In The Clash Of Philosophical Trends.

The "Essay" consists of epistles, addressed to Lord Bolingbroke, and derived, to some extent, from some of Bolingbroke's own fragmentary Philosophical writings, as well as from ideas expressed by Anthony Ashley Cooper, the third Earl of Shaftsbury. Pope sets out to describe and explain that no matter how incomplete, complicated, impenetrable, and disturbingly full of evil the Universe may appear to be, it does function in a rational fashion, according to natural laws; and is, in fact, considered as a divinely ordered plan of God. It appears imperfect and incomplete to us only because our perceptions are limited by our infirm moral and intellectual capacity.

At the time when the clash of philosophical trends began, Thomas Hobbes, Rene Descartes and Anthony Ashley Cooper, third Earl of Shaftsbury influenced Alexander Pope the most. Thomas Hobbes as a supporter of materialism stands for the truth: "The Universe is distinct from the spiritual; all that is real is material and what is not material is not real". Perhaps he meant that as far as he cannot touch God or cannot see an evidence of God's interfer

And showed a Newton as we show an ape."

ence, the God does not exist. Shaftsbury considered nature a perfect harmonious whole that reflected its divine origin, and therefore the nature, and respectively the Man exists because there is God to create them.

Considered as a whole, the "Essay on Man" is an affirmative poem of faith: life seems chaotic and patternless to man when he is in the midst of it, but is in fact a logical portion of a divinely ordered plan. In Pope's world God exists, and he is benevolent: his universe is an ordered place. The limited intellect of man can perceive only a tiny portion of this order, can experience only partial truths, and hence must rely on hope, which leads to faith and sometimes to doubt. Man must be aware of his rather negligible position in the grand scheme of things: those things which he desires most - riches, power, fame - prove to be worthless in the greater context of which he is only dimly aware. In his place, it is man's duty to make efforts to be good, even if he is doomed, because of his innate liability to err, to fail in his attempt.

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Approximate Word count = 1614
Approximate Pages = 6 (250 words per page double spaced)