Charleton, Walter

« only in his proof of God where he gives (with full acknowledgement) the causal argument offered by Descartes in the third Meditation, but also in a sharp dualism between mind and matter.

The soul is a substance perfectly distinct from that of body, he claims, and it is endowed with immortality by the character of its essence.

He follows Descartes, too, in holding that the idea of God is innate. In drawing on Descartes ' philosophy Charleton makes it clear that he wishes to distance himself from all those aspects of Epicurus that might be supposed to support atheism.

Like Gassendi and Descartes he was keen to make his account of the new philosophy not just compatible with, but actually supportive of a Christian theology.

At the same time he was quite sure that standard criticism of Epicurus was far too severe, as he made clear in the Introduction to his edition of Epicurus ' moral philosophy, Epicurus's Morals (1655).

Rather than being, as he was so often depicted, an advocate of impiety, gluttony and drunkenness, Epicurus was, Charleton urged, a great master of temperance, sobriety, continence and fortitude.

Charleton is quite prepared not only to admit but to argue that Epicurus was wrong on several fundamentals.

His three cardinal errors were his rejection of both the immortality of the soul and the worship of God, and his acceptance of suicide.

There were, nevertheless, extenuating circumstances which went some way towards excusing Epicurus these undoubted errors, principally his living in a pagan country before the advent of Christianity.

Granted the errors, Charleton, makes clear that he believes Epicurus has much to teach us about happiness and how it may be best obtained. In all his writings Charleton is careful not to appear dogmatic.

Nor was he ever an uncritical supporter of those who influenced him.

This is especially true of his later writings.

In his Natural History of the Passions (1674), for example, Charleton takes Descartes to task both for his bad anatomy (Charleton was an undoubted expert on anatomy) and for his inadequate explanation of the connection between mind and body. Charleton died in poverty in Nantwich.

His major influence was through the Physiologia , which introduced many English speakers to atomism, including the young Isaac Newton .

His other works contributed to that assault on traditional teaching and the adoption of the mechanistic and hedonistic philosophies that came to dominate the eighteenth century.. »