Abstract
This chapter will offer a close analysis of the ways in which the idea of freethinking emerged in England in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The ultimate speaker of this movement was Anthony Collins , whose Discourse of Free -Thinking (1713) should be seen as one of the earliest manifestos of liberalism. This chapter will examine Collins’ arguments in the light of the historical contexts in which they took shape and the philosophical ideas which had a clear influence on Collins. The chapter will argue that the idea of freethinking needs to be understood first and foremost as part of a militant anticlerical campaign: it was the priests who more than anyone else attempted to prevent the ordinary people from thinking on their own. Whereas some of the sources for these arguments are quite apparent—Spinoza, Bayle , Milton, and Locke are a few examples—there seems to be another, perhaps surprising, source of the argument for freethinking: Thomas Hobbes. Hobbes did not have a well-structured theory of freethinking as Collins did, but his anticlericalism led him to make a few interesting comments in this direction, and Collins seems to have read Hobbes in this way. Hobbes is famous for his so-called absolutism and his endorsement of censorship as a tool in the hands of the magistrate. This chapter will nevertheless attempt to reconstruct a Hobbesian concept of freethinking as the liberty from the illegitimate power and authority of the clergy over one’s mind, even if such liberty could not always be translated into expression, nor into actions. Examining the various justifications that can be given for freethinking, and the various shapes that it could take, will raise another set of questions regarding this concept. It might require us to rethink what conditions precisely are necessary for freethinking; how freethinking, however narrowly defined, can be allowed and perhaps useful even in non-democratic regimes; and whether there can be more than one way to promote an enlightenment which relies on the liberation of one’s thought even today.
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Notes
- 1.
A. Collins, A Discourse of Free-Thinking, Occasion’d by the Rise and Growth of a Sect Call’d Free-Thinkers, London 1713, pp. 5–6.
- 2.
Ibid., p. 5.
- 3.
Ibid., pp. 6–12.
- 4.
Ibid., p. 13.
- 5.
Ibid.
- 6.
Ibid., pp. 99–100.
- 7.
Ibid., pp. 101–102.
- 8.
Ibid., pp. 104–106.
- 9.
Ibid., pp. 107–109.
- 10.
Ibid., pp. 111–114.
- 11.
Ibid., pp. 118–122.
- 12.
Ibid., p. 109.
- 13.
For Collins’ anticlericalism , see for example J. O’Higgins, Anthony Collins: The Man and His Works, Martinus Nijhoff, The Hague 1970, esp. pp. 77–95; W. Hudson, The English Deists: Studies in Early Enlightenment, Pickering and Chatto, London 2009, pp. 102–106.
- 14.
J. O’Higgins, Anthony Collins, op. cit., p. 91.
- 15.
W. Hudson, The English Deists, op. cit., p. 103.
- 16.
See, for example, A. Collins, Priestcraft in Perfection, London 1710. For a thorough account of the freethinkers’ campaign against priestcraft from that period, see J.A.I. Champion, The Pillars of Priestcraft Shaken, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 1992.
- 17.
R. Bentley , Remarks Upon a Late Discourse of Free-Thinking, W. Thurlbourn, London 1713, p. 4.
- 18.
Ibid., pp. 11–12.
- 19.
See also M.C. Jacob, The Newtonians and the English Revolution, Cornell University Press, Ithaca, NY 1976 and P.N. Miller, “‘Freethinking’ and ‘Freedom of Thought’ in Eighteenth-Century Britain,” The Historical Journal 36 (3), 1993, pp. 599–617.
- 20.
E. Gibson, The Bishop of London’s Pastoral Letter to the People of His Diocese; Particularly, to Those of the Two Great Cities of London and Westminster. Occasion’d by Some Late Writings in Favour of Infidelity, Samuel Buckley, London 1728, p. 12.
- 21.
M. Tindal, An Address to the Inhabitants of the Two Great Cities of London and Westminster: In Relation to a Pastoral Letter Said to be Written by the Bishop of London, J. Peele, London 1728, p. 4.
- 22.
See E. Gibson, The Bishop of London’s Second Pastoral Letter to the People of His Diocese, Samuel Buckley, London 1730, and M. Tindal, A Second Address to the Inhabitants of the Two Great Cities of London and Westminster, J. Peele, London 1730. For a general overview of this debate, see S. Lalor, Matthew Tindal, Freethinker, Continuum, London 2006, pp. 111–112.
- 23.
M. Tindal, Christianity as Old as the Creation: Or, the Gospel, a Republication of the Religion of Nature, London 1730, p. 161.
- 24.
See D. Lucci, “Deism, Freethinking and Toleration in Enlightenment England,” History of European Ideas 42, 2016, p. 8; F.C. Beiser, The Sovereignty of Reason: The Defense of Rationality in the Early English Enlightenment, Princeton University Press, Princeton 1996, pp. 257–265, esp. p. 259.
- 25.
