judaism and natural religion in the philosophy of william wollaston

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Judaism and Natural Religion in the Philosophy of William Wollaston DIEGO LUCCI WoUaston and British Deism The English deist and Hebraist William Wollaston (1659-1 724) expounded his doctrines in The Religion ofNature Delineated, a very original writing in the context of British deism.’ Wollaston was one of the most appreciated experts in Jewish culture of his time. He studied at Cambridge University, where such orientalists as John Selden, John Lightfoot and Edward Pocock, and such Platonists as John Wilkins and Henry More greatly furthered research on Jewish traditions and rabbinic literature. Wollaston learned Latin, Greek and Hebrew when he was very young, and had a profound competence for ancient, medieval as well as modern Jewish philosophy. He strengthened his doctrine of natural religion by means of knowledge typical of Jewish culture, and he tried to comprehend the sense of a number of Jewish theories and beliefs apart from particular rites and customs. This paper thus exposes the foundations, the structure and the goals of William Wollaston’s The Religion of Nature Delineated, with particular emphasis on the combination of natural religion and Jewish rationalism that characterises this work. Additionally, this paper is aimed at highlighting the originalityof Wollaston’sphilosophicaland religious thought, with special focus on his view of several Jewish traditions and ideas in the light of the deistic doctrine of natural religion. Thus, the paper also takes into account the most accredited studies on Wollaston’s thought published in the twentieth century, especially after a facsimilereprint of Wollaston’s work appeared in 1974 thanks to Stanley Tweyman’sefforts. Wollaston neglected the Qabbalah and other Jewish mystical currents and focused rather on Talmudic Rabbinism, Jewish Bible commentaries, and medieval and early modern rationalistic trends of Jewish philosophy. Wollaston, unlike such deists as Toland and Collins, was influenced neither by Spinoza’s philosophy, nor Locke’s epistemology,nor seventeenth-century hermeneutics. As Jonathan Israel pointed out in his Radical Enlightenment, Spinoza was ‘the chief intellectual bogeyman and symbolic head of philosophical deism and atheism in Britain and Ireland, as well as on the continent’,2 since the most important deists devoted themselves to biblical exegesis in order to reduce the importance of religion in the social as well as political life and, therefore, to assert freedom of thought. Hence, they were greatly inspired by Spinoza’s Tractatus theologico-politicus (1670)~ in which the Dutch philosopher ‘brings about a proper discourse on the method as regards British lournu] for Eighteenth-Century Studies 30 (2007), p.363-387 0 BSECSor41-867X

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Judaism and Natural Religion in the Philosophy of William Wollaston

DIEGO LUCCI

WoUaston and British Deism

The English deist and Hebraist William Wollaston (1659-1 724) expounded his doctrines in The Religion ofNature Delineated, a very original writing in the context of British deism.’ Wollaston was one of the most appreciated experts in Jewish culture of his time. He studied at Cambridge University, where such orientalists as John Selden, John Lightfoot and Edward Pocock, and such Platonists as John Wilkins and Henry More greatly furthered research on Jewish traditions and rabbinic literature. Wollaston learned Latin, Greek and Hebrew when he was very young, and had a profound competence for ancient, medieval as well as modern Jewish philosophy. He strengthened his doctrine of natural religion by means of knowledge typical of Jewish culture, and he tried to comprehend the sense of a number of Jewish theories and beliefs apart from particular rites and customs. This paper thus exposes the foundations, the structure and the goals of William Wollaston’s The Religion of Nature Delineated, with particular emphasis on the combination of natural religion and Jewish rationalism that characterises this work. Additionally, this paper is aimed at highlighting the originality of Wollaston’s philosophical and religious thought, with special focus on his view of several Jewish traditions and ideas in the light of the deistic doctrine of natural religion. Thus, the paper also takes into account the most accredited studies on Wollaston’s thought published in the twentieth century, especially after a facsimile reprint of Wollaston’s work appeared in 1974 thanks to Stanley Tweyman’s efforts.

Wollaston neglected the Qabbalah and other Jewish mystical currents and focused rather on Talmudic Rabbinism, Jewish Bible commentaries, and medieval and early modern rationalistic trends of Jewish philosophy. Wollaston, unlike such deists as Toland and Collins, was influenced neither by Spinoza’s philosophy, nor Locke’s epistemology, nor seventeenth-century hermeneutics. As Jonathan Israel pointed out in his Radical Enlightenment, Spinoza was ‘the chief intellectual bogeyman and symbolic head of philosophical deism and atheism in Britain and Ireland, as well as on the continent’,2 since the most important deists devoted themselves to biblical exegesis in order to reduce the importance of religion in the social as well as political life and, therefore, to assert freedom of thought. Hence, they were greatly inspired by Spinoza’s Tractatus theologico-politicus (1670)~ in which the Dutch philosopher ‘brings about a proper discourse on the method as regards

British lournu] for Eighteenth-Century Studies 30 (2007), p.363-387 0 BSECSor41-867X

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exegesis, in accordance with the rules of an extremely critical historical analysis, free from theological prejudices and showing no consideration for the pretended mysteries of faith’? thus, Spinoza dealt a hard blow to both traditional religious beliefs and practices, since he carried out ‘a radical debunking and a demystification of the biblical literature, in the cold light of a secularized reason’.4 Additionally, while the seventeenth-century deist Charles Blount made reference to Spinoza’s view of the role of reason in matters of religion, the most significant eighteenth-century deists, that is, John Toland and Anthony Collins, followed Locke’s ‘way of ideas’, as the Empiricist philosopher maintained that reason acts to regulate assent in analysing every aspect of reality. Nevertheless, while Locke admitted the supernatural, since he believed that human reason cannot understand some propositions relevant to God’s essence and attributes, the deists denied that truths above reason could be recognised. To such deists and freethinkers as Toland and Collins, ‘in both divine inscription and direct revelation’, as Peter Byrne remarked,

there are contlicting claims which cannot all possibly be true. Some of these claims must be the result of early prejudice, in the case of inscription, or imposture or delusion, in the case of direct revelation. There can, therefore, be no automatic inference from ‘it seems to be inscribedhevealed to ‘it is inscribedhevealed.’ The rationalists influenced by Locke see the need for a criterion to check such inference and the only certain one they 6nd is provided by what is independently discovered to be true in religion by a direct application of reason.5

Thus, for the deists, the ‘direct application of reason’ implies that ‘to judge of truth in religion by placing trust or reliance in anything other than our perception of the evidence available to us is a sin against reason, and in consequence against religion’.6

According to the most important eighteenth-century British deists, reason is not only a means to regulate assent, but also the basic rule to give or to deny assent in any matter, and especially in matters relevant to religion. Also Wollaston was a rationalist, but his deism was very different from Toland’s and Collins’ philosophies: it was rather characterised by concepts typical of Jewish rationalism and was greatly influenced by Herbert of Cherbury’s theses on reason and religion. Actually, the English Hebraist combined the major implications of the doctrine of natural religion, which was systematised by Herbert of Cherbury in the seventeenth century, with several theories formulated by the most accredited Jewish philosophers and hermeneuts.

Herbert’s doctrine of natural religion was not inconsistent with the fundamentals of revealed religion and, hence, with Judaism. The basic principles of Herbert’s natural religion consist of innate notions, which are common to all humankind and do not constitute gnoseological principles, but ethical and religious rules. Herbert explains such notions in five articles: I. Esse supremum uliquod Numen (‘a supreme God exists’): 2. Supremum istud Numen debere coli (‘this Supreme God must be venerated’); 3. Probumfucultatum

Judaism and Natural Religion in the Philosophy of Wollaston 365

conformationem praecipuam partem cultus divini semper habitam fuisse (‘the good conformity of human faculties has always been considered as the foremost part of the religious worship’: Herbert clearly refers to the moral faculties): 4. Vitia et scelera quaecumque expiari debere ex poenitentia (‘any vice and evil deed must be expiated through the repentance’): 5. Esse praemium vel poenam post hanc vitam (‘there is a reward or a punishment in the afterlife’).7 Thus, Herbert bases religion on rational as well as ethical principles, whose essence disregards any particular revelation. As John Leland stressed, Herbert of Cherbury has ‘a view to discard all extraordinary revelation as useless and needless’.8 On the other hand, Herbert does not deny that revelation makes sense: in actual fact, as Ron Bedford remarked,

it is important to stress that he does not reject revelation: but he does insist that it must be a personal affair, valid only when it comes directly and specifically, and that in the documentation of historical revelations we must examine the nature and the circumstances of the particular revelation before according it our faith. Neither a man, whoever he may be, nor an institution has the right to foist their own revelations on the majority of men, let alone maintain them by violence.9

In Herbert’s thought, Judaeo-Christian revelation does not act as the nec- essary factor that justifies faith: Herbert, keeping to the principles of natural religion, does not regard revelation as a universal phenomenon, but he consid- ers it as a particular manifestation of God. Hence, revelation is neither universal nor necessary, but it is extremely marginal and superfluous in comparison with natural religion, which is the only universal, necessary and sufficient reli- gion. In Herbert’s work, however, the reduction of Judaeo-Christian revelation is somewhat implicit: in addition, he believes that some particular revelations are divine: according to John Butler, ‘Herbert suggests that all the revelations claimed by priests should be re-examined, although he accepts the Decalogue as a genuine revelation because the commandments were directly revealed to Moses and because they order us to do good’.I0 Thus, Herbert’s natural reli- gion could also be used in order to demonstrate that revelation was consistent with reason and, hence, revealed religion was basically rational. Actually, a number of latitudinarians and Cambridge Platonists turned natural religion into a mere precondition of revealed religion and, hence, aimed at belittling its significance.II Conversely, Wollaston used some important elements of Jew- ish culture independent of revelation in order to confirm the most significant principles of natural religion. In addition, he formulated a number ofvery inter- esting theses about God and mankind by reconsideiing several theories typical of Jewish rationalism in the light of the deistic doctrine of natural religion.

