Ethical Rationalism and Secularisation in the British Enlightenment

Conscience and the Age of Reason

Dafydd Mills Daniel

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN:
  9783030522025
• eBook ISBN:
  9783030522032
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Ethics & Moral Philosophy

This book reassesses the ethics of reason in the Age of the Reason, making use of the neglected category of conscience.  Arguing that conscience was a central feature of British Enlightenment ethical rationalism, the book explores the links between Enlightenment philosophy and modern secularisation, while responding to longstanding criticisms of rational intuitionism and the analogy between mathematics and morals, derived from David Hume and Immanuel Kant. Questioning in what sense British Enlightenment ethical rationalism can be associated with a secularising 'Enlightenment project', Daniel investigates the extent to which contemporary, and secular liberal, invocations of reason and conscience rely on the early modern Christian metaphysics they have otherwise disregarded.

The chapters cover a rich collection of subjects, ranging from the Enlightenment's secular legacy, reason and conscience in the history of ethics, and controversies in the Scottish Enlightenment, to the role of British moralists such as John Locke, Joseph Butler and Adam Smith in the secularisation of reason and conscience. Each chapter expertly refines Enlightenment ethical rationalism by reinterpreting its most influential proponents in eighteenth-century Britain – the followers of 'Isaac Newton's bulldog' Samuel Clarke – including Richard Price (Edmund Burke's opponent over the French Revolution) and John Witherspoon (the only clergyman to sign the US declaration of Independence).

© The Author(s) 2020

D. Mills DanielEthical Rationalism and Secularisation in the British Enlightenment https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-52203-2_1

Begin Abstract

1. The Enlightenment’s Legacy

Dafydd Mills Daniel¹

(1)

Oxford, UK

Dafydd Mills Daniel

Email: [email protected]

End Abstract

1.1 Introduction

Part 1

Critics and proponents of ‘the Enlightenment’ inevitably face the question of whether the definite article can be used in that well-known expression. Rather than ‘the Enlightenment project’, is it preferable to talk of ‘the Enlightenment paradigm’, ‘Enlightenment ideals’, Enlightenment values, or, rather, ‘enlightenments’?¹ Each refinement gets closer to recognising the difficulty of speaking of a single set of beliefs or thinkers who can completely encapsulate an epithet which, even with the addition of ‘European’, is often applied to at least three centuries and two continents.

This book uses the term, ‘the British Enlightenment’, unremarkably and non-exclusively. The use is unremarkable, because this book focuses on some familiar thinkers and ideas from a period in British history (the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries) conventionally referred to as the Enlightenment. On the non-exclusive side, if there is a particular set of thoughts or thinkers, or particular historical dates, that mark out the British Enlightenment, they will still be up for grabs by the close of this book. Indeed, one of the purposes of this book, as will be seen particularly in the discussion of Scotland, is to concur with recent scholarship that ‘the British Enlightenment’ was characterised by opposition between various groups over what it meant to be ‘enlightened’; an opposition which can temper our use of the word ‘secularisation’ when applied to this time period and its consequences.²

Though this book is not directly concerned with the historiography of the term Enlightenment, British or otherwise, it does examine a key current of eighteenth-century British thought, in the light of concerns that have been raised about the Enlightenment’s mixed legacy. The key current of British Enlightenment thought, examined in this book, is ethical rationalism; more specifically, that of ‘Newton’s bulldog’: Samuel Clarke. It is argued that, if we look at Clarke’s British Enlightenment ethical rationalism, especially in light of his theory of conscience, we are better placed to respond to leading Humean and Kantian criticisms of it. Moreover, at the end of this book, it will be suggested that a reappraisal of Clarke’s ethical rationalism makes it a helpful resource for tempering what contemporary critics regard as the Enlightenment’s mixed legacy.

In order to appreciate, the contribution a reappraisal of Clarke’s ethical rationalism can make, three things are necessary: to hear more about what the Enlightenment’s mixed legacy is supposed to be; to recognise that Clarke’s ethical rationalism has often been regarded as a key contributor to that legacy; and to discuss Samuel Clarke himself—a celebrated and influential eighteenth-century figure, who is now relatively neglected.

The remainder of this introduction will cover each of these three points in more detail.

1.2 Lord Shaftesbury, William Blake, and ‘The New Natural Philosophy’

There are criticisms of early modern rationalism in Lord Shaftesbury and William Blake, that not only parallel one another, but also contemporary criticisms of the Enlightenment’s legacy.

Writing at different ends of the eighteenth-century, Shaftesbury and Blake were both troubled by the scientific rationalism or ‘new natural philosophy’ of their day:

But the Spectre like a hoar frost & a Mildew rose over Albion

Saying, I am God O Sons of Men! I am your Rational Power!

Am I not Bacon & Newton & Locke who teach Humility to Man!³

Blake pleaded, ‘God forbid that Truth should be Confined to Mathematical Demonstration’,⁴ and both he and Shaftesbury viewed such figures as Francis Bacon, René Descartes, Thomas Hobbes, Isaac Newton, and John Locke as having done just that.

The first problem with confining truth to mathematical demonstration, is that it relegates all other kinds of truth, and the processes of acquiring it, to the realm of individual opinion, if not fantasy. Shaftesbury objected that ‘Science or speculation’ interfered ‘with a more practical sort’ of philosophy, while also arrogantly ‘shut[ting] the door against better knowledge’.⁵ ‘Super-speculative Philosophy’ ‘reaches nothing we can truly call our Interest or Concern’;⁶ it is ‘the cool way of Reason’ which human beings can only encounter ‘abstractedly and drily’.⁷ Meanwhile, Blake juxtaposed ‘Rational Demonstration’ and ‘Faith’ as well as the ‘Abstract Philosophy warring in enmity against Imagination’.⁸ The ‘Natural Philosophy’ of Bacon, Locke and Newton opposes ‘Spiritual Knowledge’ and ‘inspiration and vision’ with ‘Rational Philosophy and Mathematic Demonstration’.⁹

The second problem with Enlightenment natural philosophy or scientific rationalism builds on the first. The emphasis on demonstrative reasoning not only cuts us off from other types of, and ways to, truth, but separates knowledge from truth: reason and reasoning no longer grant us access to the nature of reality itself. In the criticisms of both Shaftesbury and Blake, Locke and Hobbes (or, at least, Locke and Hobbes as interpreted by Shaftesbury and Blake)¹⁰ were key figures.

John Locke’s and Isaac Newton’s ‘Philosophy of the Five Senses’

In Locke, ‘Knowledge’ consists ‘in the perception of the Agreement, or Disagreement of any two Ideas’, and it is solely ‘from Experience’ that the ‘white Paper’ of the ‘Mind’ is ‘furnished’ with ideas qua ‘all the materials of Reason and Knowledge’.¹¹ Through ‘reason’, we are able to advance ‘knowledge’, but what we are reasoning about is only ever ideas derived from human experience, just as ‘knowledge’ is never anything other than the degree of certainty we have concerning the relationship between our ideas.¹² Thus, Locke defined reason as a ‘merely’ ‘discursive Faculty’: it is in ‘Reasoning’ about the relationship between various ideas we already have that we ‘deduce’ and ‘demonstrate’ prev...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Front Matter
• 1. The Enlightenment’s Legacy
• 2. Conscience, Normativity, and Rational Intuition
• 3. Conscience or Complacency? Neo-Kantianism, Deism, and Practical Reason
• 4. Conscience or Moral Sense? The Contest for Enlightenment in Scotland
• 5. The Secularisation of Conscience
• 6. Conclusion
• Back Matter