17th Century & 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.

Catharine Trotter Cockburn is best known for her _Defence of Mr. Locke’s Essay of Human Understanding_ (1702). However very little has been said about Trotter’s treatment of Locke’s metaphysical commitments therein. In this paper I give a brief description of the history of Trotter’s _Defence_. Thereafter I focus on two (of the many) objections to which Trotter responds on Locke’s behalf: 1) the objection that Locke has not proved the soul immortal, and 2) the objection that Locke’s view leads to the absurd consequence that our souls are in constant flux. I argue that Trotter offers a compelling response to both of these charges. This is not only because of what Trotter explicitly claims in the _Defence_, but also because the _Defence_ invites and encourages the reader to return to Locke’s text. I then argue that in Trotter we find additional insights and clarifications once we move past the two objections I just mentioned, and on to the related topic of personal identity.  In this short paper I am not able to offer a full explication or evaluation of Trotter’s treatment of Locke’s metaphysical commitments. I am, however, able to show that this aspect of Trotter’s _Defence_ warrants careful consideration and further study.

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.

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.

The First of the Modern Ottomans blends biography with intellectual history. On the one hand, it is the story of an Ottoman life – the life of the scribe, ambassador, and prolific historian Ahmed Vâsıf (ca. 1735-1806), a man who improbably rose from obscurity in Baghdad to travel the empire, fight its wars, advise its sultans, and, in time, write its history. As a full-scale biography, the book is a rarity for the field of Ottoman history and reconstructs Vâsıf’s life, career, and opinions through meticulous research in both Ottoman and European sources. On the other hand, The First of the Modern Ottomans is also one of the first detailed intellectual studies of the early modern Ottoman Empire. Weaving together Vâsıf’s life and thought with the larger intellectual currents of the day – especially at the court of Sultan Selim III in Istanbul – it explores central debates among the Ottoman ruling elite over Europe, political reform, war and peace, justice, and the empire’s renewal. Vâsıf’s life reveals a vital response to the empire’s challenges at the turn of the nineteenth century – one that was novel and deeply enmeshed in Islamic philosophy, ethics, and statecraft.

Fracasado el Coloquio de Poissy (1561), y desestimada en consecuencia toda posibilidad de reconciliación bajo una única fe, la concordia dejará paso a la tolerancia. Será el canciller Michel de L’Hôpital (1504-1573) el encargado de enarbolar el nuevo estandarte, y el Edicto de Enero (1562) el marco legal de la pretendida coexistencia pacífica entre las confesiones. Ideal fugaz y fallido que dará lugar, tan sólo dos meses más tarde, con la matanza de Vassy, a un extenso período de guerras civiles de religión. Múltiples y variados serán los intentos filosóficos por hacer frente a esta profunda crisis de descomposición política y religiosa que afectará a Francia con particular virulencia. De entre esos intentos de respuesta, son sólo dos -y con extrema brevedad, por cierto- los que pretendemos presentar a lo largo de este escrito. En primer lugar referiremos a la posición de Jean Bodin (1530-1596), quien en su Repúblique (1576), y ante el gran poderío adquirido en pocos años por las diversas facciones -como la Liga Católica o el ejército hugonote-, propondrá la instauración de un poder político superior a cada una ellas. Un poder absoluto y sin vínculos religiosos. En segundo lugar daremos la palabra a Michel de Montaigne (1533-1592), quien desde una perspectiva escéptica, y conociendo los numerosos inconvenientes políticos que pueden provocar los cambios repentinos en la legislación, presentará en sus Ensayos (1580) una dura batalla contra los hugonotes. Del mismo modo en que Bodin había llegado a creer que la solución a la crisis de la fe podía ser alcanzada a través de la instauración de único rey, Montaigne concluirá que el mejor modo de evitar la desintegración será admitir una única ley.