Wollaston and Jewish Culture

Though the comparison of Wollaston’s The Religion of Nature Delineated with the works of the most famous British deists demonstrates his peculiarity in

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the context of deism, Wollaston has mostly been disregarded by the historians of eighteenth-century philosophy. The major work on Wollaston’s thought, The Ethics of William Wollaston by Clifford Thompson, appeared in 1922 and represented a rather descriptive exposition of Wollaston’s ethics in the broad context of eighteenth-century British moral philosophy.” In the second half of the twentieth century, only a few studies on Wollaston were published. Most of these studies aimed at stressing that the innatist doctrine of natural religion, which Wollaston revived, was already obsolete in the first half of the eighteenth century. In fact, John Locke had refuted innatism in An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, published in 1690 - and Locke’s epistemology greatly influenced such deists as Toland and Collins, who based their philosophies on a radicalised and extremely coherent version of Locke’s ‘way of ideas’. But Wollaston disregarded Locke’s empiristic epistemology completely. Moreover, few years after Wollaston’s work was published, David Hume disproved any sort of rationalistic ethical theory and, hence, rejected the innatist and rationalistic grounds of Wollaston’s ethical system. Thus, the peculiarity of Wollaston’s philosophy has not been emphasised enough by the historians who have analysed his work.I3 On the other hand, Stanley Tweyman and Joel Feinberg demonstrated that Hume’s explicit criticism of Wollaston’s ethics was groundless, as the Scottish philosopher misinterpreted Wollaston’s theses on the relationships between truth and good: additionally, in their writings Tweyman and Feinberg refuted the theses on Wollaston’s ethics expounded by such authors as Alasdair MacIntyre, Rachael M. Kydd and R. David Broiles, who ultimately agreed with Hume.’4 However, as regards the aspects of Wollaston’s thought that this paper examines, among the writings on Wollaston published in the twentieth century, Alexander Altmann’s essay, ‘William Wollaston (1659-1 724), English Deist and Rabbinic Scholar’, comes to the fore.I5 In his writing, Altmann examined the Jewish references of Wollaston’s work and made an outstanding piece of philological research. Actually, Altmann’s essay provides extremely precise details of the Jewish works that Wollaston mentions in his text and above all in the footnotes: moreover, it takes into account Wollaston’s interpretation of several Jewish doctrines, especially regarding the philosophy of Maimonides. Nevertheless, Altmann’s study is far Gom commenting on Wollaston’s philosophy in its entirety. Moreover, Altmann, though making reference to Herbert of Cherbury’s religion of nature as one of the main sources of Wollaston’s thought, focuses especially on the Jewish references of the British deist’s work and does not remark on the significance of the influence that non-Jewish traditions and especially the non-confessional doctrine of natural religion had on Wollaston’s thought. Actually, Wollaston availed himself of sources relevant to Jewish culture and to the syncretistic theories typical of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century religious rationalism - and these theories were inspired either by the Renaissance and early modern doctrines of natural religion or by the millenarian trends that characterised early modern Europe and Britain.

Judaism and Natural Religion in the Philosophy of Wollaston 367

First of all, Wollaston made reference to the major trends of Jewish rationalism, and his knowledge of the Talmud and of Talmudic Rabbinism was remarkable. By analysing the footnotes, written in Latin, Greek and Hebrew, it is possible to establish that Wollaston was deeply acquainted with Scripture and with the most important Jewish Bible commentaries: from among the authors he quotes there are Rashi, Abraham Ibn Ezra, Levi ben Gerson and Isaac Abrabanel.16 Moreover, nearly every page of The Religion of Nature Delineated presents references to Jewish philosophical works. In fact, the English deist refers to ancient Jewish philosophers, such as Philo and Flavius Josephus, and he frequently quotes such significant writings as Maimonides’s Moreh Nebukim, Judah Ha Levi’s Kuzari, Judah the Hasid’s Sefer Husidim and the works of Joseph Caro, Joseph Albo, Sa’adya, Ehezer Azkari and Menasseh ben Israel. However, in his book the English Hebraist does not focus on the contexts in which the Jewish thinkers that he mentions formulated their own philosophies. In addition, Wollaston disregards each Jewish philosopher’s own goals and arguments.

Wollaston explains his references to several Jewish authors in the footnotes written in Hebrew and, hence, for a specialist audience. He thus takes for granted that his readers would have a good knowledge of Jewish philosophy. It is nevertheless important to stress that, in The Religion of Nature Delineated, Wollaston aims at merely inferring the sense of a number of Jewish thinkers’ theories in the light of his own rational view of God, mankind and the world. Indeed, Wollaston regards Judaism as a clearly rationalistic tradition. In actual fact, the most significant Jewish rationalistic trends, including some currents of Talmudic rabbinism, present a number of philosophical as well as ethical doctrines that can be taken into account independent of their relation to the Jewish‘rituals, laws and history. However, making reference to several Jewish authors in relation to a number of interesting topics, the English deist does not remark on the significant differences between the philosophers that he mentions. For instance, Wollaston borrows much from Sa’adya (882- 942), Judah Ha Levi (1075-1141) and Moses Maimonides (1135-1204), but he does not point out that such thinkers as Sa’adya and Judah Ha Levi were extremely different from the Aristotelian philosopher Maimonides. In fact, while Maimonides borrowed much from Aristotle, Judah Ha Levi emphasised the superiority of religious truth, which could be noticed through intuition, over philosophical speculation. Hence, the theme of prophecy comes to the fore in the work of Judah Ha Levi, and his famous Kuzari is definitely a Jewish apologetic writing. In addition, Sa’adya, who lived before both Judah Ha Levi and Maimonides, maintained that tradition and revelation were the first foundations for knowing and living, as the presence of God in human life was ultimately indisputable. On the other hand, the works of Sa’adya, unlike Judah Ha Levi’s writings, did not imply any remarkable mystical element, since Sa’adya was a rationalist deeply influenced by the Islamic Kalurn, which was consistent with Jewish tradition. In fact, both Talmudic rabbinism and Kalam promoted the search for theological principles through dialectic.

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Wollaston, however, leaves aside the distinctive features of Judah Ha Levi’s and Sa’adya’s works, and he rather interprets and exploits the philosophies of these Jewish thinkers apart from their Jewish ‘background’. Furthermore, as regards Maimonides - who was deeply influenced by non-Jewish traditions, though he questioned the method of the Islamic KuZurnI7 - the English Hebraist uses this Jewish philosopher’s theories in order to corroborate a number of theses that he borrows from Aristotle and that he attempts to integrate into his doctrine of natural religion. Thus, Wollaston does not view Maimonides as a thinker who aimed at constructing a synthesis between Judaism and Aristotelianism; in Wollaston’s work, Maimonides seems rather to have been a mere Aristotelian who saw Jewish tradition as an allegorical system, which was intended to maintain the Jewish community but was not philosophically accurate.

Briefly, Wollaston sees Jewish philosophy merely as a means to strengthen his theories about God, mankind and human life, regardless of the rituals and the laws that characterised Jewish culture, although he admits that most Jewish philosophers made reference to the Scriptures in order to develop some important doctrines. In this connection, it is important to stress that Wollaston could actually use a number of theories, formulated by several Jewish thinkers, in order to confirm his rationalistic view of religion, which pertains to the relationships between God and mankind and, hence, to human life as a whole - not only to the Jewish people or to those who are acquainted with the Scriptures. Indeed, various Jewish theological as well as philosophical doctrines present some very interesting implications independent of their Jewish roots, since most Jewish thinkers fostered the use of reason not only in interpreting the Torah, but also in examining and clarifying the most significant philosophical as well as theological subjects relevant to God’s existence and his relation to the world and mankind. Moreover, a large number of Jewish philosophers made reference to several non-Jewish philosophical as well as theological currents, such as Aristotelianism and the Islamic KuZurn, since they based their idea of Judaism on few and simple theological principles. As the fifteenth-century philosopher Joseph Albo stressed, the fundamental Jewish principles of faith consist of the beliefs in God’s existence, in revelation, and in divine justice, which implies the idea of immortality. These principles characterise all revealed religions. On the other hand, according to Albo, the only true religion is that which understands these basic thoughts correctly, by recognising certain other truths and inferences that must follow logically from the acknowledgment of the three fundamentals. Thus, for Albo, Judaism is not only based upon the three fundamental principles, but it also acknowledges the inferences which logically should be drawn from such principles: hence, Judaism is the true revealed religion.18 Briefly, a number of Jewish authors demonstrated that, although they considered Judaism as the true revealed religion, the fundamentals of the Jewish religion consisted of few and extremely simple principles: the Jewish scholars, hence, were not prevented from borrowing from other traditions, regarding such matters as the

Judaism and Natural Religion in the Philosophy of Wollaston 369

proof of God’s existence and his attributes, on condition that such traditions did not question the three fundamentals of Judaism. Therefore, the Jewish religion did not coincide with any ‘official’ theology. Antidogmatism, simplicity and rationalism actually characterised some significant Jewish trends and beliefs. Judaism - unlike such a ‘dogmatic’ religion as Christianity, &cted by many conflicts and divisions due to theological reasons - could certainly enrich other traditions and doctrines that were not inconsistent with the three fundamental Jewish principles of faith. Thus, the deist Wollaston could turn to the Jewish theological tradition. In actual fact, Wollaston’s religion of nature was consistent with the rationality that characterised the most interesting Jewish theories about God and mankind and was corroborated by several Jewish beliefs and theological doctrines. In addition, the English deist did not reject Jewish revelation, although the sufficiency of natural religion actually diminished the importance of revelation.

Wollaston made reference not only to Jewish philosophy: his work demonstrates that he was acquainted with the works of the most important Arab philosophers, such as Ibn Sina, Alfarabi and Ibn Roshd, and he probably knew Arabic. In actual fact, he makes reference to a number of Arab doctrines, especially relevant to Ari~tote1ianism.I~ Nonetheless, in his work he neglects some important elements of the Arab philosophers’ thought: for example, when he deals with the necessary existence of a Supreme Being,20 he leaves out the distinction between essence and existence, which was formulated by Alfarabi, then developed by Ibn Sina and lastly accepted and greatly modified by Thomas Aquinas.

