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George Berkeley's (1685–1753) condemnation of freethinking arose from the social, political, and, above all, moral repercussions that he believed this heterogeneous group was bringing about in British society. In the first part of this paper, I set out the challenges posed by the freethinking movement, drawing extensively on Berkeley's Alciphron. In the second part, I address both the reasons behind his aversion to freethinking and his response, which involved advocating for the union of Church and state and while rejecting secular governance. This analysis relies primarily on lesser-known works from Berkeley's socio-political writings. The paper argues that Berkeley's opposition to freethinkers was driven by his concern for the public good and his belief that the Christian religion, particularly in its Anglican tradition, was the most effective means to achieve it. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Robert Wallace (1697–1771) was a leading minister of the Church of Scotland, but he remains a largely overlooked figure in the literature. Nevertheless, his participation in philosophical and theological debates offers a glimpse of the complex positions of the Scottish clergy – and of Scottish moderation on its own terms. Wallace's moderation was evident, for example, in his opposition both to radical deism and orthodox dogmatism. Yet what makes Wallace's case particularly interesting is that he described himself as a 'moderate freethinker' in a letter to David Hume, while distinguishing elsewhere the 'moderate' and 'sober' freethinkers from the dangerously sceptical ones. Exploring his consistent statements on this issue in various writings throughout his career, this article investigates the self-identified moderation of Wallace – in opposition, for example, to his rival freethinker William Dudgeon – and thus the clergy's attempt to use this category in the shaping of their vision of the Scottish Enlightenment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Annals of Philosophy / Roczniki Filozoficzne is the property of John Paul II Catholic University of Lublin, Faculty of Philosophy and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Anthony Collins is known mostly as an eighteenth-century freethinker who contributed to ideas of rational religion and religious toleration, as a close friend of John Locke, and as a necessitarian and materialist who held a significant correspondence with Samuel Clarke. Yet, his political philosophy has rarely received serious attention, and he remains a neglected figure in the history of political thought. This article attempts to recover Collins as a philosopher who developed a complex political theory, by focusing on his conceptions of liberty and authority. It shows that he conceptualised liberty, and liberty of thought in particular, both as non-interference and non-domination, namely, an absence of censorship as well as an absence of continuous tyranny over the minds of humankind. Then, it shows that Collins also developed a thorough idea of civil authority, according to which even religious liberties may depend in some cases on the discretion of the civil sovereign. Finally, this article suggests that Collins's multi-layered theory continued to develop after his lifetime, and that he therefore had a prominent place in eighteenth-century debates of liberty and authority. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Freethinking seems to be desirable because the human being is seen as an independently thinking being. However, as is well known, freethinking should not be taken for granted: ideological indoctrination, manipulation and propaganda, inter alia, are versatile tools for rulers and, in consequence, regularly repeated phenomena. One of the most drastic intellectual turning points in history occurred in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, when the incontestable religious world view of European civilization changed along with early modern science and the Age of Enlightenment. Although freethinking and religion do not have to be thought of as opposed, the period in question includes instances of complex and delicate phenomena, which in this article are termed intellectual purism and socio-intellectual control. The discussion includes how five thinkers (Descartes, Spinoza, Leibniz, Wolff, Kant) operated in a restrictive politico-religio-theological framework and how they manifest religious deviance.

The language of critical thinking and free thinking has increasingly been co-opted by people who only oppose established forms of knowledge. As educators, we need to recalibrate our understanding of critical thinking, and how to teach it, to better adapt to the changing media landscape. First, we should investigate how so-called "freethinkers" conceptualize the world. From there, we can develop strategies to revamp our teaching practice. At bottom, critical thinking pedagogy can no longer be ideologically neutral: we need to encourage our students to consider diverse points of view, and to consider ethics and morality when making critical thinking judgements. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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This paper analyzes the phenomenon of anticlericalism in contemporary Lithuania, applying a sociohistorical approach. It starts with a discussion on the problem of criticism of religion and anticlericalism in contemporary societies, and particularly Lithuania. The empirical part of the paper provides a statistical data analysis of two surveys, conducted in 2012 and 2018. The secondary data analysis showed that age and place of residence of Roman Catholics in Lithuania were statistically meaningful factors for the formation of anticlerical stances. Younger respondents expressed more critical stances towards the clergy, while respondents living in large cities of the country had more relaxed stances towards clergy than those living in small towns and rural areas. Living in a proximity to a Roman Catholic church in rural areas determined the prevalent anticlerical attitudes among the Lithuanian population.

