William Godwin 

William Godwin (1756-1836) was one of the most controversial political philosophers of his day.  After a brief stint as a Dissenting minister, Godwin declared himself an atheist in 1785.  His fame derived mostly from one book, An Enquiry Concerning Political Justice, and its Influence on General Virtue and Happiness (1793).  His central thesis was that man could reach perfection by gradually improving his environment and institutions.  Man’s problems were not innate, but produced by his interaction with the outside world, and if all obstacles to truth could be removed, general good and universal benevolence would prevail by means of human reason, not by feeling.  Godwin influenced many of the Romantics and revolutionaries during the early and mid-1790s, such as Wordsworth and Crabb Robinson. By the late 1790s, many had rejected his philosophy;  Robert Hall blamed Godwinism for much of the spirit of infidelity existing in England in the late 1790s in his famous sermon, Modern Infidelity Considered with Respect to its Influence on Society (1800).