Anthony Collins’s A Discourse of Free-Thinking (1713)

Abstract

In this paper, I classify and briefly discuss the variety of arguments for freedom of thought summoned by the English free-thinker Anthony Collins (1676–1729) in his formerly controversial and influential book entitled A Discourse of Free-Thinking, Ocasion’d by the Rise and Growth of a Sect call’d Free-Thinkers (1713). I argue that some of them are indeed reasonable or partly reasonable.