Eric Walten

Who was Eric Walten?

Eric Walten was a Dutch Enlightenment thinker and pamphleteer, notably accused of blasphemy and of secretly following the philosophical thinking of Benedict Spinoza in the 1690s.

A somewhat obscure young man of whose earliest life little information survives, Walten is known to have been born in what is presently Ham, Germany, although the Dutch scholar Wiep van Bunge suggests that Walten was probably of English descent.

Though influenced by such iconic Enlightenment writers as Descartes and Spinoza in his philosophical thought, Walten himself denied the latter as his primary political influence and professed to admire Juan de Mariana as the greatest writer on the powers and responsibilities of kings.

Walten's fate as a controversialist was sealed when his vigorous defense of Balthasar Bekker against the various accusations against him invited a legal prosecution on blasphemy charges against himself. Walten died in prison while awaiting trial.