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The single purpose of this reflective study is to express definitely the consequences in ethics and religion of accepting the principle of evolution in phil osophy. In the seventeenth century theologians and metaphysicians were divided between two conflicting views of the genesis of truth and goodness and of the ground of the authority they exercise over our intellect and will. Descartes was of the opinion that necessary truths such as those of mathematics, and even logical principles such as the principle of non-contradiction, were dependent on God swill and the result of God schoice; that God, had he so chosen, might have brought it about that judgments which seem to us necessary should not be true, and that judgments which seem to us self-contradictory should be true. The Calvinist theologians expressed the same idea in their doctrine of the sovereignty of God, and it proved a not inconvenient way of silencing the rebellious questionings of those who found it difficult to reconcile the doctrine of election with ethical principles. Leibniz, on the other hand, distinguished between God sintel lect and God swill, and also between necessary and contingent truths. The necessary truths are independent of God swill in the sense that they arose as ideas in God smind, products of his intellect, the expression of the divine activity itself. Contingent truths depend on God swill, his perfect wisdom being shown in the choice of the best possible among infinite possibilities. The problem was never solved.
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Binding: Hardcover Edition: First Edition Label: The Macmillan Company Manufacturer: The Macmillan Company Publication Date: 1927 Publisher: The Macmillan Company Studio: The Macmillan Company |