„Argumentul ce i-a nedumerit nespus pe cartezieni” și ontologia spațiului și timpului a lui Samuel Clarke
“The Argument the Cartesians have been greatly perplexed with” and Samuel Clarke’s Ontology of Space and Time

Summary/Abstract: I am interested in the role played in Clarke’s philosophical evolution by an argument which concerns the impossibility to remove space and time from our thought. Clarke thinks that this argument caused “great perplexity” to the Cartesians, and he uses it to argue that the Cartesian position leads to atheism. As I will try to show, the argument which Clarke sought to turn against the Cartesians will ultimately turn against himself when he will shift to the view in which space and time are not God’s properties or attributes anymore, but “modes” of God’s existence. By tracing the genealogy of some of Clarke’s arguments, I offer a fresh perspective on classical topics like Clarke’s debt to Newton, as well as a more nuanced understanding of Clarke’s relation to Descartes and Cartesianism.

• Details
• Contents