Wollaston also studied in depth the most important works of Christian authors on Judaism, and he himself was one of the most competent non-Jewish experts in Jewish culture of the early modern period. In the age of the Renaissance, the knowledge of various Jewish hermeneutical and philosophical traditions was mainly aimed at confirming Christian or syncretistic readings of Scripture. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, too, the competence for Jewish culture was mostly aimed at either strengthening or reformulating Christian religious ideas. Nevertheless, the most reliable and important non-Jewishscholars who studied Jewish traditions and rabbinic literature left aside those views that neglected the peculiarity of Judaism and that presented this religion as a mere premise of Christianity. The first studies that reassessed the value of Jewish culture were Bibliotheca Rabbinica by Johannes Buxtorf the Elder, De Republica Hebraeorurn by Petrus Cunaeus and Thesaurussynonyrnicus by JeanPlantavkz1 Moreover, inEngland such scholars as Selden, Lightfoot and Pocock wrote very interesting works concerning the Jews’ laws and rituals.” Hence, Wollaston was in a position to investigate previous studies on Judaism, but he did not confine himself to describing Jewish traditions: rather, he drew a number of basic principles of his deism from Jewish rationalistic philosophy and hermeneutics.

Finally, Wollaston’s thought was influenced by the tendencies to a sort of philosophical as well as religious syncretism that characterised early modern

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England and Europe. From the Renaissance onward, many innovative views of religion spread throughout Europe: the essence of divinity, according to such authors as Pic0 della Mirandola, Ficino, Bruno and Campanella, was independent of particular revelations, though it could be expressed by means of various worships. Later on, in seventeenth-century England and Europe, several syncretistic trends exercised a deep influence upon such thinkers as the proto-deist Herbert of Cherbury, the Christian historians Vossius, Bochart and Huet, and the famous physico-theologian Isaac Newton and his di~ciples.~3 Moreover, in seventeenth-century Cambridge, the most significant tendencies towards a sort of philosophical and religious syncretism were strongly influenced by a rationalistic version of millenarian philosemitism, whose leading exponents were Joseph Mede and two renowned Platonists, John Wilkins and Henry More.’4 Wollaston could hence combine such different traditions as natural religion and Judaism; in fact, in early modern Europe the tendency to confirm a theory by means of theses and beliefs typical of other traditions was widespread, and this tendency related to both Christian apologetic theses and non-confessional doctrines.

Ethics and Religion in Wollaston’s Work

In Wollaston’s thought, Judaism is a source of knowledge of great importance in the development of human history. The English deist, formulating his doctrine of natural religion, makes reference to several Jewish traditions, as Judaism represented a particular sort of revealed religion. Actually, Judaism is a revealed religion and presents a number of very strict ethical principles and ritual rules, but it is far from being based upon rigid and indisputable theological dogmas. As the Talmud demonstrates, Judaism gradually develops by means of remarks, comments, observations on Scripture, which the Jewish scholars regard as a source of inspiration, not as the unquestionable testimony of a sort of unchangeable truth. In actual fact, the most interesting Talmudic theories on God and mankind are rooted in debates and reflexions characterised by strict logic. Thus, the Hebraist and deist Wollaston was in a position to use some theories typical of Jewish rationalism in order to illustrate and strengthen several theses relevant to the religion of nature. Actually, the religion of nature, according to Wollaston, is the only universal religion, as it is independent of particular revelations and of cultural differences. Its value is chiefly moral: in fact, the deist asserts that ‘the foundation of religion lies in that difference between the acts of men, which distinguishes them into good, evil, indiferent’.’5

In Wollaston’s thought, ethics comes to the fore. Actually, the first section of his book is devoted to ‘moral good and evil’, and he formulates his theories concerning happiness, truth, deity, mankind and society, beginning with the distinction between good and evil.26 In actual fact, he maintains the theory that the moral evil is the practical denial of a true proposition and moral

Judaism and Natural Religion in the Philosophy of Wollaston 371

good the affirmation of it, since ethics, in Wollaston’s opinion, is grounded on reason. Wollaston elaborates a sort of ethical innatism, based on the human capacity of distinguishing truth from falsehood and, hence, good from evil. In fact, for Wollaston, ‘it is true, that whatever will bear to be tried by right reason, is right: and that which is condemned by it, w~ong’.~’ Wollaston accepts a concept of truth as adaequatio rei et intellectus: hence, ‘those propositions are true, which express things as they are: or, truth is the conformity of those words or signs, by which things are exprest, to the things themselves’.28 The propositions generate acts, and ‘no act [...I of any being, to whom moral good and evil are imputable, that interferes with any true proposition, or denies any thing to be as it is, can be 1-ight’.~9 For example, if one treats a human being as a post, then this person denies the truth concerning the human condition: therefore, if one treats a human being as a post, then this person commits an evil a ~ t . 3 ~ Wollaston’s ethics, like the latitudinarians’ ethics, is not only rationalistic, but also basically eudemonistic:3I ‘If a man does not desire to prevent evils, and to be happy, he denies both his own nature and the nature and definition of happiness to be what they a1-e’.3~ However, personal happiness can come about only if common happiness does so, since human nature drives all mankind to happiness. Hence, the pursuit of personal happiness to the detriment of other men contradicts the truth concerning the nature of all mankind and, therefore, represents an evil act.33 As Stanley Tweyman pointed out, ‘Wollaston does want to found a theory of obligation on the fact that each person has a duty to make himself happy, and it is significant that this view of obligation has recourse to his doctrine of true actions’:34 in fact, ‘both reason and happiness can be employed as criteria of actions which we either ought or ought not to perform, since each criterion involves the other and leads to the same obligations as the othef.35

In spite of Wollaston’s efforts to expound his theories about truth and moral good, his ethical system presents some significant aporias and inaccuracies, which gave rise to an interesting debate, in which David Hume was involved. Actually, the Scottish philosopher maintained that ‘our actions never cause any judgement, either true or false, in ourselves, and that ’tis only on others they have such an infl~ence’.3~ In fact, according to Hume,

’tis certain that an action on many occasions may give rise to false conclusions in others, and that a person who through a window sees any lewd behavior of mine with my neighbor’s wife may be so simple as to imagine she is certainly my own. In this respect my action resembles a lie or falsehood, only with this difference, which is material, that I perform not the action with any intention of giving rise to a false judgment in another, but merely to satisfy my lust and passion. It causes, however, a mistake and false judgment by accident: and the falsehood of its effects may be ascribed, by some odd figurative way of speaking, to the action itself. But still I can see no pretext of reason for asserting, that the tendency to cause such an error is the first spring or original source of all immorality.37

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However, Hume’s criticism of Wollaston’s ethics was imprecise: as Joel Feinberg pointed out,

Hume has simply misread Wollaston. Nowhere does Wollaston claim that the essence of all wrongdoing is telling a lie and thus deceiving others. Rather he holds that all wrongdoing is an offense against the truth, whether or not any observer is present to be deceived. What makes an act wrong, according to Wollaston, is not that it misleads others or causes false belief, but rather that it violates truth, which is quite another thing.3*

Nevertheless, Hume was right when he stressed that Wollaston’s ethics was based on abstract concepts: as Oliver Johnson stressed, ’Wollaston’s theory, Hume argues, takes the predicates “right” and “wrong” away from the actions themselves, leaving them with no moral character of their own’.39 Actually, according to Joel Feinberg,

the true defects in Wollaston’s theory of violated truth as the essence of all immorality are the same as those of the ancient Stoic systems of which it is an explication. The theory cannot explain why some immoral acts are worse than others, and presupposes in still other ways antecedent moral principles that are irreducibly distinct from it. And the error in Wollaston’s bold theory of declarative actions is simply that of uncritically extending a plausible account of the symbolic effect of some actions to cover the heterogeneous class of all acti0ns.4~

In fact, as Frederick Beiser pointed out, Wollaston

never lays down any precise method to determine the significance of actions. Like Samuel Clarke, he assures us that it is simple to determine the morality of an action: but then he never tells us how to achieve this. It would seem that we must determine the significance of an action from the intention of an agent, not its consequences. This is for the simple reason that we normally assess the morality of actions by their intentions. What the action signifies should then be expressed by propositions that describe the agent’s intention. [...I But this method of determining the significance of someone’s action still does not yield a criterion of moral worth. Although the person’s intentions might be morally correct, the propositions that express them might be false. [...I The converse also holds: the propositions that express the intentions might be true, even though the intentions are morally reprehensible. [...I Another means to determine the significance of an action would be through the moral beliefs of principles of the agent. [...I But this criterion of significance only pushes the problem back another step.4’

Beiser not only stresses that Wollaston does not clarify his ‘method to determine the significance of actions’: he also emphasises that Wollaston’s theory reminds Clarke’s theses on the grounds of ethics. Actually, Wollaston’s theories were approved by an important disciple of Clarke, John Balguy, who maintained that ‘the Foundations of Morality must be laid either in the Truth or Nature of Things themselves, or in the Divine Ideas, which comes to the

Judaism and Natural Religion in the Philosophy of Wollaston 373

same thing’.@ Thus, Wollaston’s and Clarke’s ethics had a markedly religious nature in common: on the other hand, it is important to stress that Wollaston was a deist who clearly made reference to Herbert’s religion of nature, while Clarke was a Newtonian thinker and hence - in spite of the ‘heterodox’ theses that characterised Newtonianism - defended revealed religion from the deists’ criticism. Actually, Clarke opposed the deists as they merely stuck to what reason allowed them to understand: when the deists took into account God’s nature and attributes, they made reference neither to the Scriptures nor to the so-called ‘book of nature’, and they mostly left aside revelation or clearly belittled its significance by asserting that natural religion was the only universal and necessary 0116.43 Also Wollaston, in spite of the elements that his philosophy and Clarke’s thought had in common, based both faith in God and morals on mere reason.

