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By Alphabetical Order:
By Historical Subject Area:
The
Plea for Tolerance and a Just Order (Mid 1600s)Hugo Grotius
Thomas Hobbes
James Harrington
John Milton
The
Rationalists (1600s)René Descartes
Benedict (Baruch) de Spinoza
Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz
Giambattista Vico
The
EmpiricistsRobert Boyle
Christian Huygens
Anton van Leeuwenhoek
Isaac Newton
John Locke
"Natural"
Religion (Deism) and Philosophy (Late 1600s-Mid 1700s)Lord Edward Herbert of Cherbury
John Ray
Pierre Bayle
John Toland
Matthew Tindal
Thomas Woolston
The Earl of Shaftesbury
Henry St. John Bolingbroke
Christian Wolff
Reaction
to "Natural" Religion or Deism (Late 1600s-Mid 1700s)Nicholas Malebranche
George Berkeley
William Law
On-Going
Christian Pietism (Late 1600s-Early 1700s)George Fox
Philip Jacob Spener
August Hermann Francke
Madame Guyon
François Fénelon
Cotton Mather
Count Nikolaus Ludwig von Zinzendorf
The
Great Awakening (Mid-1700s)Gilbert Tennent
Jonathan Edwards
John Wesley
Charles Wesley
George Whitfield
Charles Chauncey
Christian
Mysticism in the Age of ReasonEmanuel Swedenborg
Later
Deism and Early Biblical Criticism (Mid-Late 1700s)Johann Jakob Wettstein
Johann Albrecht Bengal
Jean Astruc
Robert Lowth
Hermann Samuel Reimarus
Gotthold Ephraim Lessing
Johann Gottfried Herder
Joseph Priestley
William Paley
Johann Friedrich Eichhorn
The
French PhilosophesBaron de Montesquieu
Voltaire (François-Marie Arouet)
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Denis Diderot
Helvitius (Claude Adrien)
Jean Le Rond d'Alembert
Baron d'Holbach
Turgot
Condorcet
The
Advance of Reason and Science (Mid-Late 1700s)Thomas Reid
Adam Smith
Jeremy Bentham
William Herschel
Pierre Simon de Laplace
Eli Whitney
Skepticism/Critical
Review of Reason (Mid-Late 1700s)David Hume
Immanuel Kant
Anti-Christian
Humanism (Mid-Late 1700s)Edward Gibbon
Ethan Allen
RevolutionBenjamin Franklin
Thomas Paine
Alexander Hamilton
Thomas Jefferson
Edmund Burke
History
of the Enlightenment: General Sources
THE PLEA FOR TOLERANCE AND A JUST ORDER
(Mid 1600s)
The Dutch jurist, Hugo den Groot (Grotius) appealed to the European conscience to seek a new spirit of openness or tolerance about matters of Truth, a broad-mindedness about inquiry concerning Truth.
Hugo Grotius (1583-1645)
To further butress this appeal he set out to try to systematically collect a listing of rules and legal norms that might in the future become the underpinning of a new cooperative international order. He scanned history for laws that had found use in guiding nations toward peace--and laid them out as a new system of international law. By basing these laws on proven behavior he hoped to be establishing a natural (ie. scientific) basis for founding peaceful international behavior. He is thus considered the "Father" of modern international law.
Grotius' major works or writings:
De veritate religionis christianae (1622)
De jure belli ac pacis (1625)
Thomas Hobbes called for an-all powerful sovereign (the "Leviathan") who would serve the interests of the larger political community (i.e., England) by holding it tightly together under his sovereign authority--in order to curb the kind of human wantonness experienced in the Wars of Religion. For Hobbes such powerful rule was not to be founded on the ancient rule of "divine rights" of monarchs--but on the basis of the needs, even rights, of the community to be served by such an all-powerful ruler. In justifying this utilitarian approach to state-building, he used "natural" theory or logic rather than scripture or tradition, putting forth the first efforts to establish a modern "political science." (His arguments were not greeted warmly by the English monarchy, which found "divine rights" as the foundation of its power much more to its liking!)
Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679)
Leviathan (1651) (Australasian Philosophy Forum)Links to other information on Hobbes:
Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679) (Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy)
A utopian republicanist who supported the idea of government of limited and balanced powers--supported by a prosperous, educated and loyal middle class. He suffered during the English civil war for his pro-republican views on the one hand and his simultaneous friendship with the English monarch Charles I on the other.
