Freethought
This article contains too many or overly lengthy quotations. (November 2020) |
Freethought (sometimes spelled free thought)[1][2][3] is an epistemological viewpoint which holds that beliefs should not be formed on the basis of authority, tradition, revelation, or dogma, and should instead be reached by other methods such as logic, reason, and empirical observation.
According to the
The term first came into use in the 17th century in order to refer to people who inquired into the basis of traditional beliefs which were often accepted unquestioningly. Today, freethinking is most closely linked with
Freemasonry served an important purpose in the spreading of the freethinking movement, Freemason lodges in 18th century Europe served as sites for enlightenment thinking and discussion of new ideas, helping spread freethought philosophies. The informal, secretive nature of the lodges allowed intellectuals and elites to gather and debate radical topics away from the scrutiny of church and state.[9]
Definition
Atheist author Adam Lee defines free thought as thinking which is independent of revelation, tradition, established belief, and authority,[10] and considers it as a "broader umbrella" than atheism "that embraces a rainbow of unorthodoxy, religious dissent, skepticism, and unconventional thinking."[11][12]
The basic summarizing statement of the essay The Ethics of Belief by the 19th-century British mathematician and philosopher William Kingdon Clifford is: "It is wrong always, everywhere, and for anyone, to believe anything upon insufficient evidence."[13] The essay became a rallying cry for freethinkers when published in the 1870s, and has been described as a point when freethinkers grabbed the moral high ground.[14] Clifford was himself an organizer of free thought gatherings, the driving force behind the Congress of Liberal Thinkers held in 1878.
Regarding
However, philosopher Bertrand Russell wrote the following in his 1944 essay The Value of Free Thought:[17]
What makes a freethinker is not his beliefs but the way in which he holds them. If he holds them because his elders told him they were true when he was young, or if he holds them because if he did not he would be unhappy, his thought is not free; but if he holds them because, after careful thought he finds a balance of evidence in their favour, then his thought is free, however odd his conclusions may seem.
A freethinker, according to Russell, is not necessarily an atheist or an agnostic, as long as he or she satisfies this definition:
The person who is free in any respect is free from something; what is the free thinker free from? To be worthy of the name, he must be free of two things: the force of tradition, and the tyranny of his own passions. No one is completely free from either, but in the measure of a man's emancipation he deserves to be called a free thinker.
On the other hand, according to Bertrand Russell, atheists and/or agnostics are not necessarily freethinkers. As an example, he mentions Stalin, whom he compares to a "pope":
what I am concerned with is the doctrine of the modern Communistic Party, and of the Russian Government to which it owes allegiance. According to this doctrine, the world develops on the lines of a Plan called
, and now expounded from day to day by a Church of which Stalin is the Pope. […] Free discussion is to be prevented wherever the power to do so exists; […] If this doctrine and this organization prevail, free inquiry will become as impossible as it was in the middle ages, and the world will relapse into bigotry and obscurantism.
In the 18th and 19th century, many thinkers regarded as freethinkers were
Characteristics
Among freethinkers, for a notion to be considered true it must be testable,
Symbol
The pansy serves as the long-established and enduring symbol of free thought; literature of the American Secular Union inaugurated its usage in the late 1800s. The reasoning behind the pansy as the symbol of free thought lies both in the flower's name and in its appearance. The pansy derives its name from the French word pensée, which means "thought". It allegedly received this name because the flower is perceived by some to bear resemblance to a human face, and in mid-to-late summer it nods forward as if deep in thought.[22] In the 1880s, following examples set by freethinkers in France, Belgium, Spain and Sweden, it was proposed in the United States as "the symbol of religious liberty and freedom of conscience".[23]
History
Pre-modern movement
Critical thought has flourished in the Hellenistic Mediterranean, in the repositories of knowledge and wisdom in
French physician and writer
So had Gargantua established it. In all their rule and strictest tie of their order there was but this one clause to be observed, Do What Thou Wilt; because free people ... act virtuously and avoid vice. They call this honor.
