Alberto Radicati

Alberto Radicati, Count of Passerano (Torino, 11 November 1698 – 24 October 1737, The Hague), was an 18th-century historian, philosopher and free-thinker. He was the reputed author of the 1732 work A Philosophical Dissertation upon Death, Composed for the Consolation of the Unhappy by a Friend of Truth, published in London. This work created a scandal and led to the arrest of Radicati and his translator.^[1] The Dissertation upon Death is referenced by George Berkeley in his 1733 Theory of Vision Vindicated, section 5. There Radicati's work is used as an example of a free-thinker explicitly adopting the radical views attributed to the free-thinkers by Berkeley in his 1732 dialogue Alciphron, and so to defend Berkeley against the charge of attacking a strawman.

References

1. Sylvia Berti, 'Unmasking the Truth: the theme of imposture in early modern European culture, 1660-1730', in James E. Force, David S. Katz (eds.) Everything connects: in conference with Richard H. Popkin: essays in his honor, 1999, p.34; Giovanni Tarantino, “Alternative Hierarchies: Manhood and Unbelief in Early Modern Europe, 1660-1750”, in Governing Masculinities: Regulating Selves and Others in the Early Modern Period, ed. by Susan Broomhall and Jacqueline Van Gent, Ashgate, 2011, pp. 209-225.

External links

• A Philosophical Dissertation upon Death. London: Printed for and Sold by W. Mears, at the Lamb on Ludgate-Hill. 1732.