James Harrington (1611-1677)
The Common-wealth of Oceana (1656)
Puritan Republicanist pamphleteer
John Milton (1608-1674)
Paradise Lost (Wheaton: ccel)
Paradise Regained (Wiretap)
(1600s)
Galileo's and Kepler's work coincided in its timing almost exactly with the work of another early 17th century figure: René Descartes. In some ways Descartes was a medieval rationalist--who believed (in keeping with Plato) that all things in the world around us are merely "extensions" of some variety of mathematical or geometric abstractions. The underlying truth about our world "out there" was discoverable really only through careful mathematical meditations on that world--which could be done at home or in one's closet.
René Descartes (1596-1650)
But in any case, what he came up with in his musings was the idea that the world "out there" was essentially a mechanical device that worked according to fixed rules of motion. Events occurred as the result of impacts among the various bodies that are in constant motion within this "machine." The machine itself is devoid of soul or vitality of its own. It simply responds to the "laws" of motion in a mathematical way.
But that left the question of the human soul and will--and the divine soul and will. Where do we fit in? Are we merely elements of this mechanical world? Is God merely an element of the mechanical world? To Descartes the answer was clearly a "no" to both questions.
But in affirming our own vitality--and God's--Descartes was forced to separate the human soul (and God's) from that soul-less mechanical creation "out there." Fine. But how then were we connected to that world--except as removed observers? Where was our ancient sense of unity with all creation? Where in fact did that leave us in relation to God--and to each other?
Those questions were never adequately answered. The human soul seemed to be left cut adrift by what was considered a very compelling philosophical statement--one which swept powerfully through the philosophical circles of Europe in those days.
Discourse on the Method (1637) (Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy)
Meditations on the First Philosophy (1642)(Wright State)
Principia Philosophiae (1644)Rene Descartes (1596-1650) (Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy)
Spinoza was born of Jewish parents who had escaped the Inquisition in Portugal by coming to Amsterdam where Baruch (Latin: Benedictus) was born. Spinoza was a very unorthodox thinker--and his ideas eventually got him expelled from the Jewish community (1656). Because he saw God as present in everything--as the source and essence of all substance--he was viewed variously as a pantheist, a materialist, an atheist.
Benedict (Baruch) de Spinoza (1632-1677)
He was a moral relativist, who did not believe in some set of transcending religious or civil laws that we ought to conform ourselves to, but who instead believed in following out our own natural personal imperatives--that noone else had a right to pass judgment on.
This was not a philosophy designed to make the religiously conservative community around him very happy. But it certainly
spoke to those souls who were tiring rapidly of the mean spiritedness of the religiously orthodox--a growing number of youthful
minds who hoped to rise to truths which were vastly higher than the traditional variety that had brought Europeans to war against
each other mercilessly.
A Short Treatise on God, Man and his Well-Being
Tractatus de Intellectus Emendatione (Treatise On the Improvement of the Understanding) (1661-1677) (Shalizi)
Tractatus Theologico-Politicus(Treatise on Theology and Politics) (1670)
Ethics (1663-1675, 1677) (MidTenn)Benedict (Baruch) Spinoza (1632-1677) (Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy)
A Spinoza Chronology (Bombardi: MidTenn)
Baruch Spinoza (1632-1677) (Kemerling)
German mathematician and rationalist philosopher--who, simultaneously with Newton, invented the differential and integral calculus. He was a widely talented and travelled individual--and kept up friendships and correspondences with a wide range of scientists, philosophers and political figures of the day.
Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (1646-1716)
Leibniz was born and educated in Leipzig, eventually studying law at the University of Leipzig. From 1667 to 1672, he worked for the Elector of Mainz as a lawyer and diplomat.
He travelled widely coming into close contact with a number of political and scientific luminaries of his day. In 1762 me travelled to Paris where he came into contact with Huygens, and Malbranche. His travels also took him to England (1673, 1676) and to Amsterdam (1673), where he spent time with Spinoza. During these days he began his work on the calculus.
In 1676 he went to work as a librarian to the Duke of Brunswick, and took up work on a number of mechanical devices that utilized his mathematical and technical talents. But he also turned his attention to philosophy, completing works on metaphysics and systematic philosophy during the 1680s and 1690s.
Hypothesis Physica Nova (New Physical Hypothesis) (1671)
Discours de métaphysique (Discourse on Metphysics) (1686)
The New System (1695)
Nouveaux Essais sur L'entendement humaine (New Essays on Human Understanding) (1705)
Théodicée (Theodicy) (1710)
The Dialogues of Hylas and Philonous (1713)
The Monadology (1714)(Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy: html) The Monadology (VaTech: gopher)Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (Stanford: Metaphysics Research Lab)
A Leibnitian Chronology (Suiseth Editions)Italian philosopher of history and society--though he also had wider interests in mathematics and linguistics.
