Mark Reed Jr.
Period 3
03 May 2016
Samuel Clarke
Samuel Clarke's status as a great english philosopher and theologian is one that has obtained great achievement and dedication. Clarke has focused a significant amount of his life to both science and religion. Science and religion have both been one of many 'water does not mix with oil' scenarios since the earliest beginnings and foundations of science. Clarke has studied in both fields and has obtained physical evidence, as well as spiritual evidence to many testable theories and beliefs. Through Samuel Clarke's views and discussions on newtonianism, anti-naturalism, rationalism, and his other studies and philosophies, Clarke's ideas on theology and metaphysics are all crucial to modern-day theologians.
Samuel Clarke was born in Norwich, England, on October 11, 1675. His father was Edward Clarke, an alderman of Norwich and its representative in Parliament, and his mother was Hannah, daughter of Samuel Parmenter, a merchant. He took his B.A. degree at Cambridge in 1695 by defending Newton's views, which were not yet widely accepted. His defensive stance on Newton's scientific laws and discoveries were very persuasive and open to other perspectives. His tutor, Sir John Ellis, convinced him to provide a new annotated latin translation of Rohault's Treatise of Physics.
The 1697 translation included Clarke's notes to Rohault's text, criticizing Cartesian physics in favor of Newton's. The edition's success rapidly expanded the understanding of Newtonian physics, and later editions became the standard physics textbook in England. In that same year, Clarke befriended William Whiston, who introduced him into the newtonian circle. In these early years he also began a concentrated study of theology, leading to the publication of Three practical essays on baptism, confirmation, and repentance, A Paraphrase on the Four Evangelists, and Amyntor.
The middle years of his career marked his greatest philosophical contributions, beginning with the Boyle lectures. The first, an attempt to prove the existence of God, along with all divine attributes, was published as A Demonstration of the Being and Attributes of God and the second, a continuation intended to establish all fundamental moral truths and most religious doctrine, as A discourse concerning the unchangeable obligations of natural religion, and the truth and certainty of the Christian revelation. A Demonstration of the Being and Attributes of God and A discourse concerning the unchangeable obligations of natural religion, and the truth and certainty of the Christian revelation both went through many editions and were often published together. These lectures, established by Robert Boyle to promote natural religion based on the latest scientific developments and implications, were closely watched, and Clarke instantly became one of the most well known philosophers in England Territory. In 1706, his association with Newton became official when he translated the Opticks into latin. In the meantime, he had been introduced to Queen Anne, who made him one of her chaplains in 1706, and three years later he was elevated to the rectory of St. James's, Westminster. During this time, Clarke developed a close relationship with Caroline of Anspach, the Princess of Wales and future queen. His prominence as a philosopher drew him into a series of very public exchanges of letters. The most notable of these were the letters to Anthony Collins from 1707 to 1708 and the letters to Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz.
In 1698 Clarke became a chaplain to the bishop of Norwich and in 1706 to Queen Anne. In 1704 and 1705, Clarke had delivered two sets of lectures, published under the titles of A Demonstration of the Being and Attributes of God (1705) and A Discourse Concerning the Unchangeable Obligations of Natural Religion (1706). In the first set he attempted to prove the existence of God by a method “as near to mathematical, as the nature of such a discourse would allow” ( ) In the second of the lectures, he argued that the principles of morality are as certain as the propositions of mathematics and thus can be known by reason without necessity of faith, an approach sometimes called ethical rationalism. The criticism of religion by David Hume resulted in part from his dissatisfaction with Clarke’s effort to prove the existence of God. Clarke also spurred a vehement and prolonged controversy with his Scripture Doctrine of the Trinity (1712), which led many of his opponents to accuse him of Arianism, the belief that Christ is neither fully man nor fully God.
Clarke was a friend and disciple of Isaac Newton at the University of Cambridge and helped to spread Newton’s views. In 1697 he made a Latin translation of the physicist Jacques Rohault’s Traité de physique (Treatise on Physics), adding numerous footnotes explaining Newton’s improvements on Rohault’s work. In 1706 he published a latin translation of Newton’s Opticks. A correspondence of 1715 and 1716 between Clarke and Leibniz, important for its defense of the reality of space and time, was published in 1717 and in several later editions. Clarke’s collected works were issued in four volumes in 1738–42. Clarke adopted some form of rationalism in metaphysics, ethics, and theology, as exhibited in his methodology, his account of ethical truths, and in his acceptance of a fundamental rationalist principle, the principle of sufficient reason.
