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William Wollaston
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Agathon (centre) greeting guests in "Plato's Symposium" oil on canvas by Anselm Feuerbach, 1869; in the Staatliche Kunsthalle, Karlsruhe, Germany.
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William Wollaston

British philosopher
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William Wollaston (born March 26, 1659, Coton Clanford, Staffordshire, Eng.—died Oct. 29, 1724, London) was a British Rationalist philosopher and moralist whose ethical doctrines influenced subsequent philosophy as well as that of his own time. After studies at the University of Cambridge, Wollaston became a schoolteacher in Birmingham (1682) and soon afterward was ordained a priest. In 1688 he inherited the major part of his family’s fortune from a cousin and was able to move...

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