Free thought is a tradition—however begrudgingly—that developed from out of the heresies of the Middle Ages, particularly during the proto- and Radical Reformation. Groups or milieus such as the Free Spirit had spread across Europe in their various forms. As these heretics faced persecutions by crusaders and the Church, the concept of the freedom of conscience developed, the idea that one should be able to discern for oneself what is morally right and wrong, and to act accordingly. In particular, the Anabaptists—the sect from which the Amish, Mennonites, Hutterites, and such groups come— held strong to the belief that baptism must be a personal choice, reflecting a genuine commitment to God, and not something compelled on the individual by external authority. A such, freedom of conscience would come to apply especially to nonparticipation in activities one viewed as immoral, such as compulsory baptisms. Today, it is the foundation for the myriad forms of conscientious objection, from that of baptism to voting for rulers.
As the proto-Reformation was maturing into the Radical Reformation, what would become known as freedom of conscience was becoming a major threat to the established religious and political order of the ruling classes. As such, the Moderate Reformation was kicked off by Martin Luther and John Calvin and their followers, among others, in attempts to co-opt the radicals into their moderate camps. This was not entirely successful, and religious wars such as the Eighty Years and the Thirty Years Wars entered the factions of the ruling classes, reducing the official power and reach of the Catholic Church. This ultimately resulted in the establishment of international law, by thinkers such as Hugo Grotius. As a result, sovereign nations had the capacity to control the religions of their citizens.
Coinciding with the development of the Scientific Revolution, many of the proponents of the freedom of conscience had turned to philosophical naturalism and natural theology, and now having to handle internationally-affirmed control of religion by the state, their efforts became less directly religious and more focused on securing their freedom of thought, the right to think and do as one discerns to be right. Unlike freedom of conscience— which tended to be more about refrain from morally impure activities—, the new freedom of thought— which was more naturalistic than religious, but which had developed from the traditions of the free conscience believers— had a decidedly republican and liberal character to it. Whereas the older heretics had themselves had these elements among them as well, religious differences tended to keep them from uniting across factional lines. This was not so true with the free thinkers, who were willing to accept individuals from any background so long as they were willing to participate in naturalistic discourse, and especially rational discourse about the natural rights of individual human beings. As the freely conscientious heretics had given way to what we now know as the Reformation in general, the free thinkers had similarly, by way of the Radical Enlightenment, given way to the (Moderate) Enlightenment, which had similarly co-opted the outer layers of the radical milieu into its own ranks.
The remaining heretics and radicals, now known as truth seekers and free thinkers, in response to the centralization of political economy, would develop sociological and economic beliefs centered on the notion of the freedom of association, developing from democratic republicans and producerists into what would become known as socialists and anarchists. These socialists and anarchists, like their forebears in their best moments, believed that it was not enough to settle with capitalism and an oligarchic republic, but that socialism and anarchy were necessary corollaries to the freedom of association. Freedom of association had already existed as a grain within Enlightenment and even Reformation thinking, but it became a crucial and then defining element of the early socialists and classical anarchists, including in the intermediary or transitional form of libertarian socialism. Together, the early socialists and anarchists composed the current known as modernism, which had continued with the Radical Enlightenment while answering the valid concerns of the Counter-Enlightenment. Still, the Counter-Enlightenment, having its interests aligned with international banksters, afforded to gain the upper hand through the arts, education, and media, ushering in postmodernity in the form of (big-M) Modernism and postmodernism, the first co-opting modernism and moving it from realism into impressionism and the latter attempting to kill the remainder. Still, elements of modernism have persisted, and have been declared to have returned in the form of remodernism.
Freedom of thought was anticipated by freedom of conscience. As such, it rests upon the sovereign exercise of the conscience by the individual. This means that the individual is themself responsible for discerning whether an action is morally acceptable or not. This rests further on the idea that the individual has a unique connection to God or Nature, which bestows upon the individual a will that operates free from the demands of pure physics. This part of the individual, the conscience, is an active participant in the design of the future, and, as such, is a collaborator in providing form to the natural world. Further, the conscience cannot be separated from the individual, and as it is naturally correct for the individual to use the conscience to their advantage, the use of the conscience is an inalienable, natural right, a necessary consequence of being a functional, living, human being.