The founding of the Romanian Free Thinkers Association (1909) prompted violent criticism against it. This arose out of a milieu influenced by the Romanian Orthodox Church targeting the Association's anti-religious attitude. One of the allegations formulated against it was that the freethinking movement was only one facet of the wider Jewish universal conspiracy. This article aims to analyse to what extent there was a connection between the freethinking movement in Romania and the Jewish question. The main argument set forward in this article is that the Romanian freethinkers struggled to dismantle these accusations, while attempting to act towards Jewish emancipation in Romania as part of their wider program to transform society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Bajo Palabra: Journal of Philosophy is the property of Bajo Palabra: Journal of Philosophy and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This paper responds to two issues in interpreting George Berkeley’s Analyst. First, it explains why the text contains no discussion of religious mysteries or points of faith, despite the claims of the text's subtitle; I argue that the subtitle must be understood, and its success assessed, in conjunction with material external to the text. Second, it’s unclear how naturally the arguments of the Analyst sit with Berkeley’s broader views. He criticizes the methodology of calculus and conceptually problematic entities, and the extent to which they require one to bend the rules of classical mathematics. Yet, elsewhere, Berkeley’s opinion of classical mathematics and its intelligibility is low, and he defends a pragmatic approach to word meaning that should not find fault with so functionally successful a theory. The ad hominem intention of the text makes it difficult to discern to what extent Berkeley is committed to the sincerity of these criticisms. This component of the text is rarely discussed, but I argue that when trying to decide what Berkeley’s true position is in the Analyst, we should treat its ad hominem component as its primary intention. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the American society in the 19th century, still prevailingly Christian, proclamations of faithlessness and calls for a purely scientific worldview occasionally appeared. Religion was perceived as an obstacle to efforts toward scientific materialism. A leading representative and popularizer of such an attitude was the American humanist, thinker, orator and lawyer Robert Green Ingersoll, whose works have been translated into many languages, including Czech. Ingersoll became a very popular figure, inspiring freethought circles both in the United States and in Europe. As a keen critic of religion, he ranked among the key American advocates for free thought, humanism, and the propagation of scientific knowledge. The paper discusses his specific form of faithlessness (agnosticism rather than atheism) and introduces a typology categorizing strategies of his criticism of the religious worldview in the context of Czech intellectual and freethinking movement of the first third of the 20th century.

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Though Zhou Youguang has passed away, his strong patriotism, independent exploration spirit, candid quality, awareness of unexpected development, broad mind, firm professional will, knowledge-seeking diligence, indifference to fame and fortune, modest and optimistic life attitude and respectful spouse affection demonstrate the great sense of historical mission and lofty responsibility of the traditional Chinese intellectuals. Today, people should strive to inherit and pass on his spirit, carry forward his sublime qualities so as to make contribution to the rejuvenation of the Chinese nation and world peace. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article follows Kant's different views on aesthetics ranging from the pre-critical period to the Critique of the Power of Judgement. It argues that John Zammito's psychological explanation of why Kant in the third Critique developed an argument for the transcendental justification of judgements of taste is unconvincing. As an alternative, the article shows how Kant in his published pre-critical discussions of aesthetics was relying upon empiricist sources while he in private comments turned to consider the culture critique of Rousseau. Kant's preoccupation with questions of culture critique, it is argued, was an important reason to enlarge the doctrines of transcendental philosophy with a third Critique containing a transcendental aesthetics of beauty. Additionally, it is pointed out an interesting similarity throughout the development of Kant's philosophy. In 1765 and in the third Critique Kant was concerned to keep philosophy and judgements of taste apart from science in order to argue that these were spaces for freethinking. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Focusing on John Toland, Anthony Collins and Matthew Tindal, this article argues that the English deists’ tolerationist ideas played a significant role in their religious thinking, which consisted of their ‘religious thoughts’ and their ‘thoughts about religion’. As regards their ‘religious thoughts’, those deists regarded rationality as the highest state of human existence, because only the proper use of reason could lead humanity to true morality, happiness and (at least in Tindal’s case) eternal salvation. Thus, they considered toleration, entailing freedom of conscience, thought and expression, as a necessary means to enable humankind to pursue ‘true religion’, namely rationality. As to their ‘thoughts about religion’, they appropriated and rethought the foundational sources and tenets of the Judeo-Christian tradition (and, in Toland’s case, of Islam as well) for a twofold purpose: they attempted to debunk the divine right system of power, which opposed toleration and was widely considered to be based on Christian texts and principles; moreover, they aimed at assimilating the original versions of the three major Abrahamic religions, which in their opinion taught morality and toleration, into their own deistic worldviews, which they tried to prove truer and historically more reliable than the positive religions of their time. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In the American society in the 19th century, still prevailingly Christian, proclamations of faithlessness and calls for a purely scientific worldview occasionally appeared. Religion was perceived as an obstacle to efforts toward scientific materialism. A leading representative and popularizer of such an attitude was the American humanist, thinker, orator and lawyer Robert Green Ingersoll, whose works have been translated into many languages, including Czech. Ingersoll became a very popular figure, inspiring freethought circles both in the United States and in Europe. As a keen critic of religion, he ranked among the key American advocates for free thought, humanism, and the propagation of scientific knowledge. The paper discusses his specific form of faithlessness (agnosticism rather than atheism) and introduces a typology categorizing strategies of his criticism of the religious worldview in the context of Czech intellectual and freethinking movement of the first third of the 20th century. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Studii de Ştiintă şi Cultură is the property of Studii de Stiinta si Cultura and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

