David Renaud Boullier

David Renaud Boullier (24 March 1699 – 23 December 1759) was a Dutch Huguenot theologian, Protestant minister and philosopher.

Biography

Boullier was born in Utrecht on 24 March 1699. He was educated at Utrech University. He was a Protestant pastor in Amsterdam and was active in London for several years.

Boullier strongly opposed Pyrrhonian skepticism. He was one of the few European thinkers who respected George Berkeley's immaterialism. He also opposed the skepticism of Pierre Bayle which attempted to eliminate any essential distinction between humans and animals. Boullier believed that God had created animal and human souls with distinct properties. He argued that animals have purposeful motions which proves they have intelligence and an immaterial soul, though on a lesser scale than humans. Boullier used evidence from comparative anatomy of the brain and from instinct to argue that animals have emotion and sensation but lack the understanding and will of human souls. He stated that animals have within them a "sensitive principle" which is essentially immaterial.

Unlike Richard Dean and others who argued that animals possess immortal souls, Boullier did not believe animal souls were immortal. He stated that animals do suffer and they are innocent but their soul can only act through their body and perish with it. He argued that animal bodies on the lower chain are used for the spiritual happiness of the beings higher on the chain and that their deaths are sometimes necessary to promote this happiness in the created hierarchical world but this excuses only purposive cruelty such as meat eating, not deliberate cruelty.

Selected publications

Essai Philosophique sur L'ˆAme des Bêtes (1728, 1737) Lettres Sur Les Vrais Principes De La Religion (1741)