Walter Donway

Dec 11, 2024 | oll.libertyfund.org | Walter Donway

Professor Alan Kors explains that the young Rousseau did not trust the Paris philosophes. He met with them in the cafes but did not like their deism. He had known and argued with atheists. The philosophes seemed to him to seize upon deism to argue that God did not exist—perhaps created the world, but was nowhere to be found in it. To Rousseau, that sounded like atheism. Deism emphatically was not Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s philosophy.

Jun 12, 2024 | oll.libertyfund.org | Walter Donway

In his presentation of the theory of a “moral sense” Lord Shaftesbury disdains “system building.” His goal is to teach the reader what he needs to know to improve life and, even more, inspire him to apply that knowledge. To that end, he calls into play every literary device, an array of presentations of the same ideas—often in the mouths of speakers we cannot be sure are Shaftesbury or his foils. Still, his essential message emerges.

Jun 6, 2024 | oll.libertyfund.org | Walter Donway

If anyone does, Joseph Priestley (1733-1804) warrants the description “Renaissance man.”  But, to avoid confusion, since Priestley lived a couple of centuries after the Renaissance, let me argue here that this “Enlightenment man,” as much or more than any “Renaissance man,” took all knowledge as his purview. And then he added a list of new disciplines including (for example) psychology, education, demography, sociology, economics, and geology.

May 9, 2024 | oll.libertyfund.org | Walter Donway

In his presentation of the theory of a “moral sense” Lord Shaftesbury disdains “system building.” His goal is to teach the reader what he needs to know to improve life and, even more, inspire him to apply that knowledge. To that end, he calls into play every literary device, an array of presentations of the same ideas—often in the mouths of speakers we cannot be sure are Shaftesbury or his foils. Still, his essential message emerges.

May 7, 2024 | oll.libertyfund.org | Walter Donway

Does every human being have an innate “moral sense”—or at least a moral sense so entrenched in human nature and experiences as to be virtually innate? Today, a standard  answer might be: “I don’t even know what you mean by a “moral sense.” Or “Nobody believes in innate ideas anymore.” Other views might be more positive, referring to religion for an answer.