Giambattista Vico (1668-1744)
New Science (Scienza Nuova)Giambattista Vico's Life (Vico Homepage)
Giambattista Vico (Jimmy Lo: GaTech)
(1600s)
Boyle is considered the "Father" of modern chemistry. He was one of the "virtuosi" of the Royal Society. He viewed the scientific enterprise as a confirmation of the providential hand of God. To him, science and theology did not contradict--but spoke to one single truth in God.
Robert Boyle (1627-1691)
New Experiments Physico-Mechanical (1660)
The Sceptical Chemist (1661)
A Dutch physicist who made a number of contributions to science in a number of different subfields. He developed the pendulum clock, the telescope, and added to our knowledge of the planet Saturn and its satellite rings and moons.
Christian Huygens (1629-1695)
He is perhaps most notable for his theory that light functioned as a wave rather than as particles (in contrast to Newton). He claimed that light moved along a vibrational path through invisible ether to reach the eye and produce vision.
Horologium oscillatorium (1658)
Systema Saturnium (1659)
Treatise on Light (1690)Christiaan Huygens (IMSS - Florence, Italy)studied microscopic life
Anton van Leeuwenhoek (1632-1723)
Toward the end of the 1600s Newton picked up on Descartes' theories of motion and completed the mechanistic vision of the universe that he had laid out. In his Principia (1687) he so thoroughly pulled the mechanistic vision together that it became the single most important foundation piece for the modern world-view.
Isaac Newton (1642-1727)
He "demonstrated" that all things within the universe are made up of minute bits of matter which are held together in their shape and movement through the force of natural attraction or gravity (the gravitational attraction of two bodies is equal to the product of their mass divided by the square of the distance between them). This theory explained quite fully everything from the movement of the planets through the skies, to the movements of the tides, to the velocity of falling objects--and more.
Just as importantly--the completeness of the theory left no possibility of seeing creation as a "living" thing. Creation was without life of its own; it was instead mere "matter" responding mechanically to a set of fixed mathematical laws.
Nonetheless, Newton thought of himself as being religiously quite devout. His theory of the universe --so he thought--was intended as a powerful tribute to the Grand Architect who designed such a wonderfully complex yet beautiful creation.
However, Newton depicted God in such a way that God actually lost "personality" and the realm of sovereign action. God was left a role in nature largely as "First Mover" with no further significant intervention in life. God nearly became identified with the eternity or infinity of the universe.
Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica (The Principia) (1687)
Opticks (1704)
Isaac Newtown's Papers and Letters on Natural Philosophy [Collection] (ed. Cohen: 1952)Sir Isaac Newton (St. Andrews: MacTutor)
Newton's Life (Westfall)
Newton, Isaac (1642-1727)
Newtonia: Pages about Sir Isaac Newton (McNab)
Isaac Newton's Hidden Agenda of Mysticism and Alchemy (Brain Bank)Very shortly after Newton's Principia was published, Locke published his Essay on Human Understanding (1690).
John Locke (1632-1704)
Locke brought the human mind into this mechanical world by positing a theory of knowledge in which the mind at birth is simply a blank receptacle, possessing no "innate" ideas. Over the years the mind has data added to it from the outside world. This comes in the form of "sensations" that strike this blank mind through the sensory devices of sight, hearing, feeling, taste, and smell.
These data in turn are developed into full ideas by the mechanism of the mind, which sifts this imported information in the search for the agreement or disagreement of two thoughts or idea. From this mental process develops a well articulated vision of the world around us--and its causes and effects.
As far as "moral" ideas were concerned, Locke felt that prudence and long-term self-interest would serve the rational mind as the determiner of human action.
This theory of human knowledge stood in strong distinction to the traditional understanding that the mind possessed fully--even at birth--a vast store of innate understanding that was vitally a part of its soul quality. The old theory accounted for "learning" by seeing the task not one of inserting information from the outside (as per Locke--and almost every Western educator since), but instead one of drawing out (thus the ancient word "education" which means "draw out") the wealth of innate understanding already present in the human soul. One didn't make discoveries about things "out there." A person made discoveries about things already located deep down inside oneself.
Though Locke's theory could offer no hard evidence that what he hypothesized was indeed true--the time was ripe for such a theory. "Science" was rapidly stripping life of the sense of "soul" or "sacredness" to it. The wars of religion had also helped immeasurably. So Locke's theory "made sense." That was all that was needed to leave a lasting impression on the rapidly shifting world-view of the West.
