Early Modern Philosophy

This paper examines two features of Kant’s 1768 critique of Leibniz’ conception of space. Firstly, Leibniz’ proposed geometrical calculus called ‘analysis situs’; secondly, Leibniz’ relational conception of space. The main thesis of the paper is that Kant’s arguments are more powerful than generally recognized. With regard to the analysis situs, I will show that Kant was quite well informed about this proposed science and that his arguments severely undermine Leibniz’ claims to what it could perform. With regard to the relational theory of space, Kant’s argument would require Leibniz to present a complex story about the relation between God’s act of creation and our spatial experience to defend his relational view, rather than using the simple principle of sufficient reason.

Una fortunata rappresentazione storiografica ha voluto che il dualismo di Descartes si costituisse in diretta rottura col concetto tommasiano di anima-forma. Sulla scia dei numerosi studi che negli ultimi decenni si sono opposti a questo pregiudizio, L'angelo e la macchina ricostruisce nel dettaglio il dibattito cinque-seicentesco sulla psicologia, focalizzandosi specialmente sull'ambiente gesuita e sul contesto aristotelico, platonico e agostiniano di area francese. A partire da una rigorosa indagine sulle teorie dell'anima separata, particolare attenzione è data poi alla derivazione indirettamente angelologica del cogito e dell'innatismo cartesiano. Negli anni in cui Descartes elabora la sua metafisica, infatti, l'immediata prossimità tra anime e angeli costituisce per certi versi un dato di fatto, alla luce del quale appaiono chiare molte scelte argomentative delle Meditationes e persino le dinamiche che congiungono strettamente la "sostanza pensante" con il corpo-macchina.

— Review: Dr. Nicolò Galasso, in La Cultura. Rivista di Filosofia, Letteratura e Storia, 57 (2019, 1), pp. 129-132.
— Review: Dr. Jacopo Francesco Falà, in Lo Sguardo. Rivista di Filosofia, 27 (2018, 2), pp. 369-373.
— Review: Dr. Laurence Dupas-Gelin, in Bulettin Cartésien (Archives de Philosophie), 49 (2020), pp. 196-197.
— Review: Emanuele Landi, in Biblos. Revista da Faculdade de Letras da Universidade de Coimbra (forthcoming).

David Hume (1711-1776) ranks among the greatest of philosophers and issues of religion lie at the heart of what most concerned him. Although the exact nature of Hume’s attitude to religion is a matter of some controversy, there is general agreement that his basic stance was critical, if not hostile, to the doctrines and dogmas of orthodox religious belief and practice. There remains, however, considerable disagreement about whether or not Hume believed that there is any truth or value in religion. According to some, Hume was a sceptic who regarded all conjectures relating to religious hypotheses to be beyond the scope of human understanding – he neither affirmed nor denied these conjectures. Others read Hume as embracing a highly refined form of “true religion”. On the other side of this spectrum, it is claimed that Hume was committed to atheism, although due to social conditions at the time, this had to be (thinly) concealed or masked. The aim of this article is to provide an overview of Hume’s core concerns and arguments on this subject and to provide the reader with a framework for interpreting and assessing his various contributions.

This entry examines Locke's notion of persons and, in particular, his thesis that personal identity is constituted by consciousness. It presents an overview over the most influential readings of this thesis and discusses the most debated interpretative questions and problems about it. I argue that, though Locke's theory of personal identity includes a tension which, ultimately, cannot be resolved, it is nonetheless well-placed to achieve the ethical-theological aim Locke pursues in discussing personal identity.

A fresh translation and in-depth commentary of Leibniz's seminal text, the Monadology.

Written in 1714, the Monadology is widely considered to be the classic statement of Leibniz's mature philosophy. In the space of 90 numbered paragraphs, totalling little more than 6000 words, Leibniz outlines - and argues for - the core features of his philosophical system. Although rightly regarded as a masterpiece, it is also a very condensed work that generations of students have struggled to understand.

Lloyd Strickland presents a new translation of the Monadology, alongside key parts of the Theodicy, and an in-depth, section-by-section commentary that explains in detail not just what Leibniz is saying in the text but also why he says it. The sharp focus on the various arguments and other justifications Leibniz puts forward makes possible a deeper and more sympathetic understanding of his doctrines.