Clarke is also an ethical rationalist. Ethical truths are discoverable through reason and correspond to necessary and eternal relations among things in the world. He also calls ethical truths “truths of reason.” His theology is also rationalist, in that through reason one can discover the many truths contained in natural religion. Furthermore, true Christian doctrines are neither mysterious nor self-contradictory, and nearly all can be comprehended by human beings.
Clarke attached great importance to the issue of free will. In his philosophical writings, he argues that freedom of the will involves a libertarian power of self-determination. However, in the sermon “Of the Liberty of Moral Agents,” he claims that the “True liberty of a Rational and Moral Agent is being able to follow right Reason only, without hindrance or restraint”. Similarly, in that sermon Clarke calls acting as one pleases “mere physical or natural liberty”, which both humans and non-human animals have, so he seems to accept a definition of liberty that is compatibilist.
Elsewhere, he argues that human freedom requires a self-determining will that could freely assent or refrain from assenting to the mind's judgments; this is a freedom of choosing and not a freedom of acting, such that a prisoner in chains “who chooses or endeavors to move out of his place is therein as much a free agent as he that actually moves out of his place” (). Clarke does not explicitly reconcile these incompatibilist and compatibilist approaches. One way to do so is to make the libertarian power of self-determination a necessary condition for the compatibilist understanding of freedom as following reason without restraint. Clarke also entertains a third notion of freedom: freedom is “a principle of acting, or power of beginning motion, which is the idea of liberty” (). The ability to begin motion marks freedom as a power only held by non-material agents, because matter has no power of self-motion. Harris argues that this third definition is libertarian and the most important of the three to Clarke's project.
Clarke's primary defense of libertarian freedom involves clarifying the relationship between the will and the judgment. In order to will, one must have a judgment about what to do and the power to choose in accordance with that judgment. This power to choose is provided by the will. The will is not to be identified with the last judgment of the understanding nor is a volition caused by a judgment. Those, like Hobbes, who thought so were guilty of basic philosophical errors. If they maintained that the content of the evaluative proposition is either identical with the volition or causes it, then they were confusing the “moral motive” with the “physical efficient,” the physical efficient being the element of the cause that provides the active power. Because the moral motive is simply an abstract object, or an abstract proposition, and abstract objects are causally inert, the moral motive cannot cause anything.
On the other hand, if Clarke's opponents maintained that, not the evaluative proposition, but one's perceiving, judging or otherwise believing it is the cause, or a partial cause, of volition, then they were falling foul of a basic causal principle. Against Descartes, Clarke insisted that judging, i.e., assenting to what appears true and dissenting from what appears false, is not an action but a passion. But what is passive cannot cause anything active. So, there is no causal link between evaluation and volition, or, as Clarke put it, between "approbation and action" . In general, there is no causal link between previous non-volitional mental states, all of which are passive, and any volition.
To Reiterate, Through Samuel Clarke's views and discussions on Newtonianism, Anti-Naturalism, Rationalism, and his other studies and philosophies, Clarke's ideas on theology and metaphysics are all crucial to modern-day theologians. Modern-day theologists have long expressed the critical balance between the Church, the State, and scientific exposure, but have danced around it for times on end. Clarke uses a new sense of reasoning to deduce most theories and speculations on common and uncommon societal problems. David Hume, John Locke, Montesquieu, Alexander Pope, and many other well-known philosophers of the time period may understand the approach given by Clarke, but would reject his ideas and rational thoughts through other reasons.
Works Cited
1) "Clarke, Samuel." Britannica Biographies (2012): 1. History Reference Center. Web. 16 Feb 2016
2) "Samuel Clarke." Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia, 6Th Edition (2015): 1. History Reference Center. Web. 16 Feb. 2016
3) "Samuel Clarke | English Theologian and Philosopher." Encyclopedia Britannica Online. Encyclopedia Britannica. Web. 16 Feb. 2016.
4) "Dr. Samuel Clarke Quotes. S. Austin Allibone, Comp. 1880. Prose Quotations from Socrates to Macaulay." Dr. Samuel Clarke Quotes. S. Austin Allibone, Comp. 1880. Prose Quotations from Socrates to Macaulay. Web. 17 Feb. 2016.
5) Yenter, Timothy. "Samuel Clarke." Stanford University. Stanford University, 05 Apr. 2003. Web. 26 Apr. 2016.
6) "Discourse Concerning the Being and Attributes of God, the Obligations of Natural Religion, and the Truth and Certainty of the Christian Revelatio." – Christian Classics Ethereal Library. Kathleen O'Bannon, CCEL Staff, n.d. Web. 29 April 2016.