Covetous of Truth

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-xi

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2. Introduction

   • Beverley C. Southgate

   Pages 1-6

3. Reputation

   • Beverley C. Southgate

   Pages 7-11

4. The Man

   • Beverley C. Southgate

   Pages 12-20

5. Life

   • Beverley C. Southgate

   Pages 21-33

6. Blackloism

   • Beverley C. Southgate

   Pages 34-41

7. Politics: The Grounds of Obedience and Government

   • Beverley C. Southgate

   Pages 42-52

8. Politics: Responses to The Grounds

   • Beverley C. Southgate

   Pages 53-65

9. The Context of Scepticism

   • Beverley C. Southgate

   Pages 66-82

10. The Context of Scholasticism

    • Beverley C. Southgate

    Pages 83-92

11. Science Old and New: Cosmology

    • Beverley C. Southgate

    Pages 93-103

12. Science Old and New: Physics

    • Beverley C. Southgate

    Pages 104-118

13. Science Old and New: Psychology

    • Beverley C. Southgate

    Pages 119-126

14. Science and Religion

    • Beverley C. Southgate

    Pages 127-137

15. Influence

    • Beverley C. Southgate

    Pages 138-143

16. Epilogue

    • Beverley C. Southgate

    Pages 144-145

17. Back Matter

    Pages 146-196

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Thomas White, in the quatercentenary of his birth, is due for historical rehabilitation. English Catholic priest, philosopher, theologian, and scientist, he was a renowned and notorious figure in his own day; and, though long forgot­ ten, his work exemplifies aspects of major current concern to historians of ideas: in particular, the significance of the newly-revived sceptical philosophy; the complexity ofthe transition from scholasticism to the new philosophy; and the whole role of"minor", non-canonical figures in the historyofthought. White's writings embrace theology, politics, and natural philosophy, or science'; and in all these three areas, his work, after centuries of comparative neglect, has slowly been resurfacing. His theological significance received intermittent recognition through the eighteenth, nineteenth, and early-twentieth centuries; but more recently his great importance as leader of a whole "Blackloist" faction of English Catholics has become increasingly clear. Condemned by co-religionists in his own time as a dangerous heretic, he has been assessed by modem scholars as an anticipator of twentieth-century trends in Catholic theology, and even as "probably, after John Henry Newman, the most original thinker as yet producedby modem English Catholicism."2 Blackloism implied not only a theological, but also a political position; and that position was clarified and publicised by White in his single political treatise, The Grounds of Obedience and Government, published in the mid­ 1650s. His provocative stance was widely misunderstood and misinterpreted, and was soon anyway rendered untenable by the restoration of the monarchy.

• intellectual history
• psychology
• seventeenth century

• University of Hertfordshire, UK

  Beverley C. Southgate

Policies and ethics