In the polemic raised by Berkeleys Alciphron against Freethinking, one of the most paradoxical topics is the accusation of enthusiasm. For enthusiasm traditionnally means a kind of religious illumination seemingly incompatible with the critical rationalism the freethinkers pretend to assume. Now this accusation is not raised against the foremost British deists like Toland and Collins (rather dismissed as rationalistic bigots), but against Shaftesbury, whose new analysis of enthusiasm as a universal passion, creative or destructive following only the temper of the individual, is strongly rejected by Berkeley. This papers aim is to show that Berkeleys rejection of this modern sense of enthusiasm involves a traditional and conservative conception of reason as an heteronomous, educational discipline of man, whose nature would only be bestial before -or without religious education, against the new epistemological and moral role given to desire and sentiment by Shaftesburys analysis of enthusiasm.

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Between XVII and XVIII centuries, along Europe, the libertine culture assimilates new natural philosophy’s laical and rational achievements . Indeed, on one side it delves into the ancient Pyrrhonism’s points; in the same time and on the other side it considers the Hermeticism’s Renaissance legacy. This is an erudite and daring operation, which is against the tide and disparaging of ecclesiastical bans. Prime movers were key people as John Toland and Anglo-Dutch free-thinkers, Eugene Prince of Savoy and his intendant Baron Hohendorf, Pietro Giannone and – in Paris – abbot Lenglet du Fresnoy. The abbot, prolific writer and reader, easily moves from his first period studies about French history – in keeping with the European erudition over Deism and radical Enlightenment – to the rescue of magical – hermetical tradition in his last years. His own extensive literary work, known but never fully analyzed, is important and valuable.