Descartes regularly claims that questions concerning the possibility of causal interaction between mind and body due to their heterogeneous natures are based on a misunderstanding of how mind and body are united. To illustrate this point, Descartes draws an analogy with the scholastic notion of heaviness in an effort to clear up this misunderstanding and to dispel their concerns about mind to body causal interaction. This paper examines the heaviness analogy in some detail. The main conclusions are that Descartes maintains a holenmeric notion of mind-body union such that the whole mind is in the whole body and wholly in each one of its parts while also exercising its function primarily in the pineal gland. This, for Descartes, implies a teleological rather than a mechanistic understanding of how the mind moves the body and thereby avoids this version of the problem entirely. The paper concludes with a short discussion of what these considerations may mean for Paul Hoffman's hylomorphic understanding of Descartes' theory of mind-body union.

The paper explains the contextual discrepancy between the grammatically related terms apercevoir/percevoir/percipere, aperception/perception, as well as perceptio/perception in French philosophical vocabulary of the mid-17th century. Bilingual Descartes’s philosophy is a peculiar testing area for changing the traditional meanings of these terms. In the Latin texts of Cartesius the word percipere and the noun perceptio denote, correspondingly, the process and the result of perception. However, the difficulty appeared during the preparation of the French texts of Descartes’s Latin works, since percevoir/perception, the natural French corres-pondents for percipere/perceptio, did not have the epistemological connotations and denoted «getting, collecting» (money, taxes etc.). Therefore Descartes chose for situational correspondents of percipere a number of French verbs with similar meaning (concevoir, connaître etc), sometimes apercevoir («notice») and never percevoir. For the noun perceptio he selected notion, connaissance and very rarely perception in the new epistemological meaning «perception», which was pretty difficult to comprehend for the French-speaking milieu of those days. As to the term aperception, it is totally artificial, and it was suggested by Leibniz in 1714 in order to denote the act of conscious perception.

The relations between metaphysics and physics in Cartesianism is a question of crucial importance for 19th century French histories of philosophy. Hence, in its institutionally dominant version, incarnated by Victor Cousin, this philosophy was understood as a spiritualism concerned with the founding of a psychology relying on a rationalist interpretation of the cogito. In order to achieve this, such a psychology must distinguish itself from the empirical method of psychology inherited from the so-called ideologues. And this required, in turn, that metaphysics must return to its place at the roots of the tree of knowledge, in opposition to a Baconian interpretation considering the history of the mind in prolongation of the natural sciences, and according to the same model. If this ambition proved to be both theoretically and objectively constraining for the « Cousinians », it was, however, not a unique enterprise in the 19th century. Other, alternative trees of knowledge were envisaged, defining other possible readings of the Cartesian philosophy, notably by opening up alleys toward empiricist interpretations. In this paper, I propose a typology of these alternative trees. The aim is to gain a better understanding of the complexity and the tensions between physics and metaphysics in Descartes on the one hand, and, on the other, to stress the decisive importance of 19th century French historiography for our current understanding of these relations.

KEYWORDS
Physics, Metaphysics, Psychology, Spiritualism, Empiricism, Materialism.

In Physics and Metaphysics in Descartes and in his Reception. Delphine Antoine-Mahut and Sophie Roux (eds), Routledge, submitted.

Norman Kemp Smith in his article “The Naturalism of Hume” formulated standard naturalistic interpretation David Hume’s philosophical project. According to Kemp Smith, the idea of ​​Hume as a skeptic is unsustainable. The first book of A Treatise of Human Nature should be understood as an introduction to the new naturalistic philosophy. However, such approach does not deny the presence of elements of skepticism and empiricism in Hume ‘s philosophy. Hume’s political theory can be viewed as either continuation or empirical confirmation of his philosophy. His skepticism is expressed in his distrust of the rationalistic doctrines and by his unwillingness to adhere to political parties. Elements of empiricism are evident in his observation of human behavior in the present and also in the past. Skepticism and empiricism are an integral part of his naturalistic explanation in political philosophy. He introduced a political theory based upon the scientific methodology, which could be an inspiration for contemporary research in political science.

Co-edited and translated with Jacob van Sluis.

Vol 1 of the Edinburgh Edition of the Philosophical Works of François Hemsterhuis

The first ever English translation of François Hemsterhuis’ early series of philosophical letters published during the 1760s and 1770s

This complete edition publishes Hemsterhuis’ 'Letter on an Antique Gemstone', 'Letter on Sculpture', 'Letter on Desires', 'Letter on Man and his Relations' and 'Philosophical Description of the Character of the Late Mr. F. Fagel' chronologically to gradually reveal Hemsterhuis’ complete systematic vision.