Two Treatises of Government (1681)(Wiretap: gopher)
Second Treatise on Government (1690) (Liberty Online: html)
A Letter Concerning Toleration (1689, 1690, 1692) (Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy: html) Concerning Toleration (VaTech: gopher)
An Essay on Human Understanding (1690) (Chinese Univ. of Hong Kong: html)
Education(1693)
The Reasonableness of Christianity (1695)John Locke (1632-1704) (Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy)
Locke Bibliography
(Late 1600s to Early 1700s)
He saw little role for revelation in the quest for truth. He believed that all humans are naturally endowed with intuitive ways that linked them to God through simple faith and moral action. Human reason, not religious revelation, was then a more reliable means of perfecting and fulfilling these natural, intuitive ways. Lord Edward Herbert of Cherbury (1583-1648)
Herbert is quite justly considered the "father" of English deism.
De Veritate (On Truth) (1624)
De Causis Errorum (On the Causes of Errors) (1645)
De Religione Laici (On the Religion of the Laity) (1645)
De Religione Gentilium (On the Religion of the Gentiles) (published posthumously in 1663)
Autobiography (ending with the year 1624; published posthumously in 1764)
Edward Herbert of Cherbury (1583-1648) (Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy)An English Puritan and a botanist/biologist. He made tremendous contributions to the work of classifying plant and animal life into families by way of their structure. John Ray (1627-1705)
As a devout Christian he put forth the "argument from design" for the existence of God: viz., surely such precision and order in the natural life necessitated an intelligent being as creator of the universe.
Catalogus Plantarum Angliae (Catalog of English Plants) (1670)
Methodus Plantarum Nova (1703)
Historia Plantarum (3 vols: 1686-1704)
The Wisdom of God Manifested in the Works of Creation(1691)A French philosopher living in the Netherlands who was highly critical of traditional Christian doctrines and teachings. In his Dictionary he lampooned Christian beliefs--and called for toleration of all viewpoints, even atheism. He believed that human reason, not religious revelation, was the only reliable source of truth.
Pierre Bayle (1647-1706)
Philosophical Commentary on the Words of the Gospel (1686) (excerpts)
Historical and Critical Dictionary (1697)The Pierre Bayle Home PageKnowledge derived largely only through human reason. There was only a very reduced role for divine revelation. Toland opened the deistic controversy in England John Toland (1670-1722)
Two Letters from Oxford (1695)
Christianity not Mysterious (1696)
Amyntor (1698)
Letters to Serena (1704)
Adeisidæmon (1709)
Nazarenus (1718)
Pantheisticon (1720)
Tetradymus (1720)
The Primitive Constitution of the Christian Church (1726)John Toland (1670-1722) (Gary Suttle)
John Toland: Father of Secular Philosophy (Sean Kearney)Matthew Tindal (1655-1733)
Essay concerning the Power of the Magistrate (1697)
The Rights of the Christian Church asserted (1706)
The Nation Vindicated (1711)
Christianity as Old as the Creation (1730) [something of an official "Deist Bible" in his time. Here Tindal lays out the argument that all that is valuable in Christianity is that which universal reason alone would hold true. All else (i.e. revelation) is superstition--the most evil form of subjugation of the human mind.]Thomas Woolston (1670-1733)
Six Discourse on the Miracles of Our Savior (1727-1729) [debunked the miracle stories of Jesus and the resurrection accounts in Scripture--on the basis of rationalist arguments.]
Two Defences (1729-1730)The Third Earl of Shaftesbury (Anthony Ashley Cooper) The Earl of Shaftesbury (1671-1713)
He was interested in formulating new sciences of ethics and of esthetics--based not on any kind of imposed norm, such as divine command, but upon the "natural" inclinations of man. His definition of the "good" or "desireable" was ultimately related to that which makes a person truly "happy." In this sense he was part of the newly arising age which began all logic from the point of view of personal human experience. What was good or true was that which was personally good and true for me.
Nonetheless he attempted to anchor this self-centered ethic in loftier holding-ground. Thus he related the notion of what it is that makes a person happy to certain natural harmonies in human life. Such harmony was characterized by a moderation in all things. Thus for instance the emotions were not to be denied--but kept in their natural place by the power of human reason, being allowed to arise only in a manner appropriate to their nature: ie., anger only when and to the extent anger was reasonably appropriate.
He also tried to anchor this self-centered ethic in our natural sense of conscience--which was a facet of our social nature as humans. Thus human reason, which was supposed to be the directing force in our lives, was closely connected to our common human experience--and was not merely the result of our personal inclinations to do this or that. In that sense also human "happiness" was understood to be a part of life's natural harmony, a harmonization of our personal inclinations with the larger social experience: ie., our instinct for "sympathy."
In any case nothing in his moral-ethical or esthetic system depended upon "authority" for it to work. It supposedly all flowed out of the natural instincts of human nature and the harmonies those produced when allowed free play. This was quite a radical challenge to the older Christian interpretation of human nature--with its vision of original sin built into the human character. It moved in a direction opposite Christianity's traditional view that goodness flows out of God's judgments alone and finds its place in our midst only through the discipline of God-fearing authority.