Depuis 1633, date à laquelle Descartes range son Monde dans un tiroir pour éviter d’avoir les mêmes ennuis que Galilée, aucun éditeur n’a jamais publié ce livre comme tel, et dans l’ordre où le souhaitait Descartes.
Cependant, pour Descartes lui-même, c’est un traité à part, même s’il est resté inachevé. L’homme est en effet le chapitre XVIII du Monde. Leur dissociation est dommageable car elle masque le projet même de Descartes, qui est d’articuler la révolution de Copernic à celle de Vésale, et de proposer ainsi une relation nouvelle de l’homme et  du monde, où la médecine joue un rôle éminent.
Cette édition intégrale du Monde est donc un événement - en ce qu’elle procure un  texte complet, scrupuleusement établi (modernisé dans son orthographe et sa ponctuation), introduit par Annie Bitbol-Hespériès et annoté par Annie Bitbol-Hespériès et Jean-Pierre Verdet.

This paper is on Descartes' account of modality and, in particular, his account of the necessity of the laws of nature. He famously argues that the necessity of the "eternal truths" of logic and mathematics depends on God's will. Here I suggest he has the same view about the necessity of the laws of nature. Further, I argue, this is a plausible theory of laws. For philosophers often talk about something being physically necessary because of the laws of nature, but this necessity is thought to be metaphysically contingent. However, they struggle to explain how the laws could be genuinely necessary while being metaphysically contingent. The chief advantage of Descartes' view, I argue, is that God's will can plausibly explain both the necessity of the laws (because God made them necessary) and the contingency of the laws (because God could have done otherwise). So, Descartes' theistic account of laws provides a plausible explanation, perhaps the best explanation, of the contingent-necessity of laws of nature.

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.

This most recent edition of the bibliography contains almost 21,200 titles in English (64%) and French (36%), with an introductory section on historiography. It deals with every aspect of Italian history and culture from the Late Renaissance to the French Revolution.

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.

Es indudable la importancia de la noción de función para la matemática y la lógica actuales y es sabido que es G. W. Leibniz quien utiliza por vez primera el término función en un sentido matemático, un término que, además, es introducido en el marco de su cálculo infinitesimal. Puesto que el pensador alemán es, junto con I. Newton, uno de los descubri­dores del cálculo, suele pensarse que también debemos a él el concepto de función. Sin embargo, poco se ha escrito sobre la manera específica en la que Leibniz utilizó el término función, evadiendo con frecuencia la pregunta de si acaso el término y el concepto han correspondido siempre. En el presente trabajo exploramos el significado del término en el contexto de su surgimiento: el manuscrito de 1673 "De functionibus". Con tal objetivo, hacemos, en primer lugar, una breve reconstrucción de la historia del instinto de funcionalidad que sirva de marco para comprender el significado del término función. Este significado es obtenido, en segundo lugar, atendiendo a los usos que el autor hace del término en dicho manuscrito.

Recent feminists have critiqued G.W. Leibniz’s Theodicy for its effort to justify God’s role in undeserved human suffering over natural and moral evil. These critiques suggest that theodicies which focus on evil as suffering alone obfuscate how to thematize evil, and so they conclude that theodicies should be rejected and replaced with a secularized notion of evil that is inextricably tied to the experiences of the victim. This paper argues that the political philosophy found in the writings of Catherine Macaulay (1731–1791) can serve as a support to Leibniz’s larger claims and can also offer a more concrete, situated notion of evil that escapes the contemporary feminist critique. Macaulay’s work on natural and moral political evil, especially, will be presented as an early modern precursor to feminism, which defends divine perfection and a pre-established harmony in the face of political evil. I then identify three unique theodicical arguments in Macaulay’s work: the pragmatically beneficial defense, the eschatalogical defense, and the redemptive defense.

L’âge classique peut assez paradoxalement être qualifié tant comme âge de la transparence, que comme âge du code, voire du surcodage. Cet article vise à tempérer la première qualification, toute foucaldienne, par la seconde, en étudiant deux types d’oblicité du discours propres à cette période : le langage gestuel, et les langues universelles et artificielles. Il s’agit de montrer comment ces réflexions, portant sur deux modes apparemment opposés de « dire sans dire », peuvent se ramener à un même changement dans l’attitude par rapport au langage. Cette posture se caractérise, d’abord, par la méfiance. Elle considère le langage comme un obstacle. La réaction qui s’ensuit est de prétendre, par le mécanisme prédominant, atteindre à un contrôle de la communication, ce qui mène pas à pas à l’idée que la pensée n’est pas séparée du langage et que l’on ne peut penser sans signes.

