Adam Weishaupt
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Categories: Articles needing additional references from May 2007 | All articles with unsourced statements | Articles with unsourced statements since March 2008 | 1748 births | 1830 deaths | 18th century philosophers | Enlightenment philosophers | German philosophers | German-language philosophers | German Roman Catholics | Former Jesuits | People from Ingolstadt | People from the Duchy of Bavaria | University of Ingolstadt alumni | University of Ingolstadt faculty
Image:Adam Weishaupt02.jpg
Adam Weishaupt
Johann Adam Weishaupt (6 February 1748 in Ingolstadt – 18 November 1830 in Gotha) was a German philosopher who founded the Order of Illuminati.
Early lifeAdam Weishaupt was born on February 6, 1748 in Ingolstadt[1] in the Electorate of Bavaria. Weishaupt's father Johann Georg Weishaupt (1717–1753) died[2] when he was five years old and he then came under the tutelage of his godfather Johann Adam Freiherr von Ickstatt[3] who, like his father, was a professor of law at the University of Ingolstadt.[4] Ickstatt was a proponent of the philosophy of Christian Wolff and of the Enlightenment,[5] and he influenced the young Weishaupt with his rationalism. Weishaupt began his education at age seven[6] at a school controlled by the Jesuits. He later enrolled at the University of Ingolstadt and graduated in 1768[7] at age 20 with a doctorate of law.[8] In 1772[9] he became a professor of law. The following year he married Afra Sausenhofer[10] of Eichstätt. After Pope Clement XIV’s suppression of the Society of Jesus in 1773, Weishaupt became a professor of canon law,[11] a position that was held exclusively by the Jesuits until that time. In 1775 Weishaupt was introduced[12] to the empirical philosophy of Johann Georg Heinrich Feder[13] of the University of Göttingen. Both Feder and Weishaupt would later become opponents of Kantian idealism. Founder of the IlluminatiWith the help of Adolph Freiherr Knigge, on May 1, 1776 Weishaupt formed the "Order of Perfectibilists", which was later known as the Illuminati. He adopted the name of "Brother Spartacus" within the order. Though the Order was not egalitarian or democratic, its mission was to establish a New World Order, which meant the abolition of all monarchical governments and religions. Weishaupt wrote: "the ends justified the means." The actual character of the society was modeled on one of its traditionalist enemies, the Jesuits, and was an elaborate network of spies and counter-spies. Each isolated cell of initiates reported to a superior, whom they did not know, a party structure that was effectively adopted by some later groups, including more recently by the early Ba'ath party in Syria and Iraq[citation needed]. Weishaupt was initiated into Freemasonry Lodge "Theodor zum guten Rath", at Munich in 1777 by Adolf Freiherr Knigge. His project of "illumination, enlightening the understanding by the sun of reason, which will dispel the clouds of superstition and of prejudice" was an unwelcome reform. Soon however he had developed gnostic mysteries of his own, with the goal of "perfecting human" nature through re-education to achieve a communal state with nature, freed of government and organized religion. He began working towards incorporating his system of Illuminism into that of Masonry, with the aim of creating a New World Order. He wrote: "I did not bring Deism into Bavaria more than into Rome. I found it here, in great vigour, more abounding than in any of the neighboring Protestant States. I am proud to be known to the world as the founder of the Illuminati." Weishaupt's radical rationalism, sweeping away nations and religions, private property and marriage, with the vocabulary used by the French Revolution, was not likely to succeed. Writings that were intercepted in 1784 were interpreted as seditious, and the Society was banned by the government of Karl Theodor, Elector of Bavaria in 1784. Weishaupt lost his position at the University of Ingolstadt and fled Bavaria. Activities in exileHe received the assistance of Duke Ernest II of Saxe-Gotha-Altenburg (1745–1804), and lived in Gotha writing a series of works on Illuminism, including A Complete History of the Persecutions of the Illuminati in Bavaria (1785), A Picture of Illuminism (1786), An Apology for the Illuminati (1786), and An Improved System of Illuminism (1787). He died there in 1811, though his later career was so obscure that some sources place the year of his death at 1830. John Robison, a professor of natural philosophy at Edinburgh University in Scotland and a member of a Freemason Lodge there, said he had been asked to join the Illuminati. After consideration he concluded that the Illuminati were not for him. In 1798 he published a book called "Proofs of a Conspiracy" in which he wrote: “An association has been formed for the express purposes of rooting out all the religious establishments and overturning all existing governments. . .the leaders would rule the World with uncontrollable power, while all the rest would be employed as tools of the ambition of their unknown superiors”. “Proofs of a Conspiracy” was sent to George Washington who replied that he was aware that the Illuminati were in America and that they had “diabolical tenets”. A century after his death, occultist interest in Weishaupt and the Bavarian Illuminati picked up through the writings of Aleister Crowley. A manuscript was written during this time titled 'The Lamp of Diogenes'(1804) an Enlightenment era work now in English owned by Sir Mark Bruback (as yet unpublished). Quotes about Weishaupt
| ||||||||||||||||||||
