characterization of clerical
histories of freethought, in respect of their liberality of
view. They deal largely, however, with general or philosophical
skepticism, which is a special development of freethought, often by
way of reasonings in which many freethinkers do not acquiesce. (All
strict skeptics, that is to say--as distinguished from religionists
who profess skepticism up to a certain point by way of making
a surrender to orthodox dogmatism [46]--are freethinkers;
but most freethinkers are not strictly skeptics.) The history
of philosophic skepticism, again, is properly and methodically
treated in the old work of Carl Friedrich Stäudlin, Geschichte
und Geist des Skepticismus (2 Bde., Leipzig, 1794), the historic
survey being divided into six periods: 1, Before Pyrrho; 2, from
Pyrrho to Sextus; 3, from Sextus to Montaigne; 4, from Montaigne
to La Mothe le Vayer; 5, from La Mothe le Vayer to Hume; 6, from
Hume to Kant and Platner. The posthumous work of Émile Saisset,
Le Scepticisme: Ænésidème--Pascal--Kant (1865), is a fragment of
a projected complete history of philosophic skepticism.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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