These letters are supplemented by three introductions. The first by Peter Sonderen pinpoints the significance of Hemsterhuis’ remarkably influential aesthetics. The second by Jacob van Sluis provides the context to 'Letter on Man and his Relations'. And the third by Gabriel Trop focuses on the importance of these writings in the history of ideas, especially Herder’s translation and ‘Postscript’ to the 'Letter on Desires', Diderot’s commentary on the 'Letter on Man and his Relations' and Goethe’s incorporation of Hemsterhuis’ definition of beauty into his aesthetic reflections.

The book is available here for purchase: https://edinburghuniversitypress.com/book-the-early-writings-of-francois-hemsterhuis-1762-1773.html

It is generally accepted that Rousseau gave one of the most fierce critique of modern civilization and society in general. He is often claimed to have accurately described or at least anticipated what later on has been named alienation, even if he himself made no use of this term. In my paper I examine what might be regarded as a precursor conception of alienation in Rousseau’s work. In order to highlight theoretical differences and presuppositions, I shall also discuss Marx’s theory of alienation.
I shall argue that what we find in Rousseau can only be labelled as alienation in a broader sense, since the semantic core of alienation, i.e. becoming strange to someone, is not the basic problem in Rousseau’s description. A closer reading of Rousseau’s second discourse on unequality will serve as a point of reference in interpreting the term “alienation”. The treatise essentially claims that (1) human beings under conditions of civilization are unnoticed slaves, and (2) that this slavery to one another was brought about by a socio-cultural development leading to a loss of authenticity. I point out that there is a general scheme of alienation that might be described as possession – disappropriaton – reappropriation, and I shall claim with regard to Rousseau that he has but a short version in form of possession – disappropriation.

This paper investigates literary discourse surrounding the early modern stag hunt to explore somatic grounds for empathetic communication between humans and animals. The stag hunt—more than any other form of hunting during the early modern period—is frequently construed in allegorical terms, which sustain human-animal divisions and reinforce notions of human superiority. However, I argue that elements of the stag hunt blur these boundaries, posing a challenge to essentialist conceptions of the human, and opening up more fluid mediums of corporeal communication. I contend that the literary representation of hunting in the early modern period can serve as a model for an embodied understanding of cross-species communication and interaction.
Beginning with George Gascoigne’s treatise The Noble Arte of Venerie or Hunting (1575), I consider how, within the context of hunting, the hunter’s body is initially understood as unified and stable, while the stag’s body is perceived as malleable; it is something which can be made and unmade at the hunter’s discretion. Using the performative element of Gilles Deleuze’s conception of “meat,” and work by contemporary thinkers like Vinciane Despret and Rane Willerslev, I contest these assumptions to explore human-animal “meating places.” I then turn to Jaques’ encounter with the stag in Shakespeare’s As You Like It (1599) to consider the potential for trans-species communication of material “passions.” My approach resonates with current work like that of Ralph Acampora, which attempts to shift the grounds of humans’ ethical consideration for animals from the psyche to the soma.

Course Description: A continuation of the Classical Mind, the Modern Mind is an introduction to modern philosophy focusing on texts from selected early modern and modern thinkers. The class builds upon the history, thought concepts, and themes developed in the Classical Mind and traces the development of Western philosophical thought from the seventeenth to the twentieth century. In particular, this course deals with philosophers that consider the nature of thinking and reasoning, the idea of metaphysics and the foundations of human knowledge, the idea of a universal moral law, the nature of political society and the concept of right, and the idea and value of historical thinking. This course utilizes canonical philosophic texts situated in the history of philosophy to establish the structure and methodology of philosophical thinking. As the second course of the introductory sequence of philosophy classes, this class culminates not only in the identification of philosophic issues, concepts, and questions, but also the practical examination and analysis of fundamental human questions as preparation for students' continuing engagement with their liberal arts education. — Prerequisite for PHIL 202: successful completion of PHIL 201.

En el siguiente trabajo presentamos una reflexión acerca de la cuestión del lenguaje en Descartes, considerando que el lenguaje es la prueba fundamental que establece para diferenciar al ser humano de los animales y el reconocimiento de la posesión de una mente. El lenguaje, como veremos, trata de un elemento de distinción ontológica fundamental en la filosofía del pensador francés y plantea importantes preguntas acerca de la naturaleza de los animales.