“Using” the conscience comes naturally. It is not something that needs instruction. But it is not really using the conscience, because the conscience is not a tool, but an actually, definitive element of the individual. We speak of “using” it as a rhetorical device, but this is not true to the natural occurrence. One’s conscience is that innate part of the individual which discerns for the individual what good and bad, and even to an extent right and wrong, are. The conscience is intuition or instinct applied to matters of Reason, including especially a strong tendency toward deduction. It judges what is to result from a given action against what one knows about the world, thereby discerning whether or not the action is desirable. What constitutes what is desirable is a matter of one’s character, which becomes subject to forces of social Darwinism. Those who fall too far outside of the momentum of the progressive, evolutionary equilibrium will be socially deselected. So it is to the advantage of the individual to utilize their conscience.
However, while it is to the natural advantage of the individual to utilize their conscience, it is something that can be stunted, particularly through deliberate, external forcing. Human beings develop their conceptions through mental associations, whereby repeat experiences have their way in setting the worldview of the individual, such that individuals form conceptions about what is normal and what results are to be expected according to what their observations have driven them to perceive inductively. Repeat experiences, that is, drive people to believe that the observed consequences are normal and to be expected. When occurring in the natural world, outside of the influence of overwhelming cultural, social, and political conditions, this functions perfectly well for the individual, allowing the individual to navigate their physical and social environments with great accuracy. However, the wider world of Nature includes also the artificial power of individuals to overwhelmingly influence one another. In thermodynamic or physical terms, this is similar to systemic forcing, whereby a subsystem does things it otherwise would not do, due to forces operating from outside. For example, an astral impact on a planet may force the planet to change its orbit or rotation to some extent, and this is external forcing. Similarly in some respects, the social environment can be manipulated by the intentions of individuals to cause epistemological forcing on others, such that the environment is purposefully manipulated to cause other individuals to form particular conclusions about the consequences of their actions as a result of the mental associations they form. In the ancient and Middle Ages, the main medium for this was religion, a set of cosmological, theological, mythical, legendary, and historical tales that became widely accepted as an enforceable dogma. In our own times, the main mediums for this are secular entertainments that have replaced religion, such as the various new forms of the arts, and in the apparati for the dissemination of scientific knowledge and the happenings of current events, such as educational and media institutions.
Thinking freely in this environment entails that one really put one’s conscience to work! One can easily become entrenched in assumptions formed from out of artificially-manipulated repeat experiences, especially as they result from widely-disseminated misinformation that has been granted the moral weight of religious wisdom. Just as the multitude of the Mesoamerican civilizations accepted human sacrifice and ritualistic cannibalism as a normal and expected part of life— one that was even “inevitable” insofar as the lowest common denominator ensured it through self-defeating prophecy—, it is easy to believe that modern forms of human abuse such as wage slavery, tenancy, debtorship, and citizenship, or their corollaries, profit, rent, interest, and taxation, are acceptable. Indeed, our mental associations have typically been formed by cultural and political influences to view bosses, landlords, bankers, and politicians with respect nearing the reverence given to a “man of God,” and to pay their tributes with the same duty that comes with paying such a holy man’s tithes. If we are to base our beliefs upon popular notions and sensibilities, then, it is unquestionable, human sacrifice and cannibalism must continue to persist in the myriad forms of political-economic exploitation.
In combination with a rational use of the conscience, one must employ a common sense use of perception, one which places epistemological trust in one’s observations of the world and in one’s own senses. Just as popular sensibilities can serve to divorce us from the use of our own conscience, popular claims about perception can serve to divorce us from trusting the use of our own senses. While it is true that there are elements of idealism to existence, particularly moral teleological existence, and while it is true that our senses are fallible, the claims of the indirect realists that our senses are completely unreliable contradicts the rest of their philosophy, which requires the use of those very same senses for verification of the existence of the world. Instead, one must learn to trust that, while fallible, one’s senses nonetheless provide a direct experience of the world, the data of which is the only data that we have, and which has served reliably enough to even contradict itself when necessary to describe that which we have not adapted to sense in a more straightforward manner (thereby leading to the claims of the idealists and indirect realists). Just as people can convince us to do what is bad, they can also get us to believe what is wrong. And just as a well-developed conscience protects us from doing what is bad, a keen common sense can protect us from accepting what is wrong.
The goal of thinking freely is to satisfy a drive to approximate the best understanding of Nature that one can achieve so as to live a satisfying and powerful life. To some extent, this entails a focus on objectivity, especially as it relates to the physical, material world, but also as it relates to mental constructions. But it does not forsake subjectivity or preference entirely. In fact, it celebrates subjective preferences—in this discourse, typically tied to individuality—, but within Reason, and especially in acts of introspection and intersubjectively social deliberation.