When Rabelais's hero Pantagruel journeys to the "Oracle of The Div(in)e Bottle", he learns the lesson of life in one simple word: "Trinch!", Drink! Enjoy the simple life, learn wisdom and knowledge, as a free human. Beyond puns, irony, and satire, Gargantua's prologue-metaphor instructs the reader to "break the bone and suck out the substance-full marrow" ("la substantifique moëlle"), the core of wisdom.
Modern movements
The year 1600 is considered a landmark in the era of modern free thought. It was the year of the execution in Italy of Giordano Bruno, a former Dominican friar, by the Inquisition.[27][28][29]
Australia
Prior to
Belgium
The
Canada
In 1873 a handful of secularists founded the earliest known secular organization in English Canada, the Toronto Freethought Association. Reorganized in 1877 and again in 1881, when it was renamed the Toronto Secular Society, the group formed the nucleus of the Canadian Secular Union, established in 1884 to bring together freethinkers from across the country.[31]
A significant number of the early members appear to have come from the educated labour "aristocracy", including Alfred F. Jury, J. Ick Evans and J. I. Livingstone, all of whom were leading labour activists and secularists. The second president of the Toronto association,
The principal organ of the free thought movement in Canada was
France
In France, the concept first appeared in publication in 1765 when Denis Diderot, Jean le Rond d'Alembert, and Voltaire included an article on Liberté de penser in their Encyclopédie.[32] The concept of free thought spread so widely that even places as remote as the Jotunheimen, in Norway, had well-known freethinkers such as Jo Gjende by the 19th century.[33]
In France, Lefebvre de la Barre is widely regarded a symbol of the victims of Christian religious intolerance; La Barre along with Jean Calas and Pierre-Paul Sirven, was championed by Voltaire. A second replacement statue to de la Barre stands nearby the Basilica of the Sacred Heart of Jesus of Paris at the summit of the butte Montmartre (itself named from the Temple of Mars), the highest point in Paris and an 18th arrondissement street nearby the Sacré-Cœur is also named after Lefebvre de la Barre.
The 19th century saw the emergence of a specific notion of Libre-Pensée ("free thought"), with writer Victor Hugo as one of its major early proponents. French Freethinkers (Libre-Penseurs) associate freedom of thought, political anti-clericalism and socialist leanings. The main organisation referring to this tradition to this day is the Fédération nationale de la libre pensée, created in 1890.
Germany
In Germany, during the period 1815–1848 and before the
Free thought organizations developed the "Jugendweihe" (literally Youth consecration), a secular "confirmation" ceremony, and atheist funeral rites.[35][36] The Union of Freethinkers for Cremation was founded in 1905, and the Central Union of German Proletariat Freethinker in 1908. The two groups merged in 1927, becoming the German Freethinking Association in 1930.[37]
More "bourgeois" organizations declined after
Ireland
In the 19th century, received opinion was scandalised by George Ensor (1769-1843).[41][42] His Review of the Miracles, Prophecies, & Mysteries of the Old and New Testaments (1835) argued that, far from being a source of moral teaching, revealed religion and its divines regarded questions of morality as "incidental"--as a "mundane and merely philosophical" topic.[43]
Netherlands
In the Netherlands, free thought has existed in organized form since the establishment of De Dageraad (now known as
In 2009, Frans van Dongen established the Atheist-Secular Party, which takes a considerably restrictive view of religion and public religious expressions.
Since the 19th century, free thought in the Netherlands has become more well known as a political phenomenon through at least three currents: liberal freethinking, conservative freethinking, and classical freethinking. In other words, parties which identify as freethinking tend to favor non-doctrinal, rational approaches to their preferred ideologies, and arose as secular alternatives to both clerically aligned parties as well as labor-aligned parties. Common themes among freethinking political parties are "freedom", "liberty", and "individualism".