"Enlightened Monks investigates the social, cultural, philosophical, and theological challenges the German Benedictines had to face between 1740 and 1803, and how the Enlightenment process influenced the self-understanding and lifestyle of these religious communities. It had an impact on their forms of communication, their transfer of knowledge, their relationships to worldly authorities and to the academic world, and also their theology and philosophy. The multifacetedachievements of enlightened monks, which included a strong belief in individual freedom, tolerance, human rights, and non-violence, show that monasticism was on the way to becoming fully integrated into the Enlightenment. Ulrich L. Lehner refutes the widespread assumption that monks were reactionary enemies ofEnlightenment ideas. On the contrary, he demonstrates that many Benedictines implemented the new ideas of the time into their own systems of thought. This revisionist account contributes to a better understanding not only of monastic culture in Central Europe, but also of Catholic religious culture in general.

Reviews:
 
"Lehner is nothing if not a thorough and industrious scholar, and the wealth of information he has amassed alone makes this book a valuable resource. But he is also a fluid writer, with an eye for piquant details and arresting stories, ensuring that the narrative is enlivened along the way by a great number of vivid and sensitive portraits of individuals."
Darrin McMahon, The Catholic Historical Review

"This book is of the same calibre as Derek Beale's magisterial work about monasticism during the Ancien Régime."
Rainald Becker, Francia Recensio

"No scholar interested in early modern monasticism or Catholicism, the Catholic or German enlightenments, or religion and the Enlightenment can afford to overlook this book ... This book deeply contextualizes intellectual and religious history. One of its great virtues is the way it combines monastic responses to new historical, legal, philosophical, and theological ideas with concrete attention to monastic material culture, social practices and institutional innovations."
Brad S. Gregory, Theological Studies

"Beautifully written and cogently argued, Lehner’s book makes a thoroughly convincing case for – what those clinging to a Voltairean Enlightenment will hardly believe – enlightened monks."
James Lees, Eighteenth Century Studies

"This fascinating book … might stimulate monastic communities today to ask whether they too could learn from the Enlightened Monks."
James Leachmann, Benedictine Culture

"This book is highly entertaining."
Johannes Reich, Erbe und Auftrag

"A stimulating book that will leave no one indifferent!"
Daniel Misonne, Revue Benedictine

"Many of the ideas and reforms of these eighteenth century Benedictines are in many ways strikingly similar to the radical changes in monasticism after the Second Vatican Council. … It is the great merit of this book to have saved these enlightened Benedictines from oblivion and to have unearthed a monastic culture that was characterized by its openness to modernity."
Klaus Schatz, Theologie und Philosophie


"Engagingly written, deeply researched, and seriously engaged with current research, Lehner’s work demonstrates that the Enlightenment was far more than a secular movement pitted against an obscurantist religious outlook. It was, rather, a multi-faceted trend to reconcile science and reason with matters of faith. Enlightened Monks illustrates how, paradoxically, an institution known most as a relic of the medieval past actually stood on the front lines of this endeavor."
from the Gilmary Shea Prize Committee

"This little summary doesn’t do justice to the book’s range and depth of research. Lehner offers, among other things, an excellent description of mo- nastic prisons, as well as deftly drawn portraits of various savants, rogues, and dreamers in and out of the mon- asteries. Enlightened Monks also pro- vides important context for the later German revival of theology centered in nineteenth-century Tübingen. Despite its somewhat recherché title, this is one the most interesting books I’ve read this year."
Lawrence S. Cunningham, Commonweal

"This very learned and highly original book, based on little-known and often obscure sources, reveals the existence of a remarkable subculture of Enlightened, even revolutionary, monks who had personal as well as literary and philosophical connexions with the non-monastic world."
Journal Ecclesiastical History, Derek Beales, Cambridge

Lehner's work marks a significant step in original research. His extensive citation of archival sources offers a new perspective on European religious culture... The book's content appeals to a wide range of scholars and is not reserved for the narrow musings of the specialist. The sociologist and historian will be intrigued as will the philosopher and the theologian.
Journal of Church and State