La critique spinozienne des miracles est, avec le nécessitarisme et le rejet de l'autorité mosaïque du Pentateuque, une des théories qui ont le plus choqué les contemporains de Spinoza. Nous en avons une preuve dans la réaction de Henry Oldenburg qui, en 1675, demande à son correspondant de s'expliquer davantage sur ce sujet et lui signale très clairement que mettre en doute les miracles revient à saper la révélation qui leur doit sa certitude 1. Le chapitre VI du TTP soulève plusieurs problèmes. Notre but est double : nous voudrions d'une part essayer de mettre en rapport les opinions de Spinoza et celles de certains auteurs qu'il connaissait ou qu'il pouvait connaître ; d'autre part, en généralisant des résultats de l'interprétation avancée par Steven Nadler, nous nous proposons de répondre à certaines lectures de ce chapitre qui l'opposent à d'autres sections du TTP. Nous commencerons par situer le chapitre sur les miracles dans l'économie de l'ensemble du texte. Comme le titre de l'ouvrage l'indique, le TTP est composé de deux parties, l'une consacrée à un examen des Écritures et de la religion, l'autre explorant les fondements de l'État. Il est possible de tracer une autre division : la première section, consacrée à la théologie, se compose de six chapitres qui traitent de notions clé de la religion et de la théologie (la prophétie, les prophètes, l'élection des juifs, la loi divine, les rites, les miracles). Les neuf chapitres suivants détaillent les règles de l'herméneutique

The Theses LVI belong to a series of hitherto unpublished early manuscripts of the Dutch humanist and jurisconsult Hugo Grotius (1583-1645) that were acquired by the University of Leiden in 1864. It is not certain when the Theses were written, but preliminary research on the physical manuscript and the sources cited indicate two possible windows. The first is around 1602-1605, that is roughly at a time when Grotius was also working on his Commentary on the Law of Prize and Booty (De Iure Praedae Commentarius). The second dating places the genesis of the manuscrbipt around 1613-1615.
In the context of Grotius’ writings, the Theses LVI assume an important position for several reasons: They raise questions about state formation, the duty of citizens to the state and the right of political resistance in far greater detail than in any other work of the celebrated Dutch humanist. The Theses LVI also feature important reading notes that yield priceless insights into the sources that Grotius directly consulted and their influence on his ideas. The manuscript grants modern scholars a unique glimpse into the working mind of its author. Evidence points not only to the ferocious haste with which Grotius wrote his works, but also the occasional sloppiness of his reading and research habits."""

Thomas Hobbes is an exception among early political scientists in his affirmation of gender equality. Carole Pateman and Susan Okin acknowledge this but maintain that, in the final analysis, his gender egalitarianism is disingenuous. There is certainly cause for suspicion. The history of political theory is replete with misogyny, and even theories that purport to be more egalitarian have had their sexist tendencies exposed on analysis. Such criticisms of Hobbes, however, are misplaced. In this essay, I explore the feminist possibilities in Hobbes's work, and argue that his affirmation of gender equality should be taken seriously. Far from reinforcing patriarchal relations, Hobbesian political theory demands a robust and substantive form of gender equality.

In the late 1720s and early 1730s, Christian Wolff writes a series of short treatises on general medical concepts such as health, disease, cause of disease, symptom, etc. The paper makes the claim that these texts should be considered as a pioneering attempt at developing a systematic philosophy of medicine based on metaphysical and epistemological investigations on medical concepts, doctrines, and practices. The main focus is on Wolff’s analysis of the concepts of health and disease in functional terms and its connection to his teleological characterization of both natural and artificial machines. This also explains Wolff’s use of the normatively loaded concepts of fitness and nature to clarify the distinction between health as good functioning and disease as dysfunction. The conclusion is that Wolff’s mechanist view of living bodies and his realism about biological functions are just one side of the coin; the other is his commitment to a normative view of the human body’s nature and purposes.

