Questioning Authority: Anthony Collins’ Challenge to Orthodox Anglican Authority Figures and George Berkeley’s Reply

Abstract

In this paper I argue that the English freethinker Anthony Collins (1676–1729) is making use of ‘conglobation’ to develop an argument across the Vindication of the Divine Attributes (1710) and the Discourse on Free-Thinking (1713), which aims to challenge the religious authority of orthodox representatives of the Anglican church. That is, Colins makes use of a rhetorical (piecemeal) strategy that serves to insinuate one’s proper position to create, what I will call, the ‘authority-challenge’. I reconstruct this challenge in three steps. First, I analyse Collins’ criticism of William King (1650–1729), the Archbishop of Dublin, who according to Collins’ Vindication advances a conception of the divine attributes and of the nature of God that is compatible with atheism. Second, I introduce Collins’ argument from disagreement, which he develops in his Discourse. This argument aims to establish that whenever there is meaningful disagreement, e. g., about the (philosophical) content and not merely about the best terminology, between the supposed experts, we have the right to think on our own about the issue at hand. In the third step, I present the ‘authority-challenge’. In a nutshell, this challenge requires orthodox representatives of the Anglican church either (i) to open the door to atheism by not substantively disagreeing with William King (thereby undermining everything they stand for and presenting themselves as hypocrites) or (ii) to substantively disagree with King to contain atheism (thereby undermining their status as experts for religious issues). Since (i) cannot be an option, they have no choice but to undermine their own authority by impairing their expert status, which, in turn, has ramifications for their political power as well. In the second part of my paper, I argue that §§ 16–22 of the fourth dialogue of George Berkeley’s Alciphron (1732/52) are designed to meet Collins’ ‘authority-challenge’. This will allow me to resolve the puzzle that these sections so far have posed for commentators. In particular, many have been puzzled by Berkeley’s argumentative strategy and in particular his references to the Scholastics. As I argue, however, if §§ 16–22 are read in the light of Collins’ authority challenge, it becomes evident that Berkeley uses these references in his attempt to refute King without failing to meet Collins’ challenge.