Annie Besant
(1847–1933)British social reformer and theosophist. She became a Fabian, a trade-union organizer (including the match girls' strike of 1888), and a propagandist for birth control. She became a ...
Charles Bradlaugh
(1833–91)British social reformer. A republican and keen supporter of reform movements, he was tried, with Annie Besant, in 1877–78 for printing a pamphlet on birth control. The charge failed and ...
Clandestine Literature
In order to understand the cultural and intellectual context in which clandestine philosophical literature circulated, we must first call into question the notion of “crisis of conscience” proposed ...
deism
Belief in a god who created the universe but does not govern worldly events, does not answer prayers, and has no direct involvement in human affairs. deist n. One who espouses deism. Compare ...
Friedrich Engels
(1820–95)German socialist and political philosopher, resident chiefly in England from 1842. The founder of modern communism with Karl Marx, he collaborated with him in the writing of the Communist ...
humanism
[De]A philosophy or ethical system that centres on the concept of the dignity, freedom, and value of human beings. The belief that there is an essential human condition that emerges regardless of ...
Jacques-André Naigeon
(1738–1810).Atheist philosophe, forthright rather than subtle. He wrote for the Encyclopédie and reworked subversive manuscripts for Holbach's anti‐religious campaign. Later he produced the first ...
Jean Meslier
(1664–1729), French priest. Meslier spent all his life in the Ardennes region of northeastern France. After studying at the seminary in the town of Reims, in Champagne, he became priest ...
Natural Religion
Natural religion is defined in Chambers's Cyclopedia (London, 1728) as “whatever we descry to be due and meet by the meer Dictates of natural Reason; as, to love, and honour ...
Richard Carlile
(1790–1843) English publisher and writer.Originally a tin worker, Carlile became a radical writer and publisher in 1817, when he started his journal The Republican and began reprinting Thomas ...
William Paley
(1743–1805)English theologian and moral philosopher. Paley is remembered for two contributions to natural theology. The first is the sustained defence of the argument to design for the existence of ...