Most work on pioneering South African novelist Olive Schreiner foregrounds the shaping of her work by the relationship between Great Britain and South Africa, and Schreiner’s own shuttling between those two countries. Elleke Boehmer’s call for “cross-national” readings of “anticolonial interdiscursivity” challenges us to examine Schreiner’s intellectual development, particularly her religious freethinking, her literary originality, and her political radicalism in a more globally transnational light. This paper picks up that challenge by tracing some of the colonial counterflows of Unitarian dissent from Rammohun Roy in early nineteenth -century Bengal through Ralph Waldo Emerson in mid-nineteenth-century Boston to Schreiner and the formal establishment of Unitarianism in Cape Town. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Background of the Study Democratic behaviours shown by teachers in the classroom are of great importance in terms of teachers acting as a role model for students and raising more democratic individuals. Purpose of Study This study aimed to develop a scale to measure the directing freetinking behaviours shown in the primary classroom of teachers delivering a social studies course. The study was conducted on 289 social studies teachers employed in the secondary levels of 49 primary schools located in Ankara, Turkey, in the 2008-2009 academic year. Results In the scope of this study, which aimed to develop a scale to measure directing freetinking behaviours shown by the social studies teachers in the primary classroom, item analysis was undertaken on the item and scale scores in order to select the items to be included in the scale that have strong and distinctive relationship with attitude. The item-total scale correlations of all the remaining items were above 0.40 and their correlation coefficients were found statistically significant (significance=0.05). An exploratory factor analysis was used to test the construct validity of the scale. The analysis produced a KMO value of 0,910 which proved that the study data and sample population was appropriate and adequate for the selected analysis. The Bartlett test was found to be statistically significant. (χ²= 2619,87; p<.05). The remaining 21 items created a structure composed of 4 subfactors (each with an eigenvalue above 1).The total of the all scale subfactors explained 57.47'sini % of the total variance. Cronbach Alpha internal reliability coefficient of 0,92 for the whole scale. Discussion and Conclusion This study aimed to develop a scale to measure the directing freetinking behaviours shown by social studies teachers in the primary classroom. At the end of the study, a four-subfactor, 21-item "Directing Freetinking behaviours Shown in the Classroom" scale had been developed. Among these, 7 items in the first sub-factor were referred to as "freethinking", 5 items in the second sub-factor were referred to as "free discussion", 5 items in the third sub-scale were referred to as "respecting different opinions" and four items in the fourth sub-factor were referred to as "self-discipline behaviors". The findings related to the reliability and validity of the scale prove that this scale can be used to measure directing freetinking behaviours shown by the social studies teachers in the classroom. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Little historical research has been done into science education in primary schools in the Netherlands. This is remarkable, because the introduction of science in the curriculum marked an important shift in the history of the primary school. This article focuses on the pedagogical meaning of science education in the period after 1857, the year when several scientific subjects, like natural science and the 'study of forms', became obligatory to all pupils. Some teachers feared that this change would turn primary schools into industrial schools. This, however, was not the case. On the contrary, as became clear by studying cultural and pedagogical journals, teachers appreciated the benefits of science education because it supported the development of pupils in all the aspects of life: cognitive, moral and religious. Freethinkers are included in this research because their liberal theological thought and interest in the moral meaning of science was both exemplary and limiting for the identity of science education. The outcome of this article challenges the idea in historiography that the function of Dutch primary schools in the mid-nineteenth century was either socialisation or qualification. Instead, it intended to educate pupils towards 'full humanity', science education having an important role in this. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The essay examines the comments made on a portrait of the French materialist philosopher Julien Offray de la Mettrie by a number of German critics, chiefly Lessing and Lavater. I claim that aesthetic arguments are used as proxies for ideological disagreement. In particular, I argue that Lessing's celebrated criticism of the representation of duration in the visual arts, in his Laokoon, is motivated by theological concerns. I show further that Lessing's argument was used to buttress the cruder calumnies of Lavater and others. The corpus of comments over a thirty-year period show how difficult it was for German thinkers to accept philosophical materialism as a position deserving intellectual respect. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

France is currently celebrating the 100th anniversary of the passing of the Act of Separation between the Churches and the State (9 December 1905) and a particular committee was created in 2003 in order to reflect on the implementation of the principle of "laïcité". These two facts have jointly initiated a reconsideration of the past. The period between 1880 and 1914, with its numerous debates that ended up in more or less pronounced consensus, is a key one to better understand the current events. Indeed, through a close reading of the texts one can identify several interpretations of "laïcité", which are still underlying today's discussions with a different background: a "laïcité" which is stamped with a religious spirit, another anticlerical, or perhaps even antireligious, one, and finally an a-religious one. The upholders of each interpretation have endeavoured to answer, in their own way, to meet the human requirements of an ideal, irrespective of the period considered. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyzes the phenomenon of anticlericalism in contemporary Lithuania, applying a sociohistorical approach. It starts with a discussion on the problem of criticism of religion and anticlericalism in contemporary societies, and particularly Lithuania. The empirical part of the paper provides a statistical data analysis of two surveys, conducted in 2012 and 2018. The secondary data analysis showed that age and place of residence of Roman Catholics in Lithuania were statistically meaningful factors for the formation of anticlerical stances. Younger respondents expressed more critical stances towards the clergy, while respondents living in large cities of the country had more relaxed stances towards clergy than those living in small towns and rural areas. Living in a proximity to a Roman Catholic church in rural areas determined the prevalent anticlerical attitudes among the Lithuanian population. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]