Classical Modern Philosophy introduces students to the famous philosophers of the 17th and 18th centuries and explores their most important works. Jeffrey Tlumak takes the reader on a chronological journey from Descartes to Kant, tracing the themes that run through the period and their interrelations. The main texts covered are: · Descartes' Meditations on First Philosophy · Spinoza's Ethics · Locke's Essay Concerning Human Understanding · Leibniz's Discourse on Metaphysics and Monadology · Berkeley's Treatise Concerning the Principles (...) of Human Knowledge · Hume's Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding and Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion · Kant's C ritique of Pure Reason and Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics Classical Modern Philosophy: A Contemporary Introduction is the ideal textbook to accompany a course in the history of modern philosophy, but each chapter can also be studied alone as an introduction to the featured philosopher or work. Jeffrey Tlumak outlines and assesses prominent interpretations of the texts, and surveys the legacy of each great thinker. (shrink)

Early Modern Philosophy Reconsidered: Essays in Honor of Paul Hoffman is an international collection of essays from both well-established and younger scholars. In keeping with the example of Hoffman's own work, the essays are written in the spirit of promoting serious philosophical engagement with the historical figures they discuss. Among the philosophers whose views are explored in the collection are Descartes, Spinoza, Leibniz, Berkeley, and Kant."--Publisher's website.

This paper offers a non-traditional account of what was really at stake in debates over the legitimacy of teleology and teleological explanations in the later medieval and early modern periods. It is divided into four main sections. The first section highlights two defining features of ancient and early medieval views on teleology, namely, that teleological explanations are on a par (or better) with efficient causal explanations, and that the objective goodness of outcomes may explain their coming about. The second (...) section argues that it was the first thesis – the thesis of explanatory parity –that came under attack by mainstream philosophers in the later medieval and early modern traditions, rather than teleology per se. The third section argues similarly that it was the second thesis – the thesis of explanatory goodness – that was the object of Spinoza’s critique of final causes, rather than teleology itself. Finally, the fourth section argues that Leibniz’s claim to be a champion of traditional teleology rests on his willingness to defend both the theses of explanatory parity and goodness against the very charges that led to their demise. The essay concludes by contrasting the narrative offered here with Don Garrett’s recent account according to which “it is not Leibniz but Spinoza who holds the position on teleology and teleological explanation nearest to that of Aristotle” (312). (shrink)

_ _ _Modern Philosophy: An Anthology_ features a broad range of selections from important but seldom anthologized works in the philosophy of psychology, natural science, morality, politics and religion. Features a broad range of selections from works in the philosophy of psychology, natural science, morality, politics and religion. Places the modern thinkers in conversation with each other, including Leibniz on Descartes and Spinoza, Reid on Locke and Hume, and Kant on Hobbes. Offers important, but seldom anthologized (...) primary works. (shrink)

ABSTRACT: Indifference is a term often used to describe the sort of freedom had by the will according to the libertarian, or Molinist account. It is thought to be a univocal term. In fact, however, it is used in at least seven different ways, in a variety of domains during the early modern period. All of them have plausible roots in Descartes, but he himself uses the term in only one sense, and failure to notice this consistent use by (...) him has bedeviled interpretations of his account of the will. (shrink)

This volume showcases the best current work now being written on a wide range of issues in early modern philosophy, when some of the most influential current philosophical problems were first identified by figures like Locke, Berkeley, Kant, Spinoza, and Descartes. Collectively the articles exemplify the wide range of methodological perspectives currently being employed by top figures in the field. Indeed the selling point of the volume is the very high level of the fourteen contributors, each of whom (...) has a highly distinguished international reputation. (shrink)

Part of the Blackwell Readings in the History of Philosophy series, this survey of early modern philosophy focuses on the key texts and philosophers of the period whose beliefs changed the course of western thought.

