Author Archive

Joseph Priestley

Joseph Priestley (1733–1804) was an English theologian, natural philosopher, and political theorist whose materialist philosophy and Unitarian writings challenged orthodox Christianity. His most significant intellectual contributions include Disquisitions Relating to Matter and Spirit (1777), which argued for a materialist view of the soul, and his advocacy for democratic principles and religious toleration in works like An Essay on the First Principles of Government (1768). Though also renowned for his scientific discovery of oxygen, Priestley’s philosophical legacy lies in his fusion of Enlightenment rationality with radical dissent, influencing later utilitarian and liberal thought.

44 summaries in the archive

18th Century Socinianism Brought to the Test – Joseph Priestley Joseph Priestley

John MacGowan’s 1805 polemic uses twenty open letters to argue that Priestley’s Socinianism collapses into a position indistinguishable…

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18th Century Political Dialogues – Joseph Priestley Joseph Priestley

Political Dialogues is a political and philosophical tract written by Joseph Priestley, the eighteenth-century English theologian, natural philosopher.

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18th Century An Appendix to The Observations in Defence of the Liberty of Man – Joseph Priestley Joseph Priestley

This pamphlet is not a work by Joseph Priestley but a reply to him, written by John Palmer,…

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18th Century Objections to the Experiments and Observations Relating to the Principle of Acidity, the Composition of Water, and Phlogiston, Considered – Joseph Priestley Joseph Priestley

Priestley read this paper before the Royal Society on November 27, 1788, and it belongs to the long…

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18th Century The Theological Repository – Joseph Priestley Joseph Priestley

Edward Evanson's arguments on Sunday observance, first published in Joseph Priestley's Theological Repository, are reprinted in this 1792…

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18th Century Directions for Impregnating Water with Fixed Air – Joseph Priestley Joseph Priestley

Joseph Priestley's Directions for Impregnating Water with Fixed Air is a short practical pamphlet published in London in…

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18th Century A Discourse on Occasion of the Death of Dr. Price – Joseph Priestley Joseph Priestley

Joseph Priestley’s 1791 funeral sermon for his friend Richard Price turns a memorial address into an argument for…

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18th Century Institutes of Natural and Revealed Religion – Joseph Priestley Joseph Priestley

Joseph Priestley's Institutes of Natural and Revealed Religion is a systematic exposition of Protestant Dissenting theology published in…

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18th Century Letters to a Philosophical Unbeliever – Joseph Priestley Joseph Priestley

Priestley believes most unbelief grows not from argument but from inattention, and his letters are designed to force…

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18th Century The History and Present State of Electricity – Joseph Priestley Joseph Priestley

Priestley's work is an eighteenth-century experimental philosophy blending chronicle, laboratory report, and manifesto for collaborative science.

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18th Century The Importance and Extent of Free Inquiry in Matters of Religion – Joseph Priestley Joseph Priestley

The sermon was preached on 5 November, the anniversary of the Gunpowder Plot, a date traditionally marked in…

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18th Century Remarks on Some Paragraphs in the Fourth Volume of Dr. Blackstone’s Commentaries – Joseph Priestley Joseph Priestley

Remarks on Some Paragraphs in the Fourth Volume of Dr.

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18th Century An Appeal to the Public on the Subject of the Riots in Birmingham – Joseph Priestley Joseph Priestley

Joseph Priestley’s first-person polemic demands his countrymen reckon with the 1791 destruction of his house, laboratory, and meeting-house…

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18th Century A Free Address to Protestant Dissenters as Such – Joseph Priestley Joseph Priestley

Joseph Priestley published A Free Address to Protestant Dissenters, as Such in 1788 as the enlarged third edition…

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18th Century An Account of a Society for Encouraging the Industrious Poor – Joseph Priestley Joseph Priestley

Joseph Priestley’s An Account of a Society, for Encouraging the Industrious Poor is a short tract on poverty,…

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