Switzerland
With the introduction of cantonal church taxes in the 1870s, anti-clericals began to organise themselves. Around 1870, a "freethinkers club" was founded in Zürich. During the debate on the Zürich church law in 1883, professor Friedrich Salomon Vögelin and city council member Kunz proposed to separate church and state.[44]
Turkey
In the last years of the
United Kingdom
The term freethinker emerged towards the end of the 17th century in England to describe those who stood in opposition to the institution of the Church, and the literal belief in the Bible. The beliefs of these individuals were centered on the concept that people could understand the world through consideration of nature. Such positions were formally documented for the first time in 1697 by William Molyneux in a widely publicized letter to John Locke, and more extensively in 1713, when Anthony Collins wrote his Discourse of Free-thinking, which gained substantial popularity. This essay attacks the clergy of all churches and it is a plea for deism.
The Freethinker magazine was first published in Britain in 1881; it continued in print until 2014, and still exists as a web-based publication.
United States
The Free Thought movement first organized itself in the United States as the "Free Press Association" in 1827 in defense of George Houston, publisher of The Correspondent, an early journal of
Driven by the revolutions of 1848 in the German states, the 19th century saw an
Many Freethinkers settled in German immigrant strongholds, including St. Louis, Indianapolis, Wisconsin, and Texas, where they founded the town of Comfort, Texas, as well as others.[58]
These groups of German Freethinkers referred to their organizations as Freie Gemeinden, or "free congregations".[58] The first Freie Gemeinde was established in St. Louis in 1850.[59] Others followed in Pennsylvania, California, Washington, D.C., New York, Illinois, Wisconsin, Texas, and other states.[58][59]
Freethinkers tended to be liberal, espousing ideals such as racial, social, and sexual equality, and the abolition of slavery.[58]
The "Golden Age of Freethought" in the US came in the late 1800s. The dominant organization was the
Free thought in the United States declined in the early twentieth century. By the early twentieth century, most free thought congregations had disbanded or joined other mainstream churches. The longest continuously operating free thought congregation in America is the Free Congregation of Sauk County, Wisconsin, which was founded in 1852 and is still active as of 2020[update]. It affiliated with the
German Freethinker settlements were located in:
- Burlington, Racine County, Wisconsin[58]
- Belleville, St. Clair County, Illinois
- Castell, Llano County, Texas
- Comfort, Kendall County, Texas
- Davenport, Scott County, Iowa[62]
- Fond du Lac, Fond du Lac County, Wisconsin[58]
- Frelsburg, Colorado County, Texas
- Hermann, Gasconade County, Missouri
- Jefferson, Jefferson County, Wisconsin[58]
- Indianapolis, Indiana[63]
- Latium, Washington County, Texas
- Manitowoc, Manitowoc County, Wisconsin[58]
- Meyersville, DeWitt County, Texas
- Milwaukee, Wisconsin[58]
- Millheim, Austin County, Texas
- Oshkosh, Winnebago County, Wisconsin[58]
- Ratcliffe, DeWitt County, Texas
- Sauk City, Sauk County, Wisconsin[58][61]
- Shelby, Austin County, Texas
- Sisterdale, Kendall County, Texas
- St. Louis, Missouri
- Tusculum, Kendall County, Texas
- Two Rivers, Manitowoc County, Wisconsin[58]
- Watertown, Dodge County, Wisconsin[58]
Anarchism
Part of a series on |
Anarchism |
---|
United States tradition
Free thought influenced the development of
European tradition
In Europe, a similar development occurred in French and Spanish individualist anarchist circles:
"Anticlericalism, just as in the rest of the
In 1901 the Catalan anarchist and freethinker
Freethinking in Freemasonry
Freemasonry attracted many freethinkers and became a hub of the movement, during the Enlightenment era due to its emphasis on inclusive membership, Logic, rationalism, and religious tolerance.[70] Freemasonry's origins from stonemason guilds meant its symbolism and rituals drew on concepts from the Trivium and Quadrivium, they include the Mastery of Grammar, Rhetoric, Logic then Mastery of arithmetic, geometry, music, and astronomy as well as other arts such as the mechanical arts, reflecting Enlightenment ideals in the goal of making its members Masters of their thoughts and opinions thus making them Freethinkers.[71] This distinguished Freemasonry from other fraternal orders focused on chivalry or Christian morality.[70]
Rationalism and Science
Because Freemasonry utilized extensive symbols and allegories related to mathematics, geometry, and architecture, conveying the importance of reason and science,[71]and the central Masonic symbol of the compass and square represented logic and rigor [72] as well references to the "Great Architect of the Universe" these concepts were interpreted as a deist scientific creator by Enlightenment freethinkers.
