A History of Atheism in Britain: From Hobbes to Russell (review)

BOOK REVIEWS t43 VFI and for their service in making translations of this seminal work available. Now all we need is a good translation of the "Port-Royal Logic." STEVEN NADLER University of Wisconsin, Madison David Berman. A History of Atheism in Britain: From Hobbes to Russell. London: Croom Helm 1988. Pp. xi + 253. $72.5 o. A great deal of new literature is appearing about atheism and deism in England, France, Italy, and elsewhere, from the Renaissance onward. For over a century, people were satisfied with the view that there were lots of secret atheists from Pomponazzi onward in Italy, and from the time of the French libertines and from the time of Ralegh's School of Nights, and that of the Hobbesists and Spinozists in England. The enormous literature against atheism and deism throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries would suggest that there must have been lots of people holding these views. Almost all of the famous thinkers of the period were accused by their opponents of being atheists, or of holding views that tended towards atheism. David Berman tackles the English side of the story, and starts by raising the problem of why there is no evidence in published or unpublished works of any English thinker actually advocating a recognizable atheistic position before the late eighteenth century. The possible punitive effects do not seem a sufficient explanation, at least of unpublished declarations of atheism. In the 178os Berman does find actual arguments for a denial of God's existence, and only from Shelley onward does he find serious advocacy of the position. The book is roughly divided between the period from Hobbes to Shelley and the period of development of militant atheism from Shelley to G. E. Moore, McTaggart, and Bertrand Russell. For the nineteenth century, Berman has found some most interesting manuscript material about the unpublished views of Bentham, Grote, and J. S. Mill. He has also provided us with a clear picture of the popular atheists who came into view in the nineteenth century, and whose views have continued to flourish in Rationalist societies in England and America. So much has been written, at the time and since, about the "atheism" of Hobbes and of the English deists that it is worthwhile to have an expert on atheism examine what the facts were, and what can reasonably be inferred from them. Berman contends , and I think rightly, that the constant denunciation of atheism was intended more as repressive than suppressive, to prevent anyone from advancing the view, rather than punishing someone who did hold the view. That there were people who were practical as well as theoretical covert atheists seems plausible. Berman carefully analyzes what is known about the views of the Earl of Rochester, who died in 168o. He concludes "that Rochester was not only an avowed atheist who associated with other atheists .... But the oral and second-hand nature of his surviving statements precludes a conclusive judgment" (56). These "probable" covert atheists used some of Hobbes's ideas (also Spinoza's, though Berman does not go into this). And Berman argues, contrary to much current scholarship, that Hobbes was most likely a disguised atheist. 144 JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY 3o: 1 JANUARY 1992 From Hobbes through the deists, Berman traces the development of"atheology." (One of the most controversial chapters, on Anthony Collins, argues against recent scholarly opinion "that Collins was not a deist but a speculative atheist" [7o].) Finally, Chapter 5 deals with "The Birth of Avowed Atheism: 1782-1797." The first avowedly atheistic book was the anonymously published Answer to Dr. Priestley's Letters to a Philosophical Unbeliever (London, 1782), which Berman attributes to one Mathew Turner. In a8a i Shelley published Necessity of Atheism, followed by other works in which he developed an empirical critique of belief in God. The developing evidence that some form of deism or theism was not needed to underwrite morality, and the growing lack of conviction in belief in God as the moral enforcer, led to what Berman calls "aggressive rationalism," and a willingness to accept what the atheists saw as the possibly harmful truth. Though they were just a handful of people...