Free Thinking : The nation

From the UK, philosopher Jonathan Rée

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1. The curious history of freethinking

   • Jonathan Rée
   • 14 Sep 06, 11:43 PM

   My minders at the BBC would like me to make my posts a bit snappier and whackier – a bit more bloglike in short. I shall do my best, but I'm afraid I may not succeed. After all they have also tagged me as ‘philosopher’, which implies taking care to look at everything in the round. And that takes time. If it’s not the way things work in the blogosphere, then something will have to give.
   
   That is why I have been insisting on the difference between holding an opinion and thinking things through. Comments on this distinction are still coming in (very interesting too), and I shall return to it, as incisively as possible, in a later post.

   But first I need to discharge an old promise by explaining a little of the history ‘freethinking’, and the part Bishop Berkeley played in its downfall. If I’m right, the story points to a paradox in the idea of freethinking – a paradox that has not lost its capacity to trip people up.

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