In this monograph, Steffen Ducheyne provides a historically detailed and systematically rich explication of Newton’s methodology. Throughout the pages of this book, it will be shown that Newton developed a complex natural-philosophical methodology which encompasses procedures to minimize inductive risk during the process of theory formation and which, thereby, surpasses a standard hypothetico-deductive methodological setting. Accordingly, it will be highlighted that the so-called ‘Newtonian Revolution’ was not restricted to the empirical and theoretical dimensions of science, but applied equally to the methodological dimension of science. Furthermore, it will be documented that Newton’s methodology was far from static and that it developed alongside with his scientific work. Attention will be paid not only to the successes of Newton’s innovative methodology, but equally to its tensions and limitations. Based on a thorough study of Newton’s extant manuscripts, this monograph will address and contextualize, inter alia, Newton’s causal realism, his views on action at a distance and space and time, the status of efficient causation in the Principia, the different phases of his methodology, his treatment of force and the constituents of the physico-mathematical models in the context of Book I of the Principia, the analytic part of the argument for universal gravitation, the meaning and significance of his regulae philosophandi, the methodological differences between his mechanical and optical work, and, finally, the the interplay between Newton’s theology and his natural philosophy.

Questo articolo parte dalla ricostruzione del modello aristotelico di amicizia fornita nel ‘Brief of the Art of Rhetorique’ e dai motivi della critica hobbesiana a questo modello per esaminare il modo in cui l’amicizia lavora nel discorso antropologico, etico e politico di Hobbes. In un primo momento mostra che l’amicizia rappresenta un potere e che la specificità dei rapporti amicali è costituita dalla loro natura egualitaria ed extra-contrattuale, nonché dalla corrispondenza di dono e gratitudine attraverso la quale si compie lo scambio di poteri e di onori. In un secondo momento si concentra sull’aspetto morale del problema, mettendo in evidenza il nesso tra l’amicizia e quella capacità di mettersi l’uno al posto dell’altro che costituisce il cuore di tutta la concezione hobbesiana della legge naturale. Infine, sottolinea il possibile pericolo politico dei vincoli particolaristici che l’amicizia è in grado di cementare e dalle forme di cooperazione che essa è in grado di promuovere nonostante e contro lo Stato.

Keywords: Hobbes, amicizia, potere, dono, legge naturale, politica

This study starts from the ‘reconstruction’ of the Aristotelian model of friendship, found in the ‘Brief of the Art of Rhetorique’, and the reasons behind Hobbes’s criticism of this model. It then moves on to examine the way friendship works in Hobbes’s anthropological, ethical and political discourse. First, Hobbes’s discourse shows that friendship represents power, and that the specificity of friendly relationships is their equalitarian and non-contractual nature, as well as, the correspondence of gifts and gratitude through which an exchange of power and honours is achieved. Second, it focuses on the moral aspect of the problem highlighting the link between friendship and the ability to put oneself in another’s shoes, which constitutes the heart of the whole of the Hobbesian conception of natural law. Finally, it emphasises the possible political danger of the bonds which friendship can cement and the forms of cooperation that it is able to promote in spite of and against the State.

Keywords: Hobbes, friendship, power, natural law, politics

This paper aims to provide an account of the main themes in David Hume's philosophy, explaining the interplay between his scepticism, empiricism, naturalism, and irreligion, and resolving some apparent tensions that result from simplistic interpretations of these. Hume's main concerns are identified by reference to his biography, and to the development of his thought as manifested in his main works (e.g. his emphasis on causation in Treatise 1.3, and his mitigated scepticism in the first Enquiry). Overall, Hume's theoretical philosophy turns out to have a consistent underlying core, as presented in the "Chief Argument" that forms the backbone of the Abstract and the Enquiry.

Free download: http://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/y3DipH2m3WDBKSa2QB65/full

One of the most renowned pages of Pascal's Pensées offers an astonishing phenomenology of the all-powerful action of imagination in human life. This article retraces the genesis of this text and reassesses the sources of Pascal's conception of imagination. It argues that Pascal builds up his definition of the imagination as an ‘anti-theodicy’ which carefully recalls and then criticizes the Cartesian ‘theodicy of error’ and the foundation of the ‘general rule’ of truth proposed by the Fourth Meditation. In doing so, Pascal undermines the major aim of Descartes's Meditations, which is to secure human nature against any doubt as to its intrinsic perfection. Where, according to Descartes, human knowledge is finite yet perfectly secured in its accomplishments when we use the faculties of our mind correctly, Pascal describes imagination as a deceptive faculty that seems to have been given to us specifically to lead us into necessary error.