Shaftesbury's arguments seemed so persuasive to the 18th century that his book Characteristics (1711) underwent eleven editions during that century.
Inquiry Concerning Virtue or Merit (1699)
Characteristics (1711)Earl of Shaftesbury: Anthony Ashley Cooper (1671-1713) (Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy)
Bibliographie des études relatives à Anthony Ashley Cooper, troisième Comte de Shaftesbury (1671-1713) (Laurent Jaffro)Henry St. John Bolingbroke (1678-1751)
Letters on the Study and Use of History (2 vols: 1735; published 1752)Henry St. John Bolingbroke (1678-1751) (Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy)
Christian Wolff (1679-1754)
Christian Wolff (1679-1754)
(Late 1600s to Early 1700s)
Nicholas Malebranche (1638-1715)
De la recherche de la vérité (The Search After Truth) (3 vol.: 1674-1675) (Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy: portions of books 3 and 6 only)
Traité de la nature et de la grâce (Treatise of Nature and Grace) (1680)
Traité de morale (A Treatise of Morality) (1683)
Entretiens sur la métaphysique et sur la religion (Dialogues on Metaphysics and on Religion) (1688)Nicholas Malebranche (1638-1715) (Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy)
Nicholas Malebranche (1638-1715)
Nicolas Malebranche (St. Andrews)Anglican bishop (Platonist?). No proof that matter truly exists; only our impressions of such matter exist in our minds. The basis for all thought are ideas which God impresses on our minds.
George Berkeley (1685-1753)
The New Theory of Vision (1709)
Principles of Human Knowledge (1710) (Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy)
Three Dialogues Between Hylas and Philonous (1713) (Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy)
Alciphron or the Minute Philosopher (1732)
The Analyst (1734)
Siris(1744)George Berkeley (1685-1753) (Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy)Reason is the source of all human disorder and corruption. God's will stands above human reason. William Law (1686-1761)
A Serious Call to a Devout and Holy Life (1729) (Wheaton: ccel)
The Case of Reason(1732)
A Demonstration of the Gross and Fundamental Errors Of a Late Book (1737) (Wheaton: ccel)
The Grounds and Reasons of Christian Regeneration (1739) (Wheaton: ccel)
An Appeal to all that Doubt the Truths of the Gospel (1740) (Wheaton: ccel)
The Spirit of Prayer (1749) (Wheaton: ccel)
The Way to Divine Knowlege (1752) (Wheaton: ccel)
The Spirit of Love (2 parts, 1752-1754) (Wheaton: ccel)
A Collection of Letters on Several Occasions (1760) (Wheaton: ccel)
Of Justification by Faith and Works (1760) (Wheaton: ccel)
An Humble, Earnest, and Affectionate Address to the Clergy (1761) (Wheaton: ccel)
Letters to a Lady Inclined to enter into the Communion of the Church of Rome (1779)
The Nature and Extent of the Lord's Supper and RedemptionJohn Leland
A View of the Principal Deistical Writers (1754) [He critiqued as heretical the works of 14 authors writing over the century before him, from Thomas Hobbes and Lord Herbert of Cherbury (mid 1600s) to Thomas Chubb and Thomas Morgan (contemporaries).]
(Late 1600s to Early 1700s)
founder of Quakers
George Fox (1624-1691)
Autobiography(Wheaton: ccel)
German Pietist who attempted to move the Christian life away from the Lutheran focus on the church's ecclesiastical doctrine and sacraments--toward a personal relationship with God through small group prayer and study of Scripture. He also promoted a simple life-style and abstinence from certain social "frivolities" (dancing, card-playing, theater-going) as a mark of piety. Philip Jacob Spener (1635-1705)
Pia Desideria (1675)Early German Lutheran Pietism's Understanding of Justification (Gary DeLashmutt)
Pietism
Doing Philosophy as a Pietist (Stephen S. Bilynskyj )
Spener, Philip (1635-1705) (ChurchRodent)Francke picked up on the pietist concept from Spener and amplified it by giving it wide applications in the area of charity work. He was a German university professor who was hounded from university to university by Lutheran authorities until he was invited by Frederick I of Prussia to take up a professorship at the new University of Halle. Here he helped developed the university into a mainstay of German pietism--and gave pietism a missionary quality. As a pastor in nearby Glaucha he also established an orphanage and school (the Paedagogium) for poor children--the latter of which eventually was schooling over 2,000 children. This became a model for other pietist missions. August Hermann Francke (1663-1727)
A Christian mystic: a quietist who believed that total surrender of the human will to the will of God, with an accompanying total indifference to the things of the world, was the path to a perfect union with God. Madame Guyon (1647-1717)
She was born Jeanne-Marie Bouvier de La Motte. At age 16 she married Jacques Guyon, Lord of Chesnoy. He died 13 years later--and after a further 5-year period of spiritual training under the quietist Friar François Lacombe, she left her children and began travels in quest of her own spiritual perfection.