According to Wollaston, religion and morality are identical. Indeed, he emphasised the moral value of religion and, disregarding the aporias that his theory implied and that were then stigmatised by his critics, he reasserted the importance of the relationships between good and truth:

By religion I mean nothing else but an obligation to do [...I what ought not to be omitted, and to forbear what ought not to be done. So that there must be religion, if there are things, of which some ought not to be done, some not to be omitted. But that there are such, appears from what has been said concerning moral good and evil [...I. And then since there is religion, which follows from the distinction between moral good and evil; since this distinction is founded in the respect, which mens acts bear to truth: and since no proposition can be true, which expresses things otherwise than as they are in nature: since things are so, there must be religion, which is founded in nature, and may upon that account be most properly and truly called the religion of nature or natural religion; the great Law of which religion, the law of nature, or rather of the Author of nature is, [...] that every intelligent, active, andfree being should so behave himself, as by no act to contradict truth; or, that he should treat everg thing as being what it is.@

This passage demonstrates that Wollaston, l i e Herbert of Cherbury, bases religion on rational and innate principles: as Alexander Altmann pointed out, the English philosopher ‘had [...I stressed the self-sufficiency of Reason, and had constructed a system of morality without recourse to Revelat i~n’ .~~ Therefore, ‘Christianity plays no part whatever in Wollaston’s Religion of Nature. [...I The deeper reasons for Wollaston’s remarkable independence from Christian theology lie not so much in his “Free Thinking” as in the influence which Jewish theology exercised upon l 1 W . 4 ~ Actually, Wollaston makes reference to the Pentateuch, the Talmud and the Jewish Bible commentaries not only to clarify moral precepts respecting mankind, particular societies, and family47 - which are three of the most well-defined and debated themes in the context of Jewish rationalism and especially in Talmudic rabbinism - but also to corroborate his own concepts of good and evil: in fact, as Maimonides remarked, ‘a good man acts in accordance with the truth for the sake of the truth .48 Actually, according to Maimonides, the Law promotes the well-being

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of man by teaching truth and, hence, morality and social conduct.49 On this point, it is important to stress that the Law represents the most important element of Jewish culture, that is, the element that led a number of Jewish scholars to write the Talmud and to formulate a large number of doctrines concerning God’s presence in human life. It is nevertheless necessary to point out that a number of basic principles of Jewish Law could be interpreted as the fundamentals of a universal and eternal law (the so-called noachic law). Thus, Wollaston exploits Maimonides’s view of Jewish Law since the Jewish philosopher, like several representatives of Talrnudicrabbinism, actually presented the fundamentals of the Torah as relevant not only to the Jewish people, but also to mankind as a whole. Indeed, as regards the relationship between God and truth emphasised by Maimonides, the English deist also stresses that in the Talmud it is written that ‘the seal of the Holy One, blessed be He, is Truth’, while the sixteenth-century Kabbalist Elijah de Vidas asserted that ‘God is called Truth’.s0 Thus, Wollaston’s analysis of God, His existence and His attributes follows his observations on good and truth, since truth originates in God and, in some respects, is God Himself.

God and Mankind in the Philosophy of Wollaston

Wollaston’s theses on God’s existence, His attributes, and divine providence are extremely fascinating. The English philosopher, borrowing from Aristotle, regards God as the ‘First mover’; he maintains that ‘an infinite succession of effects will require an Infinite efficient, or a cause infinitely eflective’, similar to a ‘chain hung down out of the heavens’ and produced by a First mover, that is, G0d.5~ Moreover, Wollaston confirms his theory by stating that ‘many of the elder Jews have agreed with the Greeks in this matter, and added arguments of their own’, and he also refers to such thinkers as Sa’adya, Judah Ha Levi, Maimonides and Albo; on the other hand, Wollaston disregards Christian theology, and the only Christian theologian he mentions is Justin Mart~r .5~

According to Wollaston, God is the First mover of the universe: Aristotle stated such theory, ‘and after him the Arabic philosophers, Maimonides, Albo [...I teach all that God exists necessarily’.53 In fact, ‘a Cause or Being, that has in nature no superior cause, and therefore [...I is also unproduced, and independent, must be self-existent: i.e. existence must be essential to Him; or, such is his nature, that He cannot but be’,54 and ‘the root of His existence can be sought for no where, but in His own nature’.55 Even the Tetragrammaton, which expresses God’s unmentionable name, represents God’s necessary existence - as Philo, Abrabanel and other Jewish philosophers pointed 0ut.5~ Moreover, Wollaston largely borrows from Maimonides, Sa’adya and Rabbi Bahya in expounding another proof of God’s existence, necessity and uniqueness: ‘For if there was not at least one such Being, nothing could be at all. For the universe could not produce itself; nor could any part of it produce itself, and then produce the rest: because this is supposing a thing to act before it is’;57 and, if God is necessary,

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then he is also eternal and infinite, since what is necessary is not subject to time, which Wollaston calls ‘a flux of moments’: therefore, as Maimonides remarked, ‘there can be no relation between Him [God] and tirne’.S8 On this point, Wollaston has recourse to Joseph Albo’s Sefer Ha-Ikkarim in order to explain God’s independence from time. In fact, Albo distinguished between an ‘abstract time’ (that is, an ‘unmeasured duration, which is conceived only in thought and has perpetual existence, having existed prior to the creation of the world’) and ‘the order of time’ (that is, a ‘time which is numbered and measured by the motion of the spheres’). Though some Jewish philosophers have linked God with the ‘abstract time’, Wollaston maintains that God is independent of both kinds of time, since Joseph Albo asserts that ‘we cannot say of God that He is older today than He was in the time of David or when He created the world.59 However, Wollaston does not remark on the differences between the Jewish authors that he mentions, as regards the proofs of God’s existence and attributes. Actually, it was clear that Sa’adya and, later on, Joseph Albo made reference to Aristotle’s philosophy in order to corroborate the assumption that God existed, which represented a fundamental principle of Judaism. Conversely, it is still difficult to understand what Maimonides attempted to do: did he use Aristotelianism in order to confirm Judaism, or did he formulate a merely Aristotelian system, veiled with Jewish philosophical categories and terminology? Although Wollaston does not clearly expose his interpretation of Maimonides’s philosophy, he seems to incline to the latter hypothesis: indeed, besides disregarding Maimonides’s own goals, he mostly attempts to integrate a number of the Jewish thinker’s Aristotelian and rationalistic theories into his doctrine of natural religion.

Wollaston also makes reference to Maimonides in order to clarify some attributes of God. In fact, he greatly uses Maimonides’s doctrine of the negative attributes. In Maimonides’s ‘negative theology’, no predicate is adequate to express the nature of God: thus, one should describe God exclusively through negative attributes.60 In this connection, Wollaston maintains that God ‘is above all things, that fall under our cognizance: and therefore his manner of existence is above all our conceptions’.61 Nevertheless, the deist philosopher attempts to clarify some attributes of God, such as incorporeity, simplicity, perfection and unity, by means of rational analysis. To Wollaston, God is one and indivisible: otherwise, God would be imperfect and limited.62 Thus, Wollaston blames the atheists, who deny God, and the pantheists, who think that God is corporeaL63 while ‘there can be no corporeity of Gog64 because ‘God, existing in a manner that is perfect, exists in a manner that must be uni,forrn, always one and the same, and in nature unchunge~bZe’.~5 Hence, the English deist implicitly questions - and disproves - such Christian dogmas as incarnation and Trinity. However, in the Cabbalistic tradition God is mentioned as a ‘place’; in this connection, Wollaston maintains that, when the Cabbalists regard God as a place, ‘they intend chiefly His omnipresence and immensity’: therefore,

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‘God is the place of the world, but the world is not His place’.66 This theory confirms that

when we speak of the internal essential attributes of God positively, as that He is omniscient, omnipotent, eternal, &c. the intent is only to say, that there is no object of knowledge or power, which He does not know or cannot do, He exists without beginning and end, &c. and thus we keep still within the limits allow’d by the proposition. That is, we may speak thus without pretending to comprehend His nature6’

as Maimonides’s doctrine of the negative attributes demonstrates. In Wollaston’s theory of natural religion, the Supreme Being takes after not

so much the triune Christian God as the unique and absolutely transcendent Jewish God - so that Wollaston, ‘like Maimonides, who in this respect follows Aristotle, [...I sees a Divine Providence at work in the “laws and provisions” of Nature’.68 By Providence, Maimonides meant Gods care ‘of the species of all living creatures, not of their individual members. Wollaston finds no difficulty in associating himself with this interpretation of the purposiveness of Nature as evidence of a general Pr0vidence’,~9 which coincides with the order in the universe.7’ In his writing, Wollaston also explains what particular Providence is. On this point, Maimonides admitted that God’s will could suspend the laws of nature and, therefore, provoke supernatural events: but Wollaston could not approve this theory, since he was actually a deist, though a ‘providential’ one, and not a theist. For the English philosopher, acts due to the particular Providence fit in the framework of general Providence, that is, in the order of nature. On the other hand, according to Wollaston, in the ‘prodigious scheme’ of the laws of nature, in ‘such a series of causes and effects’, God may favour certain species of living beings and even certain individuals by giving them some special abilities, ‘without any innovation or alteration in the course of nature’.7’

Though Wollaston rejects Spinoza’s philosophy, he clearly denies things above reason, but he, unlike such deists as Blount and Toland, who were Spinozist and, hence, pantheist and immanentist, believes that the order of nature is characterised by an essential purposiveness. However, Wollaston develops a finalistic view of nature in order to refute the theories that asserted the reality of supernatural events: to Wollaston, nature itself is benevolent and takes care of all species of beings - and we ought to observe that the English deist cannot think differently: in fact, according to him, truth and goodness derive from the adherence of propositions and acts to the actual facts. Even prayers, for Wollaston, are valid only ifthey are relevant to ‘effects already forecasted in the course of n a t ~ e ’ : 7 ~ in fact, as it is written in Sefer Hasidirn, ‘we should not pray for the impossible, or that which is contrary to nature, or the unseemly, or that God should change the world by way of miracle’.73 In this respect, theodicy represents a most important issue, which both Jewish thinkers and pagan philosophers have always focused on: however, it is important to note, in this connection, that Wollaston does not