Concept of God, Arguments for the Existence of God and Experience of God in Spinoza’s Ethics

This is an introductory paper on Spinoza’s metaphysical concept of God as presented in his Ethics. In the first part I develop a reading of his definition of God by presenting first his definition of substance and then his definition of infinity. Concerning the definition of substance, following Della Rocca’s reading, I problematize the connection between the relationships of ‘being in,’ ‘conceived through’ and ‘caused by.’ After that, I link these relations to the notion of freedom. Concerning the definition of infinity, following Haserot and Shein, I problematize the ontological status of attributes and their relations. After that, I revisit the question of causation in the context of the different attributes. In the second part, following Lin and Garrett, I present Spinoza’s four arguments for the existence of God and show how the metaphysical foundations of his system allow Spinoza to develop a valid, but not necessarily sound argument. In the third part, I discuss the role of the experience of God in the latter parts of Spinoza’s system, first, by explaining the relationship between his substance monism expressed in the dictum Deus sive natura and his alleged pantheism, and second, by presenting the way in which his metaphysical views on causation and his substance monism allow him to de- velop what Melamed calls anti-humanist ethics. Finally, I discuss the relation of the finite human mind and the infinite divine intellect, and link Spinoza’s anti- humanist understanding of ethics to his metaphysical understanding of causation.

In this paper, I present an interpretation of Descartes that deemphasizes his skepticism. I analyze a selection of remarks from Descartes' correspondence in which he makes judgments about the skeptics. I argue that such remarks display Descartes' attitude of contempt for skeptical philosophy. Since Descartes associates the skeptics with the activity of constant and total doubting and yet presents scenarios that seemingly arise from extreme doubt—like the malicious demon hypothesis—I look at what Descartes says in the correspondence about his own use of doubt in his published works. Descartes distances himself from the skeptics because he claims that whereas they doubt everything and, in so doing, act heretically, he uses doubt for a noble purpose. I suggest that although Descartes is influenced by skeptical ideas and considers skeptical argumentation to be useful, his strategic use of such argumentation should not lead us to believe that he condones skepticism. Quite the contrary, most of his remarks on the subject show that Descartes is highly critical or dismissive of skeptical ideas. Therefore, I argue that it is more accurate to characterize Descartes as a philosopher generally opposed to skepticism.

If the greatness of a philosophical work can be measured by the volume and vehemence of the public response, there is little question that Rousseau's Social Contract stands out as a masterpiece. Within a week of its publication in 1762 it was banished from France. Soon thereafter, Rousseau fled to Geneva, where he saw the book burned in public. At the same time, many of his contemporaries, such as Kant, considered Rousseau to be “the Newton of the moral world,” as he was the first philosopher to draw attention to the basic dignity of human nature. The Social Contract has never ceased to be read in the 250 years since it was written. Rousseau's “Social Contract”: An Introduction offers a thorough and systematic tour of this notoriously paradoxical and challenging text. David Lay Williams offers readers a chapter-by-chapter reading of the Social Contract, squarely confronting these interpretive obstacles, leaving no stones unturned. The conclusion connects Rousseau's text both to his important influences and those who took inspiration and sometimes exception to his arguments. The book also features a special extended appendix dedicated to outlining his famous conception of the general will, which has been the object of controversy since the Social Contract's publication.

This dissertation concerns two controversial aspects of Descartes’ philosophy. The first is the meaning of the distinction between the material and objective senses of the word “idea.” The second is an alleged tension between the Fifth Meditation’s claim that the real natures are mind-independent and the claim of the Principles that universals are mind-dependent.

In the first chapter, I take up the material sense, and argue against those interpretations which see it as a category for the contentless ontology of ideas. I argue that the textual evidence points to the material sense being Descartes’ category for phenomenological description of how things seem to be to a given mind when it has a given idea. In particular, I argue that he deploys the material sense in his discussions of abstractions and that this points to the material sense being a category for content that lacks existential implication for the extramental world.

In the second chapter, I take up the ontology of the real natures, and suggest that there is no tension between the Fifth Meditation and the Principles because Descartes accepts two things under the term “nature,” namely, universals and individual essences. I suggest Descartes is committed to Platonism about individual essences in the Fifth Meditation, and that in the Principles he is concerned only with universals, about which he is a conceptualist. I further suggest that individual essences play key roles in both singular and universal thought.