The Catholic Church intensely disliked quietism (Lacombe was arrested in 1687 and died soon thereafter in prison) and on two occasions she was imprisoned for her beliefs and writings. The first period (1688) was brief, for Louis XIV's second wife, Mme de Maintenon, intervened to have her released after only three months in prison. But the church was adamant in its opposition of quietism and in 1695 called her disciple, abbot Fénelon, to make a defense of their works. However, quietism was offically condemned by the church and Mme. Guyon was arrested--and held in prison until 1703. She lived out the rest of her life in Blois, trying to avoid attention yet continue her writings, which were voluminous.
Moyen court et très facile de faire oraison (The Short and Very Easy Method of Prayer) (1685)
Autobiography of Madame Guyon (Wheaton: ccel)
Translations from the French of Madame de la Mothe Guion (tr. by William Cowper) (Wheaton: ccel)French Catholic quietist (condemned in 1687) François Fénelon (1651-1715)
Spiritual Progress (Wheaton: ccel)
Les aventures de Télémaque (1699)Cotton Mather, son of the Puritan minister and Massachussetts political leader, Increase Mather, became himself the leading Puritan minister in Massachussetts at the end of the 1600s and beginning of the 1700s.
Cotton Mather (1663-1727)
He was a prolific writer and researcher of wide interest--from modern science and medicine to witchcraft. Like his father, he was particularly interested in shaping and directing a model Christian (Puritan) commonwealth in Massachussetts. However he himself lived long enough to watch with sadness as the once strong piety of his countrymen faded into religious indifference.
At the same time, though he was a deeply pious Puritan, he took on some of the ideas about God that were gradually being put forth by the deists.
Magnalia Christi Americana (1702)
Bonifacius, or Essays to Do Good (1710)
Curiosa Americana (1712-24)
Christian Philosopher (1721)
Sponsor of Moravians
Count Nikolaus Ludwig von Zinzendorf (1700-1760)
Nikolaus Ludwig von Zinzendorf 1700-1760
(Mid-1700s)
Tennent was a Presbyterian "New Sider." He favored revival and opposed the Calvinist formalism of the "Old Sider" Scotch-Irish Presbyterians of the middle colonies (Pennsylvania and New Jersey) Gilbert Tennent (1703-1764)
Jonathan Edwards (1703-1758)
Religious Affections (Wheaton: ccel)
The Excellency of Christ (Wheaton: ccel)
Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God (1741)(Wheaton: ccel)
On the Freedom of the Will (1757)
A Collection of Many of Jonathan Edwards' Sermons (CRTA)
The Writings of Jonathan Edwards (International Outreach, Inc.)
More Sermons of Jonathan Edwards (International Outreach, Inc.)Jonathan Edwards "On Line"
Jonathan Edwards (Bruce Hollinger)
Edwards, Jonathan (Alexander Leitch)
Jonathan Edwards' Place In The History of Christian Thought (John H. Gerstner)Founder of Methodism
John Wesley (1703-1791)
Wesley's Sermons on Several Occasions (Wheaton: ccel)
John Wesley's Notes on the Bible (Wheaton: ccel)
The Journal of John Wesley (Wheaton: ccel)
A Plain Account of Christian Perfection (Wheaton: ccel)
Part One
Part Two
A Collection of Hymns, for the Use of the People Called Methodists (Wheaton: ccel)Wesley, John (1703-1791) (Oxford's Characters)
John Wesley (1703-1791) A Condition of a Defeated Life (Life Action Ministries)Chalres was the younger brother of John Wesley and writer of many of the hymns of the Great Awakening. His productivity was awesome--approximately 9,000 hymns and poems.
Charles Wesley (1707-1788)
Come, Thou Long-Expected Jesus
Hark! the Herald Angels Sing
Jesus Christ is Risen Today
Christ the Lord is Risen Today
Oh, for a Thousand Tongues to Sing
Love Divine, All Loves Excelling
Rejoice, the Lord Is King!