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remind us that a number of Christian theologians also committed themselves to investigating the theme of theodicy. Nonetheless, Wollaston rejects several traditional solutions to the problem of Divine Justice: he refuses the doctrine of metempsychosis, and he hardly admits that the pains that torment many just and compassionate men may be considered as trials.74 Briefly, Wollaston maintains that the evils that innocent people suffer, as well as the welfare that the unjust enjoy, are the results of social organisation, which is integrated in the order of nature and consists of a series of causes and effects: in fact, as the Talmud demonstrates, ‘men ought to be considered as members of families, nations, mankind, the universe, from which they cannot be separated: and then from the very condition oftheir being it will appear [...I that the innocent cannot but be sometimes involved in general calamities or punishments, nor the guilty but share in public prosperities’.75

Wollaston’s observations on mankind and on the sense of human life and his reflections about God intertwine in his work. In this respect, Wollaston did not differ from most deist thinkers, who, as Rosalie Colie pointed out, held that viable ethics and, hence, politics ‘had to rest upon a correct understanding of man’s relation to God and of God’s intentions for the world He had ~reated’.7~ Thus, Wollaston completes his theory of human life with some observations concerning the human soul and, hence, man’s relation to God. He denies that the soul can be regarded as either a thinking matter or a faculty of matter. If the soul were material, then such faculties as ‘apprehending, reflecting, comparing, judging, making deductions and reasoning, willing, putting the body in motion, continuing the animal functions by its preference, and giving life’, would be only tfaculties of a faculty’; but such hypothesis is untenable, as also the Jewish philosopher Sa’adya demonstrated; therefore, the soul is a spiritual substance, independent of matter.77 Wollaston also focuses on the links between the body and the soul, that is to say, the links between matter and thinking. He refuses both Descartes’s dualistic philosophy - with the hypothesis of the pineal gland - and Geulincx’s and Malebranche’s doctrine of the ‘two clocks’: thus, he makes reference to a theory elaborated by Menasseh ben Israel in Nishmat Hayyim, a writing whose title means ‘the breath of life’.78 The seventeenth-century Dutch Rabbi perfected the Platonic doctrine ofpneuma (that is, the vital breath that links the soul to the body) and asserted that the soul consists of a substance finer, clearer and purer than the celestial spheres. Hence, the soul has a sort of ‘spiritual body’, which links it to the material body and continues to support it even after the material body’s death: therefore, even after the material body and the soul are separated, the latter is still active and sentient.79 Nonetheless, not all human souls achieve perfection, because men have different levels of understanding and goodness;80 in this connection Wollaston, expounding ‘the great difference of human souls, with respect to perfection and imperfection’,81 maintains that ‘the Jews, who generally say that by the practice of religion the soul acquires perfection and eternal life’,s2 greatly emphasise the importance of piety. Moreover, the purposiveness of the order in the universe reflects the

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purposiveness that characterises human life: actually Wollaston, making reference to an unknown Jewish scholar, maintains that ‘he who fulfils the commandment of God will achieve good understanding, and the reward of true understanding is the survival of the soul after the body has perished, its attachment to the Active Intellect, and the enjoyment of Life e~erlasting’.~3 In fact, the supreme end of human life ‘is the happiness of that state: which [...I may be presumed to be immortal, because the soul is so: and to be purer and of a more exalted nature [...I than any of these low injoyments here, because that state is every way in nature above th i~’ .~4

Wolluston’s Work in the Context of Eighteenth-Century British Philosophy

William Wollaston is a very original author in the context of eighteenth- century British deism. He borrowed widely from Herbert of Cherbury, instead of being influenced by Spinoza or Locke, and he developed a philosophical doctrine that was still marked by significant religious tendencies: however, Wollaston’s religion of nature was extremely rationalistic and presented no link with Christianity.

Wollaston could be blamed because he neglected the theme of the historical development of religion, while such deists as Herbert of Cherbury , Blount and Toland wrote very penetrating works on the perversion of original natural religion or supientia veterum. Actually, according to Herbert, the heathens approved the fundamentals of natural religion and, worshipping God’s creatures, simply wished to adore the supreme Creat~r.~S Later on, natural, original religion turned into an absurd polytheism, idolatrous and full of superstitions, due to priestly frauds: hence, it was only the priests’ interests that corrupted peoples, gave God a number of unseemly attributes, and divided worship into a lot of meaningless ceremonies.86 Also Blount, in Great is Diana ofthe Ephesians, proposed the motif of the priests’ frauds in order to explain the corruption of original religion, which was based upon ‘virtue’ and According to Blount, in the ancient times people

were seduced by their crafty and covetous Sacerdotal Order: who, instead of the said Virtue and Piety, introduced Fables and Fictions of their own coining: perswading the Vulgar, that as men could’not by any natural abilities of their own, know the best manner of serving God, so it was necessary that He should reveal the same to his Priests in some extraordinary manner, for the better instruction of the People.**

In the context of British deism, Great is Diana presents the 6rst significant attempt to elaborate a basically secularised interpretation of the history of religion: actually, the deists of subsequent generations greatly borrowed from Blount. In Toland’s Letters to Serenu a secularised interpretation of positive religions, of their origins and of their developments precedes the exposition of the Irish thinker’s pantheistic philosophy. In fact, Letters to Serenu shows

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‘the necessity of a demanding release from passively assimilated convictions and beliefs, by means of an accurate analysis of their origins and their irrational nat~re’ .~g Toland highlights the simplicity of early religious rites, emphasises the original ancient philosophies and explains how and why religion was corrupted. The Irish thinker thus follows the example of Herbert of Cherbury and Blount, but he, unlike Herbert, is far from acknowledging an innate religious instinct, common to all human beings. Moreover, Toland, unlike Blount, overshadows the ‘voluntaristic’ causes of the perversion of religious ceremonies and beliefs, and stresses rather the psychological as well as cultural reasons of the corruption of religi0n.9~ Conversely, in Wollaston’s book neither the theme of the perversion of original, natural religion nor the significance of the historical, cultural as well as social factors that have gradually modified positive religions are taken into account. Wollaston rather devoted himself to formulating a sort of rational, moral, universal, ‘philosophical’ natural religion, and he ultimately disregarded rituals and ecclesiastical institutions. Moreover, Wollaston revived natural religion in spite of the very advanced theories that such deists as Toland and Collins constructed on the basis of Locke’s anti-innatist epistemology. In fact, neither Toland nor Collins postulated any innate knowledge relevant to the existence of a Supreme Being and to the relationships between God and mankind: rather, they questioned revelation through an unprejudiced analysis of the history of positive religions and, hence, of the so-called ‘sacred texts’. As for Wollaston’s work, the English Hebraist constructed his philosophical system without recourse to revelation: but he did not question the Judaeo-Christian revelation and did not formulate any accurate analysis of revealed religion, its roots and its development. Hence, his interpretation of several Jewish doctrines and traditions was rationalistic but not ‘secularised’, ‘naturalistic’, ‘demystifying’ - namely, unprejudiced and based on advanced historical, critical as well as philological methodologies. He ultimately regarded Judaism as a tradition consistent with the religion of nature, that is, the only universal and necessary religion - and he considered Jewish culture in the light of the fundamentals of natural religion.

As regards Wollaston’s reference to the doctrine of natural religion, it is nevertheless important to stress that this doctrine was still widespread in eighteenth-century England, in spite of the broad diffusion of Locke’s ‘way of ideas’. In fact, in the 1730s such deists as Tindal, Morgan and Chubb exploited the philosophy of Herbert of Cherbury and considered Christianity as a revival of the religion of nature: thus, their theories were not so innovative as Tolands and Collins’s interpretation of revealed religion - although Tindal and his epigones aimed at belittling the importance of revelation by presenting it as a mere c o n h a t i o n of the basic principles of natural religion, which they regarded as universal, necessary, and, above all, sufficient.9’ Only the diffusion of Hume’s sceptical philosophy put an end to innatism and, in some respects, to the faith in the powers of reason: as Frederick Beiser pointed out, ‘after Hume few English philosophers will attempt to mount a systematic and

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thorough defense of the powers of reason. The most serious and sustained attempt to reply to Hume will not appear until 1781, with Kant’s Kritik der reinen Vernunft. By that time the crucial battle for the Enlightenment will be fought on German s0il’,9~ not in England, though Shaftesbury continued to be republished and to be quite influential. However, Shaftesbury’s understanding of reason was different from Wollaston’s. Indeed, while Wollaston’s ethics was characterised by religious grounds and implications - although typical of the deistic ‘religion of nature’ - Shaftesbury aimed at demonstrating that virtue was something in itself and in the nature of things merely through a careful study of human nature itself.

The philosophy of William Wollaston met with success in a period in which the doctrine of natural religion was still considered valid and was mostly exploited in order to weaken revealed religion. In actual fact, eight editions of Wollaston’s The Religion ofNature Delineated were published between I 722 and 1759, and ‘a French translation appeared in 1726 and a German translation in 1728’.~~ However, this work did not arouse interest in Continental Europe, where the doctrine of natural religion was less widespread than in Britain. On the other hand, in his native country Wollaston also came in for criticism. As we have already observed, Hume and other authors, such as John Clarke and Thomas Bott, bitterly criticised Wollaston’s ethics. The deist philosopher’s ethics actually presented several aporias, which would be described clearly in the twentieth century by such historians as Stanley Tweyman, Joel Feinberg and Frederick Beiser. Moreover, Wollaston’s innatism was criticised by the Scottish philosopher Francis Hutcheson, who greatly borrowed from Shaftesbury and further developed his doctrines. In fact, in 1725 Hutcheson involved also Wollaston’s philosophy into his criticism of Gilbert Burnet’s theory on the foundations of morals. As Luigi Turco pointed out,

Burnet accepts benevolence as the ultimate end of action, and the pleasure of moral sense as a pleasure that accompanies the discovery of truth, but he is not willing to make moral sense the basis for moral distinctions. One can always ask, Burnet points out, whether benevolence or moral sense is reasonable: thus the judgement of morality rests ultimately on reason. Hutcheson responds that Burnet reveals himself to be a disciple of Samuel Clarke and William Wollaston in his use of terms such as ‘reasonable’, ‘right’, ‘fit’, ‘conformable to truth’ and ‘ought’. These expressions have either a relative meaning or, if used in their absolute sense, a hidden evaluative meaning, and thus presuppose the very moral sense they are supposed to ground.94

In fact, Hutcheson could not approve the innatist grounds ofBurnet’s, Clarke’s, and Wollaston’s ethics, since reason, for the Scottish thinker, was the neutral, formal one of Empiricism.