In the third chapter, I take up the objective sense, and the widespread interpretation of this sense of ideas as concerning current presentational or phenomenological content. I suggest that this account struggles with cases where there is stability in the object of thought paired with changes in the associated phenomenology. I propose that we ought to reject a straightforward equation of the objective sense with current presentational content, and instead adopt a scheme according to which what has objective being in an idea is the sum total of thinkable, essential features of the object, and that when an idea is clear and distinct, what we perceive has objective being in the idea.

Intuition can be seen as the primordial and pre-verbal faculty by means of which the mind gains immediate epistemic access to the phenomena. The concept of structural intuition is premised on the basic principle that an infallible resonance exists between internally intuitive and externally phenomenal structures; it generally proves to be compositional in that it unifies mathematical formality with me- chanical and material phenomenality. The present work is an attempt to extend the doctrine of structural intuition with regard to its epis- temological potential to an epistemic-structural intuition and, accord- ingly, to substantiate it as the characteristic trait of axiomatic intui- tions in the early modern mathematical and material sciences.


Intuition lässt sich als ein primordiales und vorsprachliches Ver- mögen betrachten, anhand dessen der Geist einen unmittelbaren epistemischen Zugang zu den Phänomenen erhält. Die strukturelle Intuition baut auf dem Grundprinzip auf, dass zwischen innerlich intuitiven und äußerlich phänomenalen Strukturen eine unfehlbare Resonanz besteht; sie erweist sich gemeinhin als kompositorisch, in- dem sie die mathematische Formhaftigkeit mit der mechanischen und materiellen Phänomenalität vereinheitlicht. Die vorliegende Abhand- lung ist ein Versuch, die Lehre der strukturellen Intuition hinsichtlich ihres erkenntnistheoretischen Potenzials auf eine epistemisch-struk- turelle Intuition zu erweitern und sie demnach als den Grundzug axiomatischer Intuitionen in den frühneuzeitlichen mathematischen und materiellen Wissenschaften zu begründen.

A moral obligation is binding upon us insofar as it has obligatory force. But where does obligatory force come from? Within the early modern theistic framework where Malebranche’s ethics is situated, there are two accounts of the source of obligatory force: rationalism and theological voluntarism. For rationalism, an obligation is binding because it is dictated by Reason, whereas for theological voluntarism, an obligation is binding because it is decreed by divine volition. Most commentators are inclined to read Malebranche as a rationalist, but in this paper I argue that Malebranche is a theological voluntarist. In spite of Malebranche’s commitment to God’s role in morality, I demonstrate that the moral arbitrariness of theological voluntarism, as indicated by the Euthyphro Dilemma, motivates Malebranche to constrain divine volition. Moreover, I show that Malebranche’s strategy of constraining divine volition rests upon a division – whereas obligatory force is grounded in divine volition, the content of obligation is grounded in Reason – so divine volition cannot arbitrarily decree what one is obliged to do. To summarize my reading, Malebranche is a theological voluntarist who tries to solve the Euthyphro Dilemma through a division between obligatory force and the content of obligation that ultimately constrains God’s legislative will.

Suddenly Don Quijote doubts his squire’s embassy. It would be miraculous for Sancho to have returned in just over three days because El Toboso is more than thirty leagues away, seventy-five miles or one hundred and twenty-five kilometers from where Don Quijote was in the Sierra Morena.

This paper offers a close reading of texts of Francis Bacon, who stands at the origins of the modern conception of work as a problem to be solved by the advance of science and technology.  From his earliest writings on natural philosophy, Bacon engages in a novel interpretation of the Biblical account of the Fall in Genesis.  Bacon reads the work in the Garden (Genesis 2.15) to be a form of contemplation, thereby de-emphasizing labor and departing from both the classical view of contemplation and the Christian exegetical tradition on this Biblical passage.
This paper shows how Bacon operates with four implied concepts of work: Sabbath, God’s work of creation, the work of the corrupted and fallen intellect, and the work of the intellect corrected and guided by Bacon’s method.  Sabbath is shown to be a state without the necessities of physical labor.  Next, natural philosophy to date is explained as having followed the wrong pattern of intellectual work, being the activity of a corrupted mind trying to comprehend a deceptive natural world and seeking a false Sabbath.  This view accounts for Bacon’s wholesale rejection of all existing scientific knowledge.  Science must instead be modeled on God’s “arch-type” of creation in Genesis 1.  The paper shows how Bacon follows this model which is the only hope for restoring us to the Sabbath Adam once enjoyed.  The paper closes with a brief examination of Bacon’s vision presented in the New Atlantis, in which physical labor is unnecessary and scientific research into “the knowledge of Causes, and secret motions of things” enjoys a privileged status.