"Far from idle malingerers or enemies of Enlightenment, Lehner recounts how these monks interacted with and contributed to the Enlightenment. Lehner's monks voraciously consumed Enlightenment-era scholarship, supported reforms that would relax monastic duties in favor of a life of knowledge, invoked the language of natural rights to call for freedom of conscience and privacy from their abbots, corresponded with other luminaries, gave public lectures, produced original research on sacred and secular topics, and thus fully participated in the Republic of Letters. As such, Lehner has proffered a convincing argument that the German Benedictines might be counted not only as constituents of the Catholic Aufklärung, but as figures who existed squarely within the Enlightenment itself."
Religious Studies Reviews

"As a model of contemporary historiography and engaging scholarship, Enlightened Monks is about as good as it gets." J. Yegge, catholicbooksreview.org

"Die zunaechst als Praemisse begruendete besondere Affinitaet des Benediktinerordens zur Aufklaerung wird ueberzeugend nachgewiesen, katholische Aufklaerung erhaelt ein weiteres Profil."
S. Benz, Historische Zeitschrift"

Streszczenie: W poniższej pracy przestawiam koncepcje Thomasa More’a i Niccolo Machiavellego w odniesieniu do poglądów Leo Straussa. Najpierw przeprowadzam analizę poglądów zawartych w Księciu jako przykład rozwiązania nowożytnego, a następnie treści Utopii jako przykładu rozwiązania klasycznego. W kolejnej części pracy pokazuję elementy nowożytne w koncepcji More’a, a także rys historyczny myślenia utopijnego. Tak przeprowadzona analiza ma pokazać, że wbrew temu co pisał Leo Strauss, myślenie nowożytne nie rozwijało się wyłącznie na fundamencie Machiavellego, ale miało także źródło w poglądach More’a.

Abstract: In this paper I want to present the concepts of Thomas More and Niccolo Machiavelli in connection with the beliefs of Leo Strauss. Firstly, I analyze The Prince as an example of the modern solution and then Utopia as an example of the classic solution. In the next part of my work I present modern elements of Thomas More’s concept and the historical view on the utopian thinking. This analysis is to show that, in contrast to Leo Strauss’ beliefs, modern thinking was influenced not only by Machiavelli but also by More.
Słowa kluczowe:

Au seuil de la modérnité, la diversité des langues humaines pose aux philosophes non plus seulement des questions théoriques, mais encore des problèmes pratiques, liés au progressif abandon du latin comme langue institutionnelle de la philosophie. La réflexion philosophique sur le langage se double d'une exigence pratique qui mène les philosophes à réfléchir sur leur propre langue. L'oeuvre de Leibniz est, à ce propos, exemplaire: outre à étudier " en théoricien " les langues naturelles, en les envisageant sous de multiples points de vue , Leibniz a traité à plusieurs reprises la question de la langue philosophique optimale, et il a concrètement expérimenté les performances expressives d'idiomes différents, jusqu'à se poser le problème de leur traductibilité réciproque. C'est principalement cette approche " pragmatique " au problème du langage qui retiendra ici notre attention, bien que pour comprendre les solutions leibniziennes il faudra questionner encore leur arrière-plan théorique.

Many critics, Descartes himself included, have seen Hobbes as uncharitable or even incoherent in his Objections to the Meditations on First Philosophy. I argue that when understood within the wider context of his views of the late 1630s and early 1640s, Hobbes's Objections are coherent and reflect his goal of providing an epistemology consistent with a mechanical philosophy. I demonstrate the importance of this epistemology for understanding his Fourth Objection concerning the nature of the wax and contend that Hobbes's brief claims in that Objection are best understood as a summary of the mechanism for scientific knowledge found in his broader work. Far from displaying his confusion, Hobbes's Fourth Objection in fact pinpoints a key weakness of Descartes's faculty psychology: its unintelligibility within a mechanical philosophy.

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.

Il tema è quello del rapporto parti-tutto nella Lettera 32 di Spinoza. Dopo aver preso spunto dalle opposte traduzioni del testo per mettere in luce alcune difficoltà interpretative, delineo due possibili letture: o le cose in quanto parti non possono essere totalità, e in quanto totalità non possono essere parti, oppure questi due diversi modi di considerare le le cose possono integrarsi e convivere. Mostrando la necessità di preferire la seconda lettura alla prima, metto in luce la nuova concezione della res e della sua efficacia causale implicita nella mereologia abbozzata nella Lettera 32.

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