Influential early Speculative Masonic writings by James Anderson and Jean-Theophile Desaguliers frequently cited Isaac Newton and promoted Newtonian scientific ideas.[72] Desaguliers was a close friend and student of Newton, further spreading Newton's theories to lodges.[72] Geometry textbooks and lectures were common in early lodges, aligning with Enlightenment interest in mathematics and science.[71]
Freemasonry's multi-tiered system of initiation rituals allegorically used the tools, stages, and concepts of architecture and mechanics to represent enlightenment and self-improvement through education and reason.[71] This resonated with freethinkers' belief in perfecting society through spreading knowledge.
Religious tolerance
Unlike most contemporary fraternal orders, Freemasonry did not require its members to follow a specific religious creed.[70] This openness allowed men of diverse faiths, including freethinkers and deists, to join local lodges throughout Europe and America in the Enlightenment era. While utilizing religious imagery and themes, Freemasonry intentionally avoided dogmatic disputes and focused its moral lessons on shared values of virtue, charity, and righteousness.[70]
This religious tolerance attracted Enlightenment thinkers, like Voltaire, who viewed organized religion as upholding oppressive traditional monarchs and hindering free thought.[73] Benjamin Franklin praised Masonic principles of "liberality, tolerance and unity in essentials, leaving each Brother to his own opinions on non-essentials" in his writings.[74]
Political Liberalism
Many Enlightenment freethinkers perceived established religion as upholding traditional monarchies and oppressing free thought.[73] Consequently, the secrecy and hierarchical Initiatory structure of Freemasonry alarmed some authoritarian states, concerned it could encourage liberal revolutionary ideas.[72]
However, most Masonic lodges mainly aimed to promote morality, sociability, and philanthropic causes rather than radical politics.[70] But values of free-thinking, liberty, equality and opposition to tyranny were also celebrated in Masonic rituals and writings.[71] This intellectual spirit likely contributed to many Freemasons supporting independence movements and participating as Founding Fathers of the United States.[75]
In the 19th and 20th centuries, some authoritarian states also suspected Freemasonry of encouraging liberal freethinking philosophies and suppressed Masonic lodges.
Pursuit of Mastery
A core goal of Freemasonry's initiatory system is to guide men's intellectual and moral development towards mastery and enlightenment.[71] Masonic rituals and degrees symbolically depict the passage from an Apprentice to Fellowcraft to Master Mason as a metaphor for independent learning and self-improvement to the goal of becoming a Master of himself, thus a full freethinker.[72]
Attaining mastery is presented as freeing a man's mind from reliance on authorities and dogmas so he can autonomously reason and have educated opinions.[75] The perfectibility of human nature through education and liberty is a key theme. This aligns with freethinkers' views on thinking for oneself using logic and empiricism.
See also
- Freemasonry
- Brights movement
- Critical rationalism
- Ethical movement
- Secular humanism
- Freedom of thought
- Freethought Association of Canada
- Freethought Day
- Golden Age of Freethought
- Individualism
- Objectivism
- Rationalism
- Religious skepticism
- Scientism
- Secular Thought
- Spiritual but not religious
- The Freethinker (journal)
Notes and references
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- ^ "Free thought – Definition of free thought by Merriam-Webster". Archived from the original on 22 April 2020. Retrieved 5 August 2020.
- ^ a b c "Freethinker – Definition of freethinker by Merriam-Webster". Archived from the original on 24 April 2009. Retrieved 12 June 2015.
- ^ "FREETHINKER definition in American English | Collins English Dictionary".
