Samuel Clarke

Samuel Clarke ( born October 11, 1675 Norwich, † May 17 1729 in London) was an English philosopher and theologian in the early Enlightenment.

Life and work

Clarke was a close confidant and disciple of Isaac Newton. He devoted himself since 1691 in Cambridge philosophical, theological and philological studies, came in 1698 as chaplain to the Bishop of Norwich in 1704 and 1705 called to keep the donated by Robert Boyle lectures. This appeared under the titles demonstration of the being and attributes of God ( London 1705 to 1706, two volumes) and Verity and certitude of natural and revealed religion (London 1705).

As in these two works a new rationale of natural theology or religion of reason against the pantheism and atheism, so he tried such a natural morality in his third major work Discourse Concerning the unchangeable obligation of natural religion (London 1708). To Spinoza and Thomas Hobbes, which he regarded as his main opponent to beat them at their own weapons, he used this as the mathematical as the most independent from the influence of arbitrary demonstration. In order to formulate universally valid moral principles to the moral skeptics, such as Pierre Bayle and Michel de Montaigne, he appealed to the involuntary ( without a will ) judgment of reason about propriety (fitness ) and impropriety ( unfitness ) based on the golden rule.

He was given the first two works of the main flow of the rationalist in the English theology, by the third of the precursor to the statement of reason as an inner sense of goodness and beauty to support English ( and Scottish ) moralist school.

As he defended his thesis that the Bible nothing of reason contradictory contained, he fell at once at the Orthodox Anglican clergy in the suspicion of heresy, and was a result of his allegedly Arian colored book The scripture doctrine of the trinity (London 1712, 1719) from the number of the royal cabinet ministers deleted.

Most famous he has become through his unfinished dispute with Leibniz, in which Clarke and his philosophy of Isaac Newton defended against objections of Leibniz and against atheism suspected, had raised the Leibniz against Newton. Clarke published the correspondence under the title A collection of papers, Which passed in between Leibniz and Clarke ... ( first London 1717; French: Amsterdam in 1719 and 1740; German: Frankfurt am Main 1720). Clarke died on 17 May 1729 London.

An output of the philosophical works of this early Enlightenment appeared from 1732 to 1742 in London in four volumes. Autographs of him are kept, among other things in the Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Library.

Writings

• Samuel Clarke: The correspondence with Gottfried Leibniz in 1715 / 1716. Ed Übers and a Single, Erl and Anh. by Ed Dellian. I, - Hamburg 1990, ISBN 978-3-7873-0947-4. ( Philosophical Library, 423 )
• Samuel Clarke: A demonstration of the being and attributes of God and other writings. Edited by Ezio Vailati. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 1998, ISBN 0-521-59008-6. ( Cambridge texts in the history of philosophy. )