Locke endorses a distinction between passive reflection and voluntary attentive reflection, which he occasionally labels contemplation. Failure to recognize this distinction properly has had an effect on interpretations of Locke’s theory of reflection, and caused puzzlement about the relation between reflection and consciousness. In particular, the function of reflection as a passive internal sense that produces simple ideas of mental operations has been downplayed in favour of the view that reflection in one manner or another involves attention and/or presupposes consciousness of mental operations. This has led a number of scholars to maintain, implicitly or explicitly, that Locke in fact abandons either his doctrine of sensation and reflection as the two exclusive sources of ideas or his doctrine of ideas as the only immediate objects of experience.

With the help of a distinction between reflection as a source of ideas and reflection as an operation about ideas I aim to show how Locke can hold to his empiricist maxim about the two sources of ideas and also endorse ideas as the only immediate objects of experience. A proper understanding of Locke’s theory of reflection requires that reflection and consciousness be delineated with respect to one another. I will show how Locke’s notion of consciousness differs from both types of reflection.

In this essay, I argue that a proper understanding of the Cartesian proof of the external world sheds light on some vexatious questions concerning his theory of sense perception. Three main points emerge from the discussion: a picture of the mind, conceived as the power of understanding, as essentially related to the physical world; an extension of rationality such that it includes a set of necessities that neither can be deduced from the principles furnished by pure understanding alone nor are to be found among the particular items of sense experience; and a conception of human sense perception as a composite power that includes sensory awareness as well as understanding, and so that establishes a sharp distinction between human and animal sensory awareness. As far as agency is a constitutive ingredient of human sense perception, Descartes’ doctrine is in line with some current versions of a virtue epistemology.

In this article, I inquire into the nature and role of attention in Locke’s empiricist theory of formation of ideas, that is, mental content of all types. More particularly, the context of our inquiry is the parallelism Locke sees between sensation and reflection as the origins of ideas. We will distinguish between two distinct notions of reflection, that which provides the mind with ideas of the mind’s own operations and that which designates the mind’s capacity to take the ideas it has as objects of its further mental operations. This involves distinguishing between non-volitional and volitional forms of attention, and further, between two strands of volitional attention. The most prevalent form of volitional attention includes a non-volitional element in that some ideas incite the mind to intent study and consideration. The most demanding form of attention is full-fledged volitional attention that stems solely from the mind’s own activity and is about the mind itself.
        By expounding the relatively complex constellation of attentive capacities and functions of which Locke avails himself in the theory of ideas he puts forth in An Essay concerning Human Understanding, the aim is to thereby show that and how attention is in the end in the very heart of Locke’s theory and indeed central for the type of investigation the Essay itself is.

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La présente étude porte sur la nature et le rôle de l’attention dans la théorie empiriste de la formation des idées soutenue par John Locke. A l’arrière-plan se trouve la conception lockienne d’un parallélisme de la sensation et de la réflexion en tant que sources des idées – c’est-à-dire de tous les contenus mentaux. Il nous faudra distinguer deux notions différentes de réflexion : celle qui fournit à l’esprit des idées de ses propres opérations, et celle qui désigne la capacité de l’esprit à prendre ses idées pour objets de nouvelles opérations mentales. Ceci nous conduira à distinguer entre une forme volontaire et une forme non volontaire de l’attention, et même entre deux formes d’attention volontaire. La forme principale d’attention volontaire comprend encore cet élément involontaire constitué par le fait que ce sont certaines idées qui incitent l’esprit à les examiner et à les considérer. Mais la forme la plus exigeante d’attention est l’attention pleinement volontaire qui ne résulte que de l’activité propre de l’esprit sur lui-même.
En exposant la constellation relativement complexe des capacités et des fonctions de l’attention mise en œuvre par Locke dans la théorie des idées telle qu’elle est présentée dans l’Essai sur l’entendement humain, notre intention est d’établir que l’attention se trouve en réalité au cœur de la théorie de Locke et qu’elle est essentielle au type de recherche mis en œuvre par l’Essai lui-même.