The Philosophical Review/Volume 1/Review: Le Rossignol - The Ethical Philosophy of Samuel Clarke
The author's method is for the most part historical and comparative, and the dissertation is furnished with abundant references to books and authorities. Considerable space is given to short accounts of writers from Bacon to Mill, who shaped the ethical interest of Clarke's time or developed ideas similar to his at a later period. Dr. Le Rossignol finds that Clarke cannot be regarded either as a disciple of any school or as an eclectic, and prefers to call him rather "a product of the times in which he lived." Most directly influenced by previous English moralists, his views about the nature and place of Moral Philosophy are inherited from the Stoics, and his doctrine of the ethical end and of the relation of the passions to the reason suggests the same influence. In his metaphysical thought relative to the existence of the material world and the freedom of the will, he follows the arguments of Descartes and the Occasionalists, while his basal idea of "moral perception" is assimilated to Locke's definition of knowledge.
In Chapter III, which is devoted to the exposition of Clarke's ethical theory, the author points out the influence of the current belief in a mathematically exact science of ethics, criticises Clarke's peculiar doctrine of the differences and the fitness of things, and notes the inconsistencies in his treatment of motives. Clarke did not attempt to establish a complete system of ethics apart from religion. On the contrary, he believed that revelation alone could reconcile the apparent contradictions within the moral sense and offer a supreme end in which virtue and happiness should be inseparable. This characteristic of Clarke's ethics is emphasized again in the conclusion, where, under the heading, "Further Development of Clarke's Ideas," mention is made of later discussions of "the moral faculty" and "the moral standard." Here Dr. Le Rossignol finds that the utilitarian sources of the feeling of obligation are incomplete, and notes sympathetically Clarke's claim that no explanation of the facts of the moral consciousness is possible which does not assume a future life. But he does not indicate whether he regards this solution of difficulties as having any other interest than the historical one assigned to Clarke's system in the preface.