However, Wollaston’s work was less criticised than such writings as Tindal’s Christianity as Old as the Creation, which was published in 1730 and was also known as ‘the Bible of deism’, and Morgan’s The Moral Philosopher, published in 1737. Actually, Tindal exploited the role of reason in religious matters in order to demonstrate that natural religion was sufficient and, hence, to

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belittle the importance of revelation: he thus reversed the latitudinarian theory that turned natural religion into a mere premise of revealed religion. Furthermore, Morgan reasserted Tindal’s conception of Christianity as a ‘republication’ of the religion of nature and maintained that Christianity could not be based on Judaism, which he regarded as an absurd religion, full of prejudices and superstition. Hence, between 1730 and 1740, more than one hundred and fifty refutations of Tindal’s Christianity were published, and the debate on Morgan’s work was long and bitter.95 On the other hand, Wollaston’s work was not so criticised as Tindal‘s and Morgan’s writings since the English Hebraist did not take into account Christianity, did not openly question revelation (although Wollaston’s doctrine of natural religion actually weakened revealed religion by making it unnecessary), and drew inspiration from doctrines typical of Judaism, that is, the religion that was generally considered as the basis of Christianity. Nevertheless, according to Frederick Beiser, Wollaston’s philosophy and, in general, the deistic doctrine of natural religion were left aside due to the diffusion of Hume’s corrosive theses on religion, ethics and human reas0n.9~

Although Hume’s direct criticism of Wollaston’s ethics was imprecise, it was approved by a number of thinkers and historians, until such scholars as Tweyman and Feinberg, in the twentieth century, highlighted its defects. Additionally, in his works the Scottish philosopher examined the central arguments of the dominant philosophical and theological views of his day and stressed the lack of cognitive content in their key notions. Hence, Hume ‘destroyed’ innatism. Actually, in his Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion, the Scottish philosopher refuted the deistic doctrine of natural religion, which founded religion a priori: according to Hume, religion did not originate in reason, but it derived from fears and passions, and developed by virtue of political, social and cultural dynamics. Moreover, to the Scottish philosopher, the innatism of natural religion is untenable because men are able to infer neither the true essence of the things, nor the order of nature. Thus, he also refuted the theistic theories that founded religion a posteriori, that is, on the basis of the presumed harmony that characterises the universe.97 On the other hand, though Hume criticised natural religion, he was significantly influenced by the deistic theories on the origins and developments of positive religions, due to merely human reasons: hence, in The Natural History of Religion, he expounded a thoroughly secularised interpretation of positive religions, equated the so-called sacred history and profane history, and compared the Judaeo-Christian tradition and several pagan religiqns.g8

As for ethics and human nature, in his unprejudiced analysis of human nature Hume rejected the moral rationalists’ efforts to base morality on ‘abstract’ concepts. As David Fate Norton stressed,

the moral rationalists claimed, for example, that moral distinctions are based on transcendental principles and immutable relations that oblige all rational creatures and that can only be discerned by the use of reason. The facts, according to Hume, are very Merent. As far as any of us knows or can know,

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morality has to do only with human beings and human affairs. We do not know what is expected of higher beings, our reason cannot reach to such heights. But, if this transcendental realm is beyond our reach, we need not suppose that reason provides the foundation of morality. An exaggerated view of the power of reason leads the rationalist to suppose that reason can pierce its way into the realm of transcendental values. Once we see that reason lacks entirely this extraordinary power, we can conclude that morality does not depend exclusively on reason.99

Actually, for Hume, morality depends merely on human nature, that is, on various elements that constitute human nature, even on irrational elements. Thus, though Hume’s criticism of some aspects of Wollaston’s ethics was characterised by several inaccuracies, Hume’s analysis of human nature actually refuted moral rationalism and, hence, the fundamentals of Wollaston’s ethical system as well.

In conclusion, I would l i e to stress that the English Hebraist’s philosophy and scholarship ought to be appreciated, though Wollaston’s ethical system presented several aporias, typical of the Stoic as well as deistic moral philosophies, and though natural religion as well as moral rationalism were finally left aside, in Britain, in the second half of the eighteenth century. In fact, Wollaston developed a very original version of natural religion, which disregarded Christianity as well as Christian theology and, rather, was characterised by a rationalistic interpretation of several Jewish doctrines and beliefs, apart from particular rites and customs. Hence Wollaston, a representative of both deism and moral rationalism, still shows himself to be one of the most original and interesting philosophers of the first half of the eighteenth century.

NOTES

I. As Frederick Beiser pointed out. Wollaston’s writing ‘was privately printed in 1722. but its favourable reception among friends encouraged the author to publish it’ (F. C. Beiser, The Sovereignty of Reason: The Defense of Rationality in the Early English Enlightenment. Princeton 1996, p.301). The second and most famous edition of The Religion ofNature Delineatedwas hence published in London in 1724. Between 1722 and 1759, eight editions of Wollaston’s work were published, and it was also translated into French and German. I refer to the 1724 edition: see W. Wollaston, The Religion of Nature Delineated (London 1724). Moreover, a facsimile reprint of this edition was published in 1974: see W. Wollaston. The Religion ofNature Delineated (New York 1974). This reprint also contains an ‘Introduction’ by Stanley Tweyman and several writings concerning Wollaston’s work.

2. J. I. Israel, Radical Enlightenment: Philosophy and the Making of Modernity, I 650-1 750 (2001; Oxford 2002), p.603. On Spinoza’s influence on British deism, see R. L. Colie. ‘Spinoza and the Early English Deists’, Journal ofthe History of Ideas 20 (1959). p.23-46; and ‘Spinoza in England, 1665-1730’. Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 107 (1963). p.183-219; S. Brown, ‘Theological Politics and the Reception of Spinoza in the Early English Enlightenment’, Studia Spinozana 9 (1993), p.181-200.

3. G. Gusdorf, Les Origines de l’he‘rmeneutique (Paris 1988). p.112. 4. Gusdorf. Les Origines de l’htrmeneutique, p.112. 5. P. Byme, Natural Religion and the Nature ofReligion: The Legacy ofDeism (London 1989).

P.77.

Judaism and Natural Religion in the Philosophy of Wollaston 383

6. Byrne, Natural Religion, p.77. Such deists as Toland and Collins also used various historical as well as hermeneutical methodologies, besides the fundamentals of Spinoza’s and Locke’s philosophies. Actually, secularised interpretation of positive religions, formulated in the seventeenth century by such libertine thinkers as La Mothe Le Vayer, Van Dale, Fontenelle and Blount himself, strongly influenced their view of the history of religions. Both Toland and Collins also employed Socinian as well as Arminian theses to demonstrate that a number of positive religions, and especially Christianity, were strongly corrupt, and that the most important Christian dogmas arose from pagan customs and beliefs, while Socinians just aimed at refounding the Christian religion by rediscovering its original meaning. On the other hand, the deists also accepted, and modified, the doctrines of such authors as the Catholic priest Richard Simon and the Anglican scholar Henry Dodwell. who thought that Scripture was greatly corrupt; hence, both Simon and Dodwell maintained that there was a need to resort to the Fathers’ commentaries and to the most ancient testimonies of Christianity in order to define the correct theological doctrine. Therefore, Toland and Collins studied in depth the New Testament, the writings of the Fathers and the apocryphal works. However, they had very different goals from Simon’s and Dodwell’s purposes: in fact, the British deists aimed at highlighting the conflicts within early Christianity, at stressing the significant divergence of views between the Fathers, and at showing that the basic principles of the Christian religion were the results of theological disputes and of difficult compromises and, hence, did not enjoy any ‘supernatural’ foundation. On the eighteenth-century deists’ epistemology, hermeneutics and rhetoric, see esp. J. A. I. Champion, The Pillars ofpriestcraft Shaken: The Church of England and its Enemies, I 660-1 730 (Cambridge 1992); J. A. Herrick, The Radical Rhetoric ofthe English Deists: The Discourse ofskepticism, I 680-1 750 (Columbia, SC 1997).

7. See E. Herbert de Cherbury, De veritate, prout distinguitur a revelatione, a verosimili, apossibili et afalso (Paris, 1624; Londmi 1633), p.212-13.

8. J. Leland, A View ofthe Principal Deistical Writers [...I. 2 vols (London I757), i.7. 9. R. D. Bedford. The Defence of Truth: Herbert of Cherbury and the Seventeenth Century

10. J. A. Butler, Lord Herbert of Chirbury (1582-1 648): An Intellectual Biography (Lewiston I990), P.170.

11. On the connections between the philosophy of Herbert of Cherbury, latitudinarianism, and Cambridge Platonism, see Bedford, The Defence of Truth, p.87-129: Beiser. The Sovereignty of Reason, p.84-219; S . Hutton, ‘Lord Herbert of Cherbury and the Cambridge Platonists’. British Philosophy and the Age of Enlightenment. Routledge History of Philosophy. ed. S . Brown, vol.5 (London and New York 1996), p.20-42.

12. See C. G. Thompson, The Ethics of William Wollaston (Boston 1922). 13. On the defects that Wollaston’s book presented and on the deist thinker’s critics, see esp.

0. A. Johnson, ‘Hume’s Refutation of Wollaston?’, Hume Studies 12.2 (1986), p.~gz-zoo: Beiser, The Sovereignty ofReason, p.301-304.