- ^ "Glossary | International Humanist and Ethical Union". Archived from the original on 2013-01-17. Retrieved 2012-02-03.
- ^ "Nontracts". Archived from the original on 4 August 2012. Retrieved 12 June 2015.
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- ^ Fitzpatrick, M.; Jones, P.; Knellwolf, C.; McCalman, I. (2004). The Enlightenment World. Routledge.
- ^ "What Is Freethought?". Daylight Atheism. 2010-02-26. Archived from the original on 2015-04-02. Retrieved 12 June 2015.
- ^ Adam Lee (October 2012). "9 Great Freethinkers and Religious Dissenters in History". Big Think. Archived from the original on 8 September 2015. Retrieved 12 June 2015.
- ^ Bogdan, H.; Snoek, J., eds. (2014). "Freemasonry and the Eighteenth-Century European Enlightenment". Handbook of Freemasonry. Brill. pp. 321–335.
- ^ Clifford, William K. "5. The Ethics of Belief". In Levin, Noah (ed.). Philosophy of Western Religions. N.G.E. Far Press. pp. 18–21. Archived from the original on 2022-01-31. Retrieved 2022-01-31.
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- ^ "What is a Freethinker? - Freedom From Religion Foundation". Archived from the original on 15 July 2015. Retrieved 12 June 2015.
- ^ Russell, Bertrand (1944). The Value of Free Thought: How to Become a Truth-seeker and Break the Chains of Mental Slavery. Haldeman-Julius Publications. Archived from the original on 2023-04-29. Retrieved 2023-04-30.
- ^ "Saga Of Freethought And Its Pioneers". American Humanist Association. Archived from the original on 15 July 2015. Retrieved 12 June 2015.
- ^ James E. Force, Introduction (1990) to An Account of the Growth of Deism in England (1696) by William Stephens
- ^ Aveling, Francis, ed. (1908). "Deism". The Catholic Encyclopedia. Archived from the original on 2012-10-12. Retrieved 2012-10-10.
The deists were what nowadays would be called freethinkers, a name, indeed, by which they were not infrequently known; and they can only be classed together wholly in the main attitude that they adopted, viz. in agreeing to cast off the trammels of authoritative religious teaching in favour of a free and purely rationalistic speculation.... Deism, in its every manifestation was opposed to the current and traditional teaching of revealed religion.
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For Bruno was claiming for the philosopher a principle of free thought and inquiry which implied an entirely new concept of authority: that of the individual intellect in its serious and continuing pursuit of an autonomous inquiry… It is impossible to understand the issue involved and to evaluate justly the stand made by Bruno with his life without appreciating the question of free thought and liberty of expression. His insistence on placing this issue at the center of both his work and of his defense is why Bruno remains so much a figure of the modern world. If there is, as many have argued, an intrinsic link between science and liberty of inquiry, then Bruno was among those who guaranteed the future of the newly emerging sciences, as well as claiming in wider terms a general principle of free thought and expression.
- ^ Montano, Aniello (24 November 2007). Antonio Gargano (ed.). Le deposizioni davanti al tribunale dell'Inquisizione. Napoli: La Città del Sole. p. 71.
In Rome, Bruno was imprisoned for seven years and subjected to a difficult trial that analyzed, minutely, all his philosophical ideas. Bruno, who in Venice had been willing to recant some theses, become increasingly resolute and declared on 21 December 1599 that he 'did not wish to repent of having too little to repent, and in fact did not know what to repent.' Declared an unrepentant heretic and excommunicated, he was burned alive in the Campo dei Fiori in Rome on 17 February 1600. On the stake, along with Bruno, burned the hopes of many, including philosophers and scientists of good faith like Galileo, who thought they could reconcile religious faith and scientific research, while belonging to an ecclesiastical organization declaring itself to be the custodian of absolute truth and maintaining a cultural militancy requiring continual commitment and suspicion.
- ^ Birx, James (11 November 1997). "Giordano Bruno". Mobile Alabama Harbinger. Archived from the original on 16 May 2019. Retrieved 28 April 2014.
