Collins, Anthony
Publié le 22/02/2012
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Anthony Collins was an English freethinker, best-known to philosophers for his reconciliation of liberty and
necessity, and his criticisms of Samuel Clarke's arguments for the immateriality and immortality of the soul. 'I
was early convinced', Collins wrote, 'that it was my duty to enquire into, and judge for my self about matters of
Religion' (1727: 4). This is a fair summary of Collins' lifelong project: to judge the claims of religion as an
impartial scientist would judge the claims of a theory, not by 'the Way of Authority', but by reason or 'the Way of
private Judgment' (1727: 107). Collins took on almost the whole of religion as affirmed and practised in the
eighteenth-century Church of England: its philosophical foundations, its theological doctrines, its methods of
scriptural interpretation and its views on the politics of church and state. He found most of it wanting. His
conclusions were at least deistic and perhaps atheistic (though he remained a practising member of the
established church): the irony of his writing and the reactive character of virtually everything he published make it
difficult to know for sure.
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