Israel 2005, 352
\n“Around 1720, British \u02bbDeism\u02bc looked a dynamic cultural and intellectual force;
\nbut it tended to recede, from the 1720s, both in local vitality and from continental
\nphilosophical debates. If, from Blount onwards, British \u02bbDeism\u02bc bore Spinoza\u02bcs, as
\nwell as Hobbes\u02bcs, imprint even in the case of Shaftesbury who expressly repudiated
\ntheir thought, in the longer run, non-providentialist Deism in Britain notably failed
\nto integrate a comprehensive toleration, freedom of thought, individual liberty,
\nrejection of religious authority, republican virtue, democratic republicanism, and
\nequality into a coherent radical intellectual system by means of the monist philosophical
\napparatus at hand. British Deism, despite its republicanism, perhaps
\nrevealed itself to be au fond more Hobbesian and Humean in orientation than
\nSpinozist.40 If some British, as well as most continental, observers clearly saw that
\n\u02bbthe most applauded Doctor of modern atheism, Spinosa\u02bc had, as Leland put it, also
\n\u02bbtaken the most pains to form it into a system\u02bc,4\u00c2\u00b9 in Britain, it was precisely that
\nbroad radical intellectual system with its attendant democratic and egalitarian consequences
\nwhich was avoided.
\nIn any case, by the mid eighteenth century the so-called \u02bbDeist controversy\u02bc had
\nlargely spent itself and ceased to be central to British culture.4\u00c2\u00b2 At the same time,
\nrepublican radicalism, as we have seen, did not so much disappear as adjust to the
\nchanging British political reality in compliant and compromising ways.4\u00c2\u00b3 In his
\nlater years, Toland became the tireless apologist of a faction which tried to merge
\nrepublicanism with monarchism, rendering it not merely compatible, but closely
\nintegrated with, a monarchical, aristocratic, and imperial world system.44 He had all
\nalong helped publicize the suitability and dynastic claims of the House of Hanover
\nbut little by little this became more central to his endeavours, gradually softening
\nhis republican edge.45 With his spate of tracts of the years 1711\u2020\u201c14, claiming that
\nthe Hanoverian Succession by permanently excluding Stuart divine right monarchy,
\nentrenching toleration and civil liberty, and curbing the High Church reaction of
\nQueen Anne\u02bcs reign (1702\u2020\u201c14) would best secure what he and his allies judged the
\nmain gains of the Glorious Revolution, the ideological fusion of republicanism
\nwith a new version of British mixed monarchy was already largely complete.
\nIf, as a critique of revelation and miracles, British \u02bbDeism\u02bc retained much of its
\nvigour into the mid eighteenth century and beyond, maturing in particular into the
\nsceptical philosophy of Hume and anticlerical historiography of Gibbon, Hume\u02bcs<\/p>\n
Champion, Republican Learning, 116\u2020\u201c18, 120, 123\u2020\u201c4, 129\u2020\u201c30, 132\u2020\u201c5.
\npolitics and social and moral thought were even more conservative than those of
\nShaftesbury,Toland,Molesworth, and Collins and, by his time, rejection of the radical
\napproach to social and moral issues had become predominant within, and typical
\nof, British Deism generally. At the same time, it seems this broad retreat from
\nthe wider-ranging republican legacy of the recent past, and decreasing participation
\nin the continental intellectual debates, resulted not from any specifically intellectual
\nfactors but was due rather to social, cultural, and political conditions in
\nBritain, Ireland, and America.<\/p>\n
40 Ellenzweig,\u02bbFaith of Unbelief \u02bc, 44. 4\u00c2\u00b9 Leland, A View, iii. 21.
\n4\u00c2\u00b2 Brown,\u02bbIntroduction\u02bc, 10; Porter, Enlightenment, 97\u2020\u201c8.
\n4\u00c2\u00b3 Pocock,\u02bbSignificance of 1688\u02bc, 278, 291; Champion, Republican Learning, 116\u2020\u201c17.
\n44 Champion, Republican Learning, 133\u2020\u201c6; Zurbuchen,\u02bbRepublicanism\u02bc, 50.
\n45 Pocock, Machiavellian Moment, 449, 476\u2020\u201c7, 483; Champion, Pillars of Priestcraft, 171\u2020\u201c3,<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Israel 2005, 352 “Around 1720, British \u02bbDeism\u02bc looked a dynamic cultural and intellectual force; but it tended to recede, from the 1720s, both in local vitality and from continental philosophical debates. If, from Blount onwards, British \u02bbDeism\u02bc bore Spinoza\u02bcs, as well as Hobbes\u02bcs, imprint even in the case of Shaftesbury who expressly repudiated their thought, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archief.somtijds.nl\/hume-blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1802"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archief.somtijds.nl\/hume-blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archief.somtijds.nl\/hume-blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archief.somtijds.nl\/hume-blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archief.somtijds.nl\/hume-blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1802"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/archief.somtijds.nl\/hume-blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1802\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1803,"href":"https:\/\/archief.somtijds.nl\/hume-blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1802\/revisions\/1803"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archief.somtijds.nl\/hume-blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1802"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archief.somtijds.nl\/hume-blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1802"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archief.somtijds.nl\/hume-blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1802"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}