To me, Bruno is the supreme martyr for both free thought and critical inquiry… Bruno's critical writings, which pointed out the hypocrisy and bigotry within the Church, along with his tempestuous personality and undisciplined behavior, easily made him a victim of the religious and philosophical intolerance of the 16th century. Bruno was excommunicated by the Catholic, Lutheran and Calvinist Churches for his heretical beliefs. The Catholic hierarchy found him guilty of infidelity and many errors, as well as serious crimes of heresy… Bruno was burned to death at the stake for his pantheistic stance and cosmic perspective.
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- ^ Ensor, George (1835). A Review of the Miracles, prophecies, and mysteries of the Old and New Testaments, and of the morality and consolation of the Christian Religion. London: John Brooks. pp. 88, 91, 103. Archived from the original on 2023-04-11. Retrieved 2023-04-30.
- ^ "Geschichte der Freidenker". FAS website (in German). Archived from the original on 2 November 2017. Retrieved 10 May 2016.
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Even before accepting the religion of the Arabs, the Turks were a great nation. After accepting the religion of the Arabs, this religion, didn't effect to combine the Arabs, the Persians and Egyptians with the Turks to constitute a nation. (This religion) rather, loosened the national nexus of Turkish nation, got national excitement numb. This was very natural. Because the purpose of the religion founded by Muhammad, over all nations, was to drag to an including Arab national politics. (Afet İnan, Medenî Bilgiler ve M. Kemal Atatürk'ün El Yazıları, Türk Tarih Kurumu, 1998, p. 364.)
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- ^ a b Demerath, N. J. III and Victor Thiessen, "On Spitting Against the Wind: Organizational Precariousness and American Irreligion," The American Journal of Sociology, 71: 6 (May, 1966), 674–87.
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Koenig, Brigitte Anne (2000). American Anarchism: The Politics of Gender, Culture, and Community from Haymarket to the First World War. Vol. 2. University of California, Berkeley. p. 315. Retrieved 11 April 2021.
[...] parts of the anarchist movement in the United States actually stemmed from free thought circles [...].
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Geoffrey C. Fidler (Spring–Summer 1985). "The Escuela Moderna Movement of Francisco Ferrer: "Por la Verdad y la Justicia"". History of Education Quarterly. 25 (1/2): 103–32. S2CID 147119437.
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- ^ a b c d e Jacob, Margaret C. (1991). Living the Enlightenment: Freemasonry and Politics in Eighteenth-Century Europe. Oxford University Press.
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- ^ a b Israel, Jonathan (2006). Enlightenment Contested. Oxford University Press. pp. 3–28.
- ^ Franklin, Benjamin (2004). The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin. Dover Publications. p. 106.
- ^ a b Bullock, Steven C. (2011). Revolutionary Brotherhood.
Further reading
- Alexander, Nathan G. (2019). Race in a Godless World: Atheism, Race, and Civilization, 1850-1914. New York/Manchester: New York University Press/Manchester University Press. ISBN 978-1526142375
- Alexander Nathan G. "Unclasping the Eagle's Talons: Mark Twain, American Freethought, and the Responses to Imperialism." The Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era 17, no. 3 (2018): 524–545.
- Bury, John Bagnell. (1913). A History of Freedom of Thought. New York: Henry Holt and Company.
- ISBN 0-8050-7442-2
- Putnam, Samuel Porter. (1894). Four Hundred Years of Freethought. New York: Truth Seeker Company.
- ISBN 0-7190-0557-4
- Royle, Edward. (1980). Radicals, Secularists and Republicans: popular freethought in Britain, 1866–1915. Manchester: Manchester University Press. ISBN 0-7190-0783-6
- Tribe, David. (1967). 100 Years of Freethought. London: Elek Books.
External links
- Freethinker Indonesia Archived 2013-05-10 at archive.today
- A History of Freethought
- Young Freethought
- New International Encyclopedia. 1905.
.
- Freethought In A Nutshell by the North Texas Church of Freethought (video on YouTube)