Due to the social environment, which is plagued with the propaganda and entertainment of religion and politics, the active practice of free thought entails actively pursuing knowledge that may somehow contradict one’s preconceived notions or working hypotheses. This means that if one is inclined to a certain view, whether due to upbringing, popularity, or even after personal investigation, one nonetheless always remains open to having their conceptions challenged, and remains committed to investigating the matter for oneself. A free thinker is even actively in pursuit of ideas that contradict what one already believes to be true, and values opportunities to better oneself through such challenges.
Once discovered, contradictory knowledge claims are first tested for correlation in the natural world, and then the interpretation therefrom is tested against one’s already-existing worldview. If the knowledge correlates to the natural world, it is known to be true. However, interpretations can still vary, and these need to be considered in terms of coherence with one’s other interpretations about the world (that is, without contradicting other correlations with the natural world that can be perceived directly through one’s own senses).
A worldview that clashes with one’s objective, common sense observations of the natural world is an artificial religious worldview, one with an entirely nominal existence, its substance being purely rhetorical or imaginative. A worldview that clashes with one’s intuitive observations of Nature, as per the stuff of introspection, and which accepts interpretations that do not cohere in the conscience, is a depraved, scientistic worldview.
An important element in the process of thinking freely, if it is not to become ungrounded, is what is called critical thinking. This is where one categorizes challenges to one’s worldview according to how fundamental they are, and which asks if the challenge is failing to address more fundamental matters that pre-empt the possibility of the challenge playing out as true. In other words, if a given interpretation contradicts something that is reasonably deemed to be more fundamentally certain, it can generally be dismissed until such point that those grounds are themselves cleared. So, for instance, a sociological claim that contradicts established biological wisdom should generally be dismissed until such point that the biological wisdom is itself adjusted so as to allow for the sociological claim. The reason for this is that societies are biological entities, and so are beholden to the laws of biology, which is a more fundamental study. However, where natural correlations can be demonstrated to counter established, coherent worldviews, those natural correlations must be admitted and the worldview adjusted to allow for these observations and reasonable inductions therefrom.
It is important to understand that thinking freely is not thinking whimsically, or according to emotion. Too many hear the term free thinking and jump to the conclusion that this entails an unbridled and unscrutinizable imagination about the world. While there are elements of these to free thinking, in that freedom of thought supports one’s project of comprehending reality in one’s own way, freedom of thought has never been a “safe space” wherein one’s imaginings can be declared without having to stand up for themselves. It is not about the art of thinking whatever one wants to, as divorced from the success of those ideas. Free thought is not “free” in the sense of having positive rights not to have to defend one’s position, or to face consequences for utilizing those ideas. Free thinking is not about one’s thoughts being led emotively into the imaginary. That is, free thinking is not something that coincides with metaphysical libertarianism or solipsistic idealism, such that it is the affirmation of ungrounded dreaming or assertions protected from scrutiny.
The goal in free thinking is not to protect one’s perceptions and conceptions from external scrutiny, but to submit them to it purposefully, in order to see if they can withstand the test of correlation and coherence that other ideas may subject one’s own beliefs to. In the end, the new ideas, after posing their challenge, either displace the old views by their superiority of correlation and coherence, or they reinforce those beliefs into more confident working hypotheses by demonstrating their own superiority against the challenges. This leaves the individual, whether their old views stand or are replaced, with greater integrity and thickly earned confidence, no matter from winning or losing out in their original assertions. This is the power of conagnition, as I have described elsewhere.
Rather than metaphysical libertarianism, and despite having developed into political libertarians (anarchists), free thinkers have tended to metaphysical necessitarianism, and their conception of freedom is not that of a will free from the constraints of Nature, but of a will commensurate with and enabled by a thorough appreciation of the inevitable and all-powerful forces of Her. That is, according to the best and most foundational of the free thinkers, freedom is what happens when one can achieve what one wills, and one can achieve what one wills when one wills that which Nature also wills, that which is achievable and conducive of success. Freedom comes not from a mortal assertion of one’s wants, and protection from scrutiny, but from recognizing that one’s wants exist to serve the ends of Nature, ends that can only be known through the well-developed conscience of the individual and the exercise of their inalienable, natural rights, the best of their faculties, as scrutinized by others and enabled to evolve past their limitations through conagnition. Free thought is free in the sense of exploring ideas to better establish natural correlations (evidence) and coherence (conscience), which allow one to better achieve what one wills (and in this sense is related to natural magic), providing the grounds of practical idealism from which we may engage with the creative evolutionary forces of Nature and take part in its intelligent design.