LIBERI PENSATORI. — This name designates all those who, rejecting any revelation or dogmatic definition of religious or moral truths, claim for human rational capacities an absolute emancipation. Hence the anticlerical and antiecclesiastical attitude of the l. p.
The historical origins of the movement are to be sought in seventeenth-century England, which was influenced by the Italian Renaissance, particularly by G. C. Vanini, P. Pomponazzi, Leone l’Ebreo, G. Bruno, and T. Campanella (cf. L. Einstein, The italian Renaissance in England, New York 1902). Connected with these sources was H. of Cherbury (1582–1648), who may be considered the father of English deism, whose purely natural and rational religion could be accepted by any people (cf. De Veritate, London 1653, p. 212). The Cambridge school gave this religion an ethical orientation, while J. Toland, J. Collins, M. Tindal, T. Woolston, etc., emphasized the natural character of religion as that which excludes every dogma and rejects the authority of the Scriptures, the divinity of Christ, and miracles. The English l. p., who had long constituted a sect, published the periodical The freethinking in London from 1778 onward. Even earlier, however, A. Collins had given their movement great impetus with his Discourse of freethinking (London 1713), in which he proclaimed that placing limits on reason was to act against reason itself.
The formation of free thought in France was aided by the activity of libertine writers and by knowledge of the works of the English deists. The encyclopedists and Voltaire adhered to this tendency; the latter further accentuated the ant dogmatic spirit by discrediting the Church and Revelation through irony and sarcasm.
In Germany, after the coronation of Frederick II, many translations of the English l. p. circulated, finding fertile ground in Wolffian rationalism and shaping the German Enlightenment. The results of German free thought were more concrete than those achieved in France, especially in the field of scriptural criticism and with regard to the life of Jesus (H. S. Reimarus, D. F. Strauss, etc.; cf. G. Ricciotti, La vita di Gesù Cristo, 12th ed., Rome 1949, p. 210 ff.). Alongside the development of these
schools, the influence exerted by the positive sciences further strengthened the autonomy of reason, and the movement of the l. p. organized itself into civic associations. From then on, free thought became synonymous with atheism and a distinguishing mark of the opponents of religion and the Church.
In Milan, an Association of the l. p. was founded in 1865 (in the immediately preceding years, identical associations had been founded in Parma, Siena, and Florence); from 1866 to 1875 it published the periodical Il libero pensiero, edited by L. Stefanoni, who from 1867 also directed the Biblioteca del razionalista (Milan). The statutes of the Milanese Association state: “the l. p. admit no truths other than those demonstrated by reason; no moral law other than that sanctioned by conscience... they consider dogmatic religions, called revealed, to be negations of conscience and human freedom” (cf. Il libero pensiero, Milan 1866, pp. 56–57). Practical expressions included the l. p.’s abstention from religious marriage and from the baptism of their children, and the cremation of corpses; two medical congresses on this subject were held in Florence in 1869 and in Milan in 1874. In 1880, the Fédération internationale de la libre pensée was founded in Brussels, to which the local associations already in existence adhered. In Germany, the Deutsche Freidenkerbund (organ: Menschentum, later Der Freidenker) was founded in Frankfurt in 1881 through the efforts of L. Büchner, so that “the scattered forces of German l. p. might unite and, through the organization of associations, promote action in public life” (cf. L. Büchner, Am Sterbelager des Jahrhunderts, Giessen 1898). A notable development of the movement took place in 1896, when the various Austrian, Swiss, French, Italian, English, and American societies for moral action and culture met in Zurich and formed an International Ethische Bund.
In 1906 Haeckel founded the Monistenbund, which in 1911, together with all the monistic associations, organized itself, with its headquarters in Hamburg, as an International Komitee für Monismus.
While in France the movement of the l. p. gained strength with the coming of the left to power after the Dreyfus affair (1899–1905), in 1913 the Bund der Konfessionlos (organ: Der Weg) was formed in Berlin, bringing together the masses that had left the Church. In 1915 the general movement of the l. p. divided into radicals and moderates: the former established the International proletarischer Freidenker in Vienna (organ: Der proletarische Atheist); the latter settled in Leipzig and organized there the Volksbund für Geistesfreiheit (organ: Die Geistesfreiheit). The Arbeiter Freidenkerbewegung, which had split from the general movement in 1905, moved to Russia, where it formed the Lega dei senza Dio.
In 1904 the Fédération internationale de la libre pensée of Brussels held an international congress in Rome, at which it was proclaimed that the l. p. had the right and the duty to take away from the retrograde clerical spirit “the official direction of the States and, above all, the compulsory direction of consciences, popular education, and works of popular solidarity” (cf. Atti del Congresso della Federazione internazionale dei l. p. di Roma, Milan 1904, pp. 14–15). Regarding the movement of the l. p.’s anticlerical attitude, the words of M. Rapisardi are pertinent: “Not being able personally to hurl my final voice in the face of the Vatican is a great sorrow for me” (op. cit., p. 16).
From the passages cited, it is easy to discern the consistently ant dogmatic and anti-Catholic content and attitude of the l. p., founded on an erroneous understanding of human and religious values: the former as possessing within themselves the possibility of naturally achieving human happiness; the latter as limiting human nature and enslaving the individual. Their movement, born with the intention of reconciling the rational fact with the religious fact, eliminates the problem by excluding supernatural values and reducing every religious content to the domain of positive and experimental science. The theories of the l. p. are embraced and disseminated by Bolshevism, communism, and the “Godless.”
pensée, there 1905; J. M. Robertson, Short history of free-thought, 3rd ed., London 1906; F. Buisson-Wagner, Libre pensée et protestantisme libéral, Paris 1908; J. B. Bury, A history of freedom of thought, London 1913; G. Dentice d'Accadia, Le radici storiche del libero pensiero, in Annali della Facoltà di lettere e filosofia dell'Università di Cagliari, 1928; K. Algermissen, Freidenkerbund, Arbeitschaft u. Seelsorge, 4th ed., Freiburg i. Br. 1930; H.W. Schneider, Natural religion, in Disinisy school bulletin, 1939, p. 26 ff.; L. Brunschwig, Sur la philosophie religieuse au XVIIe siècle, in Hommage à M. Blondel, Paris 1945, p. 185 ff.; F. Schnabel, Storia religiosa della Germania nell'Ottocento, Italian translation, Brescia 1946, pp. 183 ff., 475–500; K. Algermissen, Freidenker, in LThK, IV, cols. 156–63 (with extensive bibliography). Enzo Maccagnolo