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| Title page of one of the four extant copies of the 1,090-page Latin manuscript Theophrastus Redivivus (c.1659), penned by the French Anon Theophrastus, a history of atheistic thought and religion disproof. [1] |
“Conversely, all the subversive writings of the seventeenth-century libertins, and a good many subsequent ones, too, have the ring of familiarity to the student of such matters in the Renaissance: the topoi are the same, illustrating the same themes, turning around the same antinomies—only the tone is slightly more strident, the disguise more transparent. The most exemplary of texts in this regard is certainly the Theophrastus Redivivus, which may fairly be described as an explicit radicalization of many, indeed most of the ideas which the men of a previous century and earlier had shrouded in the veils of indirection and allegory, had hinted, winked, and nodded at, had allowed themselves to think—and write—in guarded private moments more or less strictly controlled, in lives of apparently unimpeachable orthodoxy . . . and had exchanged in conversation and pleasantry, in convivial table-talk, safely among friends. All these forbidden avenues of thought are followed openly and relentlessly, with cold logic and devastating coherence, by the author of the Theophrastus, and in his book, we may see clearly just where they lead. Until recently this has been the reverse of easy; indeed, few enough scholars took the trouble to read it, understandably put off by the length and difficulty of the Latin manuscript. In any case, it was not readily available. Tullio Gregory [1979] has made it easy for us, and much of what follows is indebted to his work.”— Max Gauna (1992), Upwellings: First Expressions of Unbelief in the Printed Literature of the French Renaissance [5]
“The anonymous book Theophrastus Redivivus, published in about 1650, was famous for more than a century. It was a compendium of old arguments against religions and belief in god, by those including: Pietro Pomponazzi, Niccolo Machiavelli, Lucilio Vanini, Michel Montaigne, Pierre Charron, and Gabriel Naude, and it precipitated a cultural explosion in discussions of unbelief.”— Jennifer Hecht (2003), Doubt: a History [2]
“The Theophrastus Redivivus is the first modern work to present an atheistic system, combined with religious criticism, which attacks the current world view.”— Gianni Paganni (2014), “How Lawmakers Become Fraudsters: a Philosophical Archeology of Radical Libertinism” [3]
“I use the teachings of the philosophers and thinkers of antiquity to show that god does not exist, that the world is eternal, that the soul is mortal, that hell is nothing but a fairy tale, and that religion is a political artifice. A cunning deception is that death is detestable, because nothing stifles him [it?]. Thus, I have divided the work, as Theophrastus of Eresus did it, into six books: the first on the gods, the second on the world, the third on religion, the fourth on the soul and on hell, the fifth on the contempt of death, the sixth on the natural life. All this belongs to the argument with the gods. If it has been proved that the gods do not exist, the rest understands itself.”— Anon Theophrastus (c.1659), Theophrastus Redivivus (pg. 8) [1]
“It is useful that everybody, except the enlightened elite, is convinced that god exists, although this conviction is not true.”— Anon Theophrastus (c.1659), Theophrastus Redivivus (pg. 56) (Ѻ)
“Only human reason, the cunning of sly people who want to come to power, has invented everything that was said about gods: without this invention, it would be difficult for man to secure the obedience of the people.”References— Anon Theophrastus (c.1659), Theophrastus Redivivus (pg. 341); a Critias view [3]
“There are only three deceivers who go after man: Moses, Jesus, and Muhammad.”— Anon Theophrastus (c.1659), Theophrastus Redivivus (pg. 528); a Frederick II view [3]
“I agree with those legislators and philosophers who think that some religion is necessary in a society.”— Anon Theophrastus (c.1659), Theophrastus Redivivus (pg. 541) (Ѻ); compare: no religion