You Servants of God
Come Thou Almighty King
[Charles Wesley 1707-1788 contains 102 of his hymns--both words and music]Charles Wesley 1707-1788 (Victor Shepherd)
Charles Wesley 1707-1788Leading evangelist of the Great Awakening. In 1739 Whitfield undertook a two-year evangelistic campaign in the colonies, marking the high point of the Great Awakening. George Whitfield (1714-1770)
George Whitefield (a short biography plus 10 of his sermons)George Whitefield (1714-1770): A Condition of a Religious Life (Life Action Ministries)"Old Light" leader as pastor of the First Church of Boston. He was fervently opposed to both the Calvinist view of human depravity and the emotional "enthusiasm" of the Great Awakening. Charles Chauncey (1705-1787)
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Swedish scientist and mystic.
Emanuel Swedenborg (1688-1772)
Swedenborg was born to a Swedish family headed by a father who was a chaplain to the Swedish king, a teacher of theology at the University of Uppsala--and later a Lutheran bishop.
Swedenborg graduated from the University of Uppsala in 1709 and travelled through Europe for the next five years. He took a particular interest in mathematics and the natural sciences and studied these subjects in England, Holland and France, bringing him into contact with some of the notable mathematicians and scientists of his day.
Upon his return to Sweden he edited Sweden's first scientific journal, Daedalus Hyperboreus. He eventually took up minerology (serving for a lengthy period of time as royal assessor at the Royal Board of Mines), branched from there to astronomy, mathematics and scientific cosmology. His encyclopedic mind led him in 1734 to publish Opera Philosophica et Mineralia.
Then he turned his thoughts to physiology and psychology--in particular the workings of the brain and how this connected to the "soul" of the person. Thus in 1740-1741, during another trip abroad, he published in Amsterdam Oeconomia Regni Animalis (The Economy of the Animal Kingdom)
He then branched into the study of language and symbolism--leading him eventually to come to the view that "reality" was in fact a complex array of symbols corresponding to deeper spiritual realities--a view not unlike that of Pythagoras and Plato.
A deeply mystical religious experience of his in 1743 led him to take note of his dreams and particular visions--including visions of Jesus Christ (Journal of Dreams: 1743-1744) . With the second of these visions of Christ, he gave his energies over entirely to the pursuit of spiritual matters, in particular the ways in which spiritual reality reveals itself symbolically in divine revelation.
He put this thinking to work in his Arcana Caelestia (8 vols: 1749-1756), reviewing the first five books of the Old Testament, the Books of Moses. His goal was to demonstrate how a deeper spiritual reality flows beneath the natural reading of the text--showing the correspondence between the two levels. In 1758 he published his De Coelo et ejus Mirabilibus et de Inferno (On Heaven and Its Wonders and on Hell)--certainly his most well-known work.
To Swedenborg, the fundamental reality of all things was God--summed up as Divine Wisdom and Love. Physical or natural reality was in fact an extension, an outworking of these two elements of God. Human freedom and self-absorption had over the aeons progressively damaged the relationship that had one existed between man and God, corrupting human wisdom and love--until Jesus Christ reopened the way back to full relationship, full correspondence between human love and wisdom and Divine Love and Wisdom.
Even this too had become corrupted--by the Christian community itself--pointing to the need of Christ's second coming, which Swedenborg felt was at hand. The growth of the enlightenment seemed to Swedenborg to point to the immediacy of this event.
Swedenborg felt that he had been specially called by God to bring forth this good news--and saw his own writings as a crucial part of this wonderful event of Christ's second coming.
In his lifetime he had succeeded in drawing around him devotees who in the next 10-20 years after his death formed up religious associations known as the Church of the New Jerusalem or New Church. His followers were also sometimes called "Swedenborgians." But his influence extended well beyond this group of disciples--to many within the Romanticist movement that began to emerge during the late 1700s and which blossomed in the 1800s. In particular, Honoré de Balzac, Charles Baudelaire, Ralph Waldo Emerson, William Butler Yeats and August Strindberg acknowledged an intellectual indebtedness to him.
