William Wollaston
17th/18th-century English priest and scholar / From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
William Wollaston (/ˈwʊləstən/; 26 March 1659 – 29 October 1724) was a school teacher, Church of England priest, scholar of Latin, Greek, and Hebrew, theologian, and a major Enlightenment era English philosopher. He is remembered today for one book, which he completed two years before his death: The Religion of Nature Delineated. He led a cloistered life, but in terms of eighteenth-century philosophy and the concept of natural religion, he is ranked with British Enlightenment philosophers such as Locke, Berkeley, and Hume.
William Wollaston | |
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Born | 26 March 1659 |
Died | 29 October 1724(1724-10-29) (aged 65) London |
Era | 18th-century philosophy |
Region | Western philosophy |
School | Enlightenment Rationalism |
Main interests | Ethics, philosophy of religion |
Notable ideas | Religion derived from adherence to truth[1] |
Wollaston's work contributed to the development of two important intellectual schools: British Deism, and "the pursuit of happiness" moral philosophy of American Practical Idealism, a phrase which appears in the United States Declaration of Independence.