John Toland (philosopher)

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John Toland

John Toland (born November 30, 1670 in Inishowen , Ireland; † March 11, 1722 in Putney near London ) was an Irish free thinker of the Enlightenment .

As the son of Catholic parents, Toland converted to Protestantism in 1687 . He studied theology and philosophy in Glasgow , Edinburgh and Leiden . In 1696 the early Enlightenment published his work Christianity not Mysterious , in which he argued, following John Locke , that Christianity should be grasped with human reason. The work was publicly burned in Dublin in 1697 . Its author fled to London. There he published a complete edition including a biography of the well-known but also controversial poet John Milton in 1699 , which in turn met with hostility. He fought against this with his Amyntor font .

In 1701 he toured the German states, met Electress Sophie of Hanover and Queen Sophie Charlotte of Prussia , to whom he felt very attached. His Letters to Serena (letters to Serena) were addressed to Sophie von Prussia in 1704. He now sees the world as divine and rejects the belief in individual immortality. With this he represented pantheistic ideas. In 1709 he again toured Germany and Holland and published Adeisidaemon . Much later, Nazarenus, or jewish, gentile and mohametan christianity followed, and finally, two years later, the work Pantheisticon .

Editions and translations

  • John Toland: Letters to Serena (1704) , Berlin (East) 1959 ( About superstition , about matter and movement ).
  • John Toland: Reasons for the Naturalization of Jews in Great Britain and Ireland (1714) , ed. v. Herbert Mainusch, Stuttgart 1965 (introduction, English text and German translation).
  • John Toland: Das Pantheistikon (1720) , Leipzig 1897.
  • John Toland: Nazarenus. Edited by Justin Champion. Voltaire Foundation, Oxford 1999, ISBN 0-7294-0561-3 (edition with detailed introduction)
  • Michael Palmer: Adeisidaemon. Reason between atheism and superstition. Materialism and the Commonwealth with John Toland. With a new edition and translation of Toland's Adeisidaemon & origines Judaica, dissertation, Berlin 2002. E-book

literature

  • M. Ionfrida: La filosofia di John Toland , Milano 1983.
  • Klaus-Gunther Wesseling:  Toland, John. In: Biographisch-Bibliographisches Kirchenlexikon (BBKL). Volume 12, Bautz, Herzberg 1997, ISBN 3-88309-068-9 , Sp. 267-286.  ( Article / beginning of article in Internet archive )
  • John Champion: Republican Learning: John Toland and the Crisis of Christian Culture, 1696-1722 . Manchester University Press, Manchester 2003, ISBN 978-0-7190-5714-4 ( online )
  • Daniel C. Fouke: Philosophy and Theology in a Burlesque Mode: John Toland and the Way of Paradox. Prometheus Books, New York 2008.
  • Walther Ludwig : John Tolands Pantheisticon between the history of philosophy and Latin studies. In: Neulateinisches Jahrbuch 16 (2014), ISBN 978-3-487-15196-0 , pp. 173-212.
  • Heiner Jestrabek : Enlightment & Free-thinkers. Enlightenment in England. John Toland's letters to Serena & Pantheisticson. Freedom tree edition Spinoza 2015, ISBN 978-3-922589-56-3 .
  • Walther Ludwig: Philosophy and Theology not in a Burlesque Mode - The Pantheisticon of John Toland. Acta Conventus Neo-Latini Vindobonensis, Proceedings of the Sixteenth International Congress of Neo-Latin Studies, Vienna 2015. Astrid Steiner-Weber, Franz Römer u. a. (Ed.), Brill, Leiden-Boston 2018, ISBN 978-90-04-36152-2 , pp. 433-438.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Lecture by Volker Paul in the Association for Orts- und Heimatkunde Bad Iburg eV p. 15, online ( Memento from March 4, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) (PDF; 9.1 MB)
personal data
SURNAME Toland, John
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Irish-British free thinker
DATE OF BIRTH November 30, 1670
PLACE OF BIRTH Inishowen
DATE OF DEATH March 11, 1722
Place of death London Borough of Wandsworth