Opera Philosophica et Mineralia (3 vols: 1734)
Oeconomia Regni Animalis (The Economy of the Animal Kingdom)(2 vols: 1740-1741)
Journal of Dreams (1743-1744)
Regnum Animale (The Animal Kingdom) (2 vol.: 1744-45)
The Worship and Love of God
Arcana Caelestia (Heavenly Arcana) (8 vols: 1749-56)
De Coelo et ejus Mirabilibus et de Inferno (Heaven and its Wonders and Hell From Things Seen and Heard) (1758)
Amor Conjugialis (Conjugal Love) (1768)
Apocalypsis Explicata (Apocalypse Explained) (4 vol: 1785-89)
Vera Christiana Religio (True Christian Religion) (1771)
Emanuel Swedenborg: An Introduction to His Life and Writings (George F. Dole)
Emanuel Swedenborg (Victorian Web: David Cody and Richard Goerwitz)
Swedenborg's Biography (Swedenborg Association)
Emanuel Swedenborg (1688-1772) (NewEarth Swedenborg BBS)
(Mid-Late 1700s)
A Biblical scholar in Basel/Amsterdam. Johann Jakob Wettstein (1693-1754)
Prolegomena ad Novi Testamenti graeci (1730) outlining his ideas on text-criticism used eventually to produce his Greek NT (1751-1752)
Libelli ad Crisinatque
Interpretationem Novi Testamenti which stressed the importance of understanding the historical setting for the life of Jesus and the apostles; also stressed the importance of the study of rabbinic literature as an aid in proper exegesis of the Gospels.Neuer Wettstein (auf Deutsch) (U Halle: Georg Strecker)Johann Albrecht Bengal (1687-1752)
Gnomon Novi Testamenti (1742) a pietist's use of text-criticism and philological study to explore the deeper or hidden meanings of Scripture as a devotional aid.Professor of medicine at Paris Jean Astruc (1684-1766)
Conjectures sur les memoires originaux (1753) [literary analysis (use of different names for God, etc.) seems to point to two main sources for Genesis, plus two secondary sources and signs of the presence of a dozen other documents in its composition.]bishop of London Robert Lowth
De Sacra Poesi Hebraeorum (1753) applied his knowledge of Greek and Latin poetry to the study of Hebrew poetry, not only with reference to technical aspects of the language (parallelism, etc.) but also to the poetic spirit of the material.professor at Hamburg Hermann Samuel Reimarus (1694-1768)
Fragmente des Wolfenbuttelschen Ungenanten (published post-humously by Lessing in 1774-1778) He "defended" the faith through a deistic affirmation of creation as the true miracle of God; the other miracles stories of Scripture are demeaning of God's grandeur--only fraudulent accounts of religious enthusiasts.
Gotthold Ephraim Lessing (1729-1781)
Education of the Human Race (1780) equated the progress of the human race with the progress of the individual from childhood through youth to manhood. The Old Testament belongs to the childhood of man: teaching strict rules of imposed discipline. The New Testament belongs to the youth of mankind: teaching self-sacrifice and self-discipline in favor of future success and benefits. Manhood is characterized by duty, without immediate rewards: it is guided solely by reason--though God may yet send new revelation to aid in the development of this stage of human existence. In any case, though Scripture is invaluable in our early development--it is less useful (belonging to an inferior past) in guiding the present. Human reason is a higher guide.German poet, musician, philosopher and translator. Herder was influenced by Rousseau in viewing primitive culture as the truly creative force of a nation: folkdance, poetry, sagas and history as the true soul of a people
Johann Gottfried Herder (1744-1803)
Vom Geist der Ebräischen Poesie (1782-1783) disclosed how the Hebrew writings were written in a poetic vein (typical of the ancient Near East) and had to be read as such--not technically (the way moderns were tending to write and think)Humanität ist der Zweck der Menschennatur [in German]
Über Johann Gottfried Herder [in German] (Fröde, Kühn and Schmengler)chemist; unitarian clergyman Joseph Priestley (1733-1804)
Paley put forth a "natural-theology" defense of God based upon the self-evident complexity of the world--the logic that such a beautiful creation could not be the result of anything else except an all-powerful, all-caring God. He uses the analogy of the watch: the complexity of a watch automatically or necessarily points to the existence of a watch-maker. God is the "watch-maker" of the universe. William Paley (1743-1805)
Natural Theology (1802)The Natural Theology of Paley (Victorian Web: Thomas E. Hart)
The Fallacies of Paley's Argument (Victorian Web: Thomas E. Hart)Professor at Göttingen Johann Friedrich Eichhorn (1752-1827)
Einleitung ins Alte Testament (1770-1773)
Ueber Mosis Nachrichten(1779) both were major works on literary-criticism of the Old Testament
(Mid-Late 1700s)
Baron de Montesquieu (1689-1755)
Spirit of the Laws (1748)
Voltaire (François-Marie Arouet) (1694-1778)
Candide
The Philosophical Dictionary (HanoverColl)Voltaire (1694-1778)
Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778)
Discourse sur l'inegalism (Discourse on Inequality) (1754)
Du contrat social (Social Contract) (1762)
Emile (1762)
Confessions(1782)(VaTech)Jean Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778) (Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy)
Denis Diderot (1713-1784)
Essai sur le merite et la vertu (1745)
Pensees philosophiques (1746)
Lettre sur les aveugles (1749)
Encyclopedia (UChicago)Denis Diderot (1713-1784) (Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy)Helvitius (Claude Adrien) (1715-1771)
De l'esprit (Essays on the Mind) (1758)
De l'homme (A Treatise on Man) (2 vols.: 1772)