14. See S. Tweyman, ‘Truth, Happiness and Obligation: The Moral Philosophy of William Wollaston’, Philosophy 51 (1976). p.35-46: J. Feinberg, ‘Wollaston and his Critics’, Journal ofthe History of Ideas 38.2 (1977). p.345-52. I will further expound Hume’s criticism of Wollaston, as well as Tweyman’s and Feinberg’s remarks on the Scottish philosopher’s theses. On the philosophy of Wollaston. see also Tweyman, ‘Introduction’ to Wollaston, The Religion ofNature Delineated, facsimile reprint, p.v-xi; G. H. Smith, ‘William Wollaston on Property Rights’, Journal ofLibertarian Studies 2.3 (1978), p.217-24.

15. See A. Altmann, ‘William Wollaston (1659-1724), English Deist and Rabbinic Scholar’. Transactions ofthe Jewish Historical Society ofEngland 16 (1951). p.185-211.

16. Wollaston’s footnotes often omit important details of the Jewish works that he mentions and of the editions to which he refers. In order to translate several passages, quoted in the footnotes of Wollaston’s writing, from Hebrew into English, I also availed myself of Altmann’s study mentioned above.

17. See M. Maimonides. The Guide for the Perplexed, English trans. (London 1904). part I. ch.71.

18. See J. Albo, Sefer Ha-Ikkarim: Book ofPrinciples, English trans (Philadelphia ~gzg) , passim. 19. See Wollaston. The Religion ofNature Delineated, esp. p.68-69. 20. See Wollaston, The Religion ofNature Delineated, esp. p.68-69. 21. See J. Buxtorf, Bibliotheca Rabbinica (Base1 1613): P. Cunaeus. De Republica Hebraeorurn

libri tres (Lugduni Batavorum 1632); J. Plantavit de La Pause, Planta vitis seu thesaurus synonymicus Hebraico-Chaldaico-Rabbinicus (Lodovae 1644). On the significance of Cunaeus’s

(Manchester 1g7g), p.149.

384 DIEGO LUCCI

work in seventeenth-century political philosophy and Jewish studies, see L. Campos Boralevi. ‘Introduction’ to P. Cunaeus, De Republica Hebraeorum - The Commonwealth of the Hebrews, Latin text and English trans., ed. L. Campos Boralevi (Firenze 1996): L. Campos Boralevi, ‘Per una storia della Respublica Hebraeorum come modello politico’, in Dalle ‘Repubbliche’ elzeviriane alle ideologie del Novecento. Studi di storia delle idee in eta moderna e contemporanea, ed. V. I. Comparato and E. Pii (Firenze 1gg7), p.17-33.

22. See J. Selden, De Synedriis et praefecturis iuridicis veterum Hebraeorum, 3 vols (London 1650-1653): E. Pocock, Porta Mosis, sive Dissertationes aliquot a R. Mose Maimonide (Oxoniae 1655): J. Lightfoot. Hora hebraica et talmudica in quatuor euangelistas (Lipsia 1684). On Selden’s work, see P. Christianson, Discourse on History, Law and Governance in the Public Career of John Selden. I 61 0-1 635 (Toronto, Buffalo and London 1996): S. Caruso. La miglior legge del Regno. Consuetudine, diritto naturale e contratto nel pensiero e nell’epoca di John Selden (1584-1 654) (Milano 2001).

23. On religious syncretism in early modem England, see D. Lucci. ‘Ebraismo e antichi paganesimi. I1 sincretismo religioso di Herbert di Cherbury e i suoi influssi sugli studi storico- religiosi del Seicento’. La Rassegna Mensile di Israel 70.1 (2004). p.19-45: and ‘Filosemitismo e apocalittica nell’ermeneutica biblica di Isaac Newton’, Materia Giudaica 10.1 (2005). p.135-50.

24. On the Cambridge Platonists’ interests in Judaism, see L. Obertello, ‘Scienza. morale e religione nel pensiero di John Wilkins’. Miscellanea Seicento 2 (1g71), p.7-61: A. Coudert, ‘A Cambridge Platonist’s Kabbalist Nightmare’, Journal of the History of Ideas 36 (1975). p.633-52: S. Brown, ‘Leibniz and Henry More’s Cabbalistic Circle’, in Henry More ( I 61 4-1 687). Tercentenary Studies, ed. S. Hutton (Dordrecht 1990). p.77-95: John Wilkins and the Seventeenth- Century British Linguistics, ed. J. L. Subbiondo (Amsterdam and Philadelphia 1992): R. E. Stillman. The New Philosophy and Universal Languages in Seventeenth-Century England: Bacon, Hobbes, and Wilkins (Lewisburg 1995): S. Hutton. ‘More, Millenarianism. and the Ma’aseh Merkavah’. in Everything Connects: in Conference with Richard H. Popkin. Essays in his Honor, ed. J. E. Force and D. S. Katz (Leiden, Boston and Koln ~ g g g ) , p.163-81. On philosemitism in early modern England. see D. S. Katz, Philo-Semitism and the Readmission of the Jews to England, I 603-1 655 (Oxford 1982): P. Bernardmi, ‘The Silent Retreat of The Fathers: Jewish-Christian Relations in Early Eighteenth-Century England, in Cultures of Ambivalence and Contempt: Studies in Jewish-Non Jewish Relations in Memory of James Parkes, ed. S. Jones, T. Kushner and S. Pearce (London 1998). p.100-26: D. Lucci, ‘Tendenze filosemite nella cultura inglese del Seicento’. La Rassegna Mensile di Israel 68.2 (2002), p.19-41.

25. Wollaston. The Religion of Nature Delineated, p.7. 26. The titles of the nine sections of Wollaston’s book are the following: I. Of Moral Good

and Evil; 2. Of Happiness: 3. Of Reason, and the ways of discovering truth: 4. Of the Obligations of imperfect Beings with respect to their power of acting: 5. Truths relating to the Deity. Of his existence, perfection, providence, &c.: 6. Truths respecting Mankind in general, antecedent to all human laws: 7. Truths respecting particular Societies of Men, or Governments: 8. Truths concerning Families and Relations: 9. Truths belonging to a Private Man, and respecting (directly) only himself.

27. Wollaston. The Religion of Nature Delineated, p.23. 28. Wollaston. The Religion of Nature Delineated, p.8. 29. Wollaston. The Religion of Nature Delineated, p.13. 30. See Wollaston. The Religion of Nature Delineated. p.15. 31. On latitudinarianism and its importance in early modern England, see I. Rivers, Reason,

Grace, and Sentiment: A Study of the Language of Religion and Ethics in England, I 660-1 780, vo1.1. Whichcote to Wesley (Cambridge 1991): M. I. J. Grifh. Latitudinarianism in the Seventeenth-Century Church of England (Leiden, New York and Koln 1992): W. M. Spellman, The Latitudinarians and the Church of England I 660-1 700 (Athens and London 1993); M. Micheletti, Dai latitudinari a Hume. Saggi sul pensiero religioso britannico dei secoli XVII e XVIII (Perugia 1997): D. Lucci, ‘La tolleranza come “latitude”. Origini e importanza del latitudmarismo inglese del Seicento’, Annuli di Storia Moderna e Contemporanea 11 (2005). p.215-29.

32. Wollaston, The Religion of Nature Delineated, p.16. 33. Wollaston, The Religion of Nature Delineated, p.38. 34. Tweyman. ‘Truth, Happiness and Obligation’. p.45-46. 35. Tweyman. ‘Truth, Happiness and Obligation’, p.45-46. 36. D. Hume. A Treatise of Human Nature, ed. L. A. Selby-Biggs (London, 1739-1740: Oxford

37. Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature, p.461. 1888). p.461.

Judaism and Natural Religion in the Philosophy of Wollaston 385

38. Feinberg, ‘Wollaston and his Critics’, p.347. Hume’s interpretation of Wollaston’s ethics also intluenced such eighteenth- and nineteenth-century authors as Richard Price, Jeremy Bentham and Leslie Stephen, who quickly dismissed Wollaston’s philosophy, and the twentieth- century philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre, who actually endorsed Hume’s criticism of Wollaston’s theory (Feinberg, ‘Wollaston and his Critics’, p.347,350). As regards MacIntyre. whom Feinberg considers ‘the latest in a long line of defamers of Wollaston’ (‘Wollaston and his Critics’, p.347). see A. MacIntyre. A Short History ofEthics (New York 1966). p.170-71. Also Stanley Tweyman maintains that ‘Hume has not refuted Wollaston’ (Tweyman, ‘Truth. Happiness and Obligation’, p.35). Additionally, in his article concerning Wollaston’s moral philosophy, Tweyman refutes Rachael M. Kydd’s and R. David Broiles’s theses on Wollaston’s ethics, as they ultimately follow Hume’s wrong theories on Wollaston’s thought (see R. M. Kydd, Reason and Conduct in Hume’s Treatise. New York 1964. p.32-33: R. D. Broiles, The Moral Philosophy ofDavidHume, The Hague 1964, p.13-14).

39. Johnson, ‘Hume’s Refutation of Wollaston?’, p.195. 40. Feinberg, ‘Wollaston and his Critics’, p.351. 41. Beiser. The Sovereignty ofReason, p.303. Also the Latiniit John Clarke, who was one of the

early critics of Wollaston. stressed that the deist philosopher, in expounding the origins of evil, disregarded the relationships between an intention, an action and its consequences (see J. Clarke, An Examination ofthe Notion of Moral Good and Evil, Advanced in a late Book, entitled The Religion ofNature Delineated. London 1725; a facsimile reprint of this writing was published in the 1974 edition of Wollaston’s work). Clarke’s detailed refutation of Wollaston’s doctrine presented some interesting observations but, on the other hand, several inaccuracies. In addition, the English Latinist clearly aimed at stigmatising Wollaston’s heterodoxy regarding not only ethics, but also religion: for instance, Clarke blamed the Hebraist for mentioning a number of ‘Rabbinical Writers’, whom the Latinist considered as ‘a sort of Authors remarkable for nothing but Stupidity and Lying’ (see, An Examination, p.3). Also the Anglican theologian Thomas Bott attempted to refute Wollaston’s ethics, but his criticism was characterised by a number of incorrect and even strained interpretations of Wollaston’s theses on truth and good (see [T. Bott], The Principal and Peculiar Notion Advanc’d in a late Book, intitled, The Religion of Nature Delineated: Consider’d and Refuted, in a Letter to a Gentleman, London 1725). Actually, in I725 an anonymous Defence of Wollaston’s ethics in answer to Bott’s writing stigmatised the theologian’s misinterpretations of the Hebraist’s theories (see [Anon.], A Defence ofMr. Wollaston’s Notion of Moral Good and Evil: In Answer to a Letter in which It is Said to be Considered and Refuted, London 1725; a facsimile reprint of this Defence was published in the 1974 edition of The Religion of Nature Delineated). While such historians as Joel Feinberg and Oliver Johnson have focused on Hume’s interpretation of Wollaston’s philosophy, the 1725 debate on The Religion ofNature Delineated, in which Wollaston could not have been involved as he died in 1724, has not been studied in depth yet.

42. J. Balguy, The Foundation ofMoral Goodness (London 1728), p.31. 43. See S. Clarke, A Discourse Concerning the Unchangeable Obligations of Natural Religion, and

the Truth and Certainty ofthe Christian Revelation [...I (London 1706). The Newtonians’ physico- theology was a Christian but heterodox current, since they aimed at justifying the Christian religion by availing themselves not only of the Bible, but also of the ‘book of nature’. In addition, Newton and his disciples refused the dogma of Trinity, as it was not founded on the biblical text. One of Newton’s most famous disciples, William Whiston. openly denied Trinity and was hence expelled from Cambridge University, where he was professor of mathematics, in 1710.

44. Wollaston. The Religion ofNature Delineated, p.25-26. 45. Altmann. ‘William Wollaston’, p.189. 46. Altmann. ‘William Wollaston’, p.189. 47. See Wollaston, The Religion ofNature Delineated, p.127-67, 48. Wollaston, The Religion ofNature Delineated. p.15n. 49. See Maimonides. The Guidefor the Perplexed, part 3. ch.31. 50. Wollaston, The Religion ofNature Delineated, p.15n. 51. See, Wollaston, The Religion ofNature Delineated, p.67. 52. See, Wollaston, The Religion ofNature Delineated. p.66-67. 53. Wollaston. The Religion ofNature Delineated, p.68n. 54. Wollaston. The Religion ofNature Delineated, p.68. 55. Wollaston. The Religion ofNature Delineated, p.68. 56. See Wollaston, The Religion ofNature Delineated. p.68n. 57. Wollaston, The Religion ofNature Delineated, p.68. 58. See Wollaston, The Religion ofNature Delineated. p.6gn.

386 DIBGO LUCCI

59. See Wollaston, The Religion of Nature Delineated, p.6gn. 60. See Maimonides, The Guidefor the Perplexed, part I. ch.51-60. 61. Wollaston, The Religion of Nature Delineated. p.69. 62. See Wollaston, The Religion of Nature Delineated, p.70. 63. See Wollaston, The Religion of Nature Delineated, p.74-76. 64. Wollaston, The Religion of Nature Delineated. p.74. 65. Wollaston, The Religion of Nature Delineated, p.74. 66. See Wollaston, The Religion of Nature Delineated, p.75n. 67. Wollaston, The Religion of Nature Delineated. p.94. 68. Altmann. ‘William Wollaston’, p.200. 69. Altmann, ‘William Wollaston’, p.200. 70. See Wollaston, The Religion of Nature Delineated, p.95. 71. See Wollaston, The Religion of Nature Delineated, p.98-103. 72. Wollaston, The Religion of Nature Delineated, p.104. 73. Wollaston, The Religion ofNature Delineated, p.12on. 74. See Wollaston, The Religion ofNature Delineated. p.110. 75. Wollaston, The Religion of Nature Delineated, p.113. 76. Colie, ‘Spinoza and the Early English Deists’, p.31. 77. See Wollaston, The Religion of Nature, p.186-93. See also Sa’adya Gaon, The Book of

Doctrine and Beliefs, English trans. (Oxford 1946). Sa’adya argued firmly for creation ex nihilo and maintained that the human soul is spiritual and immortal: in fact, according to the Jewish philosopher, reason does not reject resurrection, since the second creation of a thing that was already in existence and became dissolved is more reasonable than the creation ex nihilo. In addition, though Sa’adya rejects Plato’s view of the world, he rests his own theory of soul upon a Platonic tripartite psychology. According to Sa’adya. the soul presents three faculties, that is, appetite, courage, and discernment, which correspond to three Hebrew terms for ‘soul’ found in the Scriptures (nefesh in correspondence to the appetitive function, ruah in correspondence to the faculty of courage, and neshamah as corresponding to the faculty of knowledge).

78. See M. ben Israel, Sefer Nishmat Hayyim (Amsterdam 1651). The Jewish scholar and millenarian thinker Menasseh ben Israel was famous in Britain because in 1655-1656 he committed himself to the readmission of the Jews to England and caused a bitter controversy. On Menasseh ben Israel, see L. Wolf. Menasseh Ben Israel’s Mission to Oliver Cromwell (London 1901); C. Roth, A Life of Menasseh Ben Israel: Rabbi, Printer, and Diplomat (Philadelphia 1934); Katz, Philo-Semitism, p.190-231; Menasseh ben Israel andHis World, ed. Y. Kaplan, H. Mechoulan and R. H. Popkin (Leiden 1989); L. Ifrah, L’Aigle d’Amsterdarn. Menasseh ben Israel (I 604-1 657) (Paris 2001).

79. See Wollaston. The Religion of Nature Delineated. p.197. 80. See Wollaston. The Religion ofNature Delineated, p.213-18. 81. Wollaston, The Religion ofNature Delineated. p.213. 82. Wollaston, The Religion of Nature Delineated, p.213n. 83. Wollaston, The Religion of Nature Delineated, p.213n. 84. Wollaston, The Religion of Nature Delineated, p.217. 85. See E. Herbert decherbury, De religionegentilium, errorumqueapudeoscausis(Amste1aedami

1663. posth.). p.4-10. 86. See Herbert de Cherbury. De religione gentiliurn, p.167-68. 87. See C. Blount. Great is Diana of the Ephesians [...I (London 1680), p.3. On the philosophy of

Charles Blount, see U. Bonanate. Charles Blount: Libertinismo e deismo nel Seicento inglese (Firenze 1972); D. Pfanner. Tra scetticismo e libertinismo: Charles Blount (I 654-1 693) e la cultura del libero pensiero nell’Inghilterra degli ultimi Stuart (Napoli 2004).

88. Blount. Great is Diana of the Ephesians, p.3. In his writing Blount clearly expressed some motifs typical of the seventeenth-century libertine thinkers’ anthropological analysis. Moreover, Blount’s theses on the purely historical origins of positive religions influenced such libertine thinkers as Van Dale and Fontenelle, who drew inspiration from the English philosopher in their worksconcerning the oracles: see A. VanDale, Deoraculis veterum ethnicorurn (Amsterdam 1683); and De origine et progressu Idolatriae (Amsterdam 1696); B. Le Bovier de Fontenelle, Histoire des Oracles (1686 Paris 1698). On the theme of the natural roots of religion in seventeenth-century libertinism, see R. Pintard. Le libertinage Crudit dans la premiLre moitiidu XVII siecle, 2 vols (Paris

89. C. Gmntiini. Panteismo e ideologia repubblicana: John Toland (I 670-1 722) (Bologna 1979). 1943). i.437-41.

p.214.

Judaism and Natural Religion in the Philosophy of Wollaston 387

90. See J. Toland. Letters to Serena (London 1704). 91. See [M. Tmdal], Christianity as Old as the Creation, or, the Gospel, a Republication of the

Religion of Nature (London 1730): [T. Morgan], The Moral Philosopher [...I (London 1737): T. Chubb, The True Gospel oflesus Christ (London 1739).

92. Beiser, The Sovereignty ofReason, p.xi. 93. Tweyman, ‘Introduction’, p.v. The French translation was entitled Ebauche de la religion

naturelle, traduite de l’anglais, avec un supplkrnent et autres additions considkrables (La Haye I 726). The editor of this translation was one ‘Garrigue’, maybe a French Protestant, as the Garrigues were a famous Huguenot family: see E. Garrigues, Genealogy of the Garrigues Family from the Immigration from France to Holland to St. Christopher to PhUadelphia (Salt Lake City 1966), esp. p.111. This translation was republished in 1756. Unfortunately, I have found no detail of the German translation of Wollaston’s book in any European or American catalogue.

94. L. Turco, ‘Moral Sense and the Foundations of Morals’, The Cambridge Companion to the Scottish Enlightenment. ed. A. Broadie (Cambridge 2003), p.136-56 (p.140).

95. See J. V. Price, ‘Introduction’ to [M. Tmdal], Christianity as Old as the Creation, facsimile repr. (London and Tokyo 1995). p.ix: J. V. Price, ‘Introduction’ to [T. Morgan], The Moral Philosopher, facsimile repr. (London and Tokyo 1995), p.x-xvii.

96. See Beiser. The Sovereignty ofReason, p.301-304. 97. See D. Hume, Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion ([London] 1779). The Dialogues were

written between 1749 and 1751, but were published in 1779. after Hume’s death. On Hume’s theses on religion, see J. C. A. Gaskin, Hume’s Philosophy ofReligion (London 1978): and ‘Hume on religion’, in The Cambridge Companion to H u m , ed. D. F. Norton (Cambridge 1993). p.313-44. On Hume’s dislike for theism, see T. A. Mitchell. David Hume’s Anti-Theistic Views (Lanham 1986).

98. See D. Hume. The Natural History ofReligion, in Hume. Four Dissertations. 1. The Natural History ofReligion. Zl. Of the Passion. Ill. Of Tragedy. IV. Of the Standard of Taste (London 1757). This work was written between 1751 and 1757.

99. D. F. Norton, ‘Hume, Human Nature, and the Foundations of Morality’, The Cambridge Companion to Hume, ed. Norton, p.148-82 (p.156). On Hume’s ethics, see D. F. Norton, David Hume: Common-Sense Moralist, Sceptical Metaphysician (Princeton and Guildford 1982).