An Introduction to Modern European Philosophy , contains scholarly but accessible essays by nine British academics on Hegel, Schopenhauer, Kierkegaard, Marx, Nietzsche, Husserl, Heidegger, Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir, Maritain, Hannah Arendt, Habermas, Foucault, and the 'Events' of 1968. Written for English-speaking readers, it describes the varied traditions within 19th- and 20th-century European philosophy, reflecting the dynamism and plurality within the European tradition and presenting opposing points of view. It deals with both French and German philosophers, plus Kierkegaard, (...) and is not confined to any one school of thought. It has been purged of jargon but contains a glossary of important technical terms. There is a bibliography of further reading and website information at the end of each chapter. (shrink)

"Pre-modern philosophy" means the line of reflection that started with Plato andvAristotle, passed through Augustine and Boethius, and reached its acme in Aquinas, Scotus, and Suarez. The whole line was harshly judged by Descartes, then mocked by the empiricsts of the 18th Century. Why, then, did Pope Leo XII make a determined effort to revive it? And, more importantly, why was the revival a stunning success by the middle of the 20th Century? The answers to both questions are (...) found in a famous German book, Philosophie der Vorzeit by Josef Kleutgen, now available for the first time in English. Pre-ModernPhilosophy Defended shaped and strengthened Pope Leo's resolve. It showed how inaccurate the harsh judgments had been and how sadly inferior the modern replacements from Descartes to Hegel had turned out to be in many respects. Not in all. Kleutgen was no knee-jerk reactionary. He made no bones about the obsolete status of pre-Newtonian physics and cosmology. Rather, he focused on the central boast of "modern" thought, namely, that it had turned at least to the "subject" and had provided a long-needed thing called a "critique of knowledge." This book is must reading for intellectual historians and for philosophers working today in epistemology. But most of all, it is essential reading for laity and clergy concerned about revivals of modernism in the church. What was modernism, after all, but an attempt to make the Church revise her theology in the "light" of Kant or Hegel? This is why every Modernist knew Kleutgen's name and hated this book. Here is the first English translation (from the German) of the master work of Josef Kleutgen, the nineteenth century social philosopher whose thought lies at, or near, the heart of Catholic Social Thought. Kleutgen is widely and rightly seen as the shadow author of the social encyclicals of Leo XII. Leo's Rerum Novarum remains the origin and constant reference point of all Catholic Social Teaching. And Popes since have dated their own social encyclicals from Rerum Novarum - hence, Quadragesimo anno and Centesimus annus. --Gerard V. Bradley, University of Notre Dame Pre-Modern Philosophy Defended is must reading for intellectual historians and for philosophers working today in epistemology. And it is essential reading for laity and clergy concerned about revivals of modernism in the church. What was modernism, after all, but an attempt to make the Church revise her theology in the 'light' of Kant or Hegel? This is why every Modernist knew Kleutgen's name and hated Philosophie der Vorzeit (Pre-Modern Philosophy Defended). (shrink)

First published in 2002. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

This paper examines the pressures leading two very different Early Modern philosophers, Descartes and Locke, to invoke two ways in which thought is directed at objects. According to both philosophers, I argue, the same idea can simultaneously count as “of” two different objects—in two different senses of the phrase ‘idea of’. One kind of intentional directedness is invoked in answering the question What is it to think that thus-and-so? The other kind is invoked in answering the question What accounts (...) for the success of our proper methods of inquiry? For Descartes as well as Locke, the two kinds of “ofness” come apart as a result of strong rationalist commitments. However, I will suggest that even if we reject such commitments, we go wrong if we assume that a single kind of intentional directedness suffices to address both questions. (shrink)

Originally published in 1958, this book shows how a systematic consideration of what exactly may be meant by calling anything 'good', inevitably leads on to the more general and fundamental problem of the relations between value-judgments and statements of fact. It does on to explain some of the difficult and far-reaching issues which this problem involves. The book is intended as an introduction for students interested in finding out the nature and point of modern methods of philosophic analysis when (...) applied to problems of moral philosophy. (shrink)

Margaret J. Osler - Early Modern Philosophy: Mind, Matter, and Metaphysics - Journal of the History of Philosophy 44:3 Journal of the History of Philosophy 44.3 478-479 Christia Mercer and Eileen O'Neill, editors. Early Modern Philosophy: Mind, Matter, and Metaphysics. New York: Oxford University Press, 2005. Pp. xxi + 298. Cloth, $55.00. The editors of this collection of essays by the late Margaret Wilson's former students and colleagues present this book "as a snapshot of (...) state-of-the-art history of early modern philosophy" . Many of the usual suspects make an appearance in these pages: Descartes, Spinoza, Locke, Berkeley, Malebