Samuel Clarke: A Demonstration of the Being and Attributes of God
And Other Writings

A new edition of this famous and controversial attempt at proving the existence of God.

Samuel Clarke (Author), Ezio Vailati (Edited by)

9780521599955, Cambridge University Press

Paperback, published 13 April 1998

208 pages
22.6 x 15.2 x 1.5 cm, 0.29 kg

"This should help to revive interest in Clarke's philosophy and improve our understanding of both its intellectual merits and its considerable historical significance." Ethics

Samuel Clarke was by far the most gifted and influential Newtonian philosopher of his generation, and A Demonstration of the Being and Attributes of God, which constituted the 1704 Boyle Lectures, was one of the most important works of the first half of the eighteenth century, generating a great deal of controversy about the relation between space and God, the nature of divine necessary existence, the adequacy of the Cosmological Argument, agent causation, and the immateriality of the soul. Together with the other texts presented in this edition, it also provides the best introduction to Clarke's philosophical views, which, in addition to their intrinsic interest, are historically important for the light they shed both on the philosophical positions within the Newtonian circle and on the exchange between Clarke and Leibniz, the most famous philosophical controversy of the eighteenth century.

A Demonstration of the Being and Attributes of God
1. Several letters to the Reverend Dr Clarke
2. The answer to a sixth letter
3. The answer to a seventh letter
4. Letters to Dr Clarke concerning liberty and necessity
5. From Remarks Upon a Book
6. From Clarke's Sermons on Several Subjects
7. From A Discourse concerning the Unchangeable Obligations of Natural Religion
8. From Four Defences of a Letter to Mr Dodwell
9. From a collection of papers which passed between the late learned Mr Leibniz and Dr Clarke.

Subject Areas: Western philosophy: c 1600 to c 1900 [HPCD]