Editing Freethought (section)

===Pre-modern movement===
Critical thought has flourished in the Hellenistic Mediterranean, in the repositories of knowledge and wisdom in [[Ireland]] and in the [[Iran]]ian civilizations (for example in the era of [[Omar Khayyám|Khayyam]] (1048–1131) and his unorthodox [[Sufism|Sufi]] [[Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam|''Rubaiyat'']] poems). Later societies made advances on [[freedom of thought]] such as the Chinese (note for example the seafaring renaissance of the [[Song dynasty|Southern Song]] dynasty of 1127–1279),<ref>{{Cite web|last=Theobald|first=Ulrich|title=Song Dynasty 宋, 960-1279|url=http://www.chinaknowledge.de/History/Song/song.html|access-date=2023-01-02|website=www.chinaknowledge.de|language=en|archive-date=2019-05-19|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190519204802/http://www.chinaknowledge.de/History/Song/song.html|url-status=live}}</ref> on through [[Heresy|heretical]] thinkers on esoteric [[alchemy]] or [[astrology]], to the [[Renaissance]] and the [[Protestant Reformation]] pioneered by [[Martin Luther]].<ref name="Gottlieb 2021 p. 4">{{cite book | last=Gottlieb | first=M. | title=The Jewish Reformation: Bible Translation and Middle-Class German Judaism As Spiritual Enterprise | publisher=Oxford University Press, Incorporated | year=2021 | isbn=978-0-19-933638-8 | url=https://books.google.com/books?id=z34fEAAAQBAJ&pg=PA4 | access-date=2023-01-19 | page=4 | archive-date=2023-01-19 | archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230119164428/https://books.google.com/books?id=z34fEAAAQBAJ&pg=PA4 | url-status=live }}</ref><ref name="Nahme 2019 p. 62">{{cite book | last=Nahme | first=P.E. | title=Hermann Cohen and the Crisis of Liberalism: The Enchantment of the Public Sphere | publisher=Indiana University Press | series=New Jewish Philosophy and Thought | year=2019 | isbn=978-0-253-03977-4 | url=https://books.google.com/books?id=deJVEAAAQBAJ&pg=PT62 | access-date=2023-01-19 | page=62 | archive-date=2023-01-19 | archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230119164429/https://books.google.com/books?id=deJVEAAAQBAJ&pg=PT62 | url-status=live }}</ref>

French physician and writer [[François Rabelais|Rabelais]] celebrated "rabelaisian" freedom as well as good feasting and drinking (an expression and a symbol of freedom of the mind) in defiance of the hypocrisies of [[conformist]] [[orthodoxy]] in his [[utopian]] [[Thelema#Fran.C3.A7ois Rabelais|Thelema]] Abbey (from θέλημα: free "will"), the device of which was ''Do What Thou Wilt'':

<blockquote>So had Gargantua established it. In all their rule and strictest tie of their order there was but this one clause to be observed, Do What Thou Wilt; because free people ... act virtuously and avoid vice. They call this honor.
</blockquote>

When Rabelais's hero [[Gargantua and Pantagruel|Pantagruel]] journeys to the "Oracle of The Div(in)e Bottle", he learns the lesson of life in one simple word: ''"Trinch!"'', Drink! Enjoy the simple life, learn wisdom and knowledge, as a free human. Beyond puns, irony, and satire, Gargantua's prologue-[[metaphor]] instructs the reader to "break the bone and suck out the substance-full marrow" ("''la substantifique moëlle''"), the core of wisdom.