for Advanced Studies
1st WORKSHOP at the Maimonides Centre for Advanced Studies
4 November 2015
Workshop on Henry Dodwell the Younger (ca. 1705-1784).
Date/Time: 04 November 2015, 11:00-15:00
Venue: Maimonides Centre for Advanced Studies, Schlueterstrasse 51, 5th floor
Convener: Prof. Dr. Paolo Bernardini, Insubria University, Como/Italy
Speaker: Prof. Dr. Diego Lucci, American University, Blagoevgrad/Bulgaria
The workshop will be centered upon the works and figure of Henry Dodwell the Younger (ca 1705-1784), an author almost forgotten now, but very important and quoted, as well as attacked, at his time. His book, Christianity Not Founded on Argument, published in 1741, reached 4 editions in a few years and was at a centre of a major controversy involving Deism, Skepticism, Fideism. Dr Lucci will present and discuss the book in the context of British and continental philosophy of that time, offering a fresh appraisal to a long-forgotten, albeit quite complex and interesting text. Clearly, in the 1740s the most intense season of Deism was almost entirely over, and British philosophy had new concerns, beginning with the rise of post-Locke empiricism. The long shadow of the Collins, Toland, Tindal and the other Deists was still haunting the theoretical scene. Dodwell´s work can be considered as a bridge between these two concurrent, but evidently interrelated, schools of thought.
Dr. Diego Lucci is Associate Professor of Philosophy at the American University in Bulgaria. He has taught at Boston University, the University of Naples “Federico II” and the University of Missouri-Saint Louis.
Contact: Prof. Dr. Paolo Bernardini (paololuca.bernardini@uninsubria.it)