See J.R. Wigelsworth, “‘God Can Require Nothing of Us, but What Makes for Our Happiness’: Matthew Tindal on Toleration,” in W. Hudson, D. Lucci and J.R. Wigelswort (eds.), Atheism and Deism Revalued, Ashgate, Burlington 2014, pp. 139–155.
- 26.
D. Lucci, “Deism, Freethinking and Toleration in Enlightenment England,” op. cit., p. 10.
- 27.
See, for example, J. O’Higgins, Anthony Collins, op. cit., p. 49; J.I. Israel, Radical Enlightenment: Philosophy and the Making of Modernity 1650–1750, Oxford University Press, Oxford 2001, pp. 614–619.
- 28.
J. Milton, Areopagitica, Replica, Noel Douglas, London 1917, p. 35.
- 29.
See, for example, J. O’Higgins, Anthony Collins, op. cit., pp. 1–22.
- 30.
J. Locke, A Letter Concerning Toleration, ed. J. Tully, Hackett, Indianapolis 1983; J. Dunn, “The Claim to Freedom of Conscience: Freedom of Speech, Freedom of Thought, Freedom of Worship?,” in P.P. Grell, J.I. Israel and N. Tyacke (eds.), From Persecution to Toleration: The Glorious Revolution and Religion in England, Clarendon Press, Oxford 1991, pp. 171–194.
- 31.
A. Collins, Discourse, op. cit., pp. 123–178.
- 32.
J. Parkin, Taming the Leviathan: The Reception of the Political and Religious Ideas of Thomas Hobbes in England, 1640–1700, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 2007, p. 1.
- 33.
T. Hobbes, Leviathan, ed. N. Malcolm, Oxford University Press, Oxford 2012, p. 272.
- 34.
A. Collins, Discourse, op. cit., pp. 170–171.
- 35.
T. Hobbes, Leviathan, op. cit., p. 260.
- 36.
Ibid., Dedicatory Letter, p. 4.
- 37.
Ibid., p. 262.
- 38.
See ibid., p. 198: “RIGHT, consisteth in liberty to do, or to forbeare; Whereas LAW, determineth, and bindeth to one of them: so that Law, and Right, differ as much, as Obligation, and Liberty.”
- 39.
Ibid., pp. 336–340.
- 40.
On the evolution of this position in Hobbes, see R. Tuck, Natural Rights Theories: Their Origin and Development, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 1979, pp. 119–142.
- 41.
T. Hobbes, Leviathan, op. cit., p. 340.
- 42.
Ibid., p. 1096.
- 43.
Ibid., pp. 324–326.
- 44.
Ibid., p. 696.
- 45.
Ibid.
- 46.
Ibid., p. 330.
- 47.
Ibid., p. 554.
- 48.
Ibid., p. 282.
- 49.
Ibid., p. 340.
- 50.
N. Malcolm, “Hobbes and Spinoza,” in N. Malcom, Aspects of Hobbes, Clarendon Press, Oxford 2002, p. 38.
- 51.
T. Hobbes, The Elements of Law: Natural and Politic, ed. F. Tönnies, Simpkin & Marshall, London 1889, pp. 178, 180–181: “That to leave man as much liberty as may be … is a duty of a sovereign by the law of nature.”
- 52.
T. Hobbes, Behemoth, or the Long Parliament, ed. P. Seaward, Oxford University Press, Oxford 2009, p. 188.
- 53.
N. Malcolm, “Hobbes and Spinoza,” op. cit., p. 50. The case for a more ‘liberal’ Hobbes has been developed in the literature increasingly since the 1980s. For a few prominent examples, see A. Ryan, “A More Tolerant Hobbes?,” in S. Mendus (ed.), Justifying Toleration, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 1988, pp. 37–59; R. Tuck, “Hobbes and Locke on Toleration,” in M.G. Dietz (ed.), Thomas Hobbes and Political Theory, University Press of Kansas, Lawrence 1990, pp. 153–171; E. Curley, “Hobbes and the Cause of Religious Toleration,” in P. Springborg (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Hobbes’s Leviathan, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 2007, pp. 309–334.
- 54.
T. Hobbes, Leviathan, op. cit., p. 1116.
- 55.
Ibid., p. 186.
- 56.
Ibid., pp. 1052–1124.
- 57.
D. Johnston, The Rhetoric of Leviathan: Thomas Hobbes and the Politics of Cultural Transformation, Princeton University Press, Princeton 1986.
- 58.
I elaborate on this point in E. Carmel , “Hobbes and Early English Deism,” in R. Douglass and L. van Apeldoorn (eds.), Hobbes on Politics and Religion, Oxford University Press, Oxford, forthcoming.
- 59.
T. Hobbes, Leviathan, op. cit., p. 576.
- 60.
A. Collins, Discourse, op. cit., p. 14.
- 61.
T. Hobbes, Leviathan, op. cit., p. 1100.
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Carmel, E. (2017). The History and Philosophy of English Freethinking. In: Tomaszewska, A., Hämäläinen, H. (eds) The Sources of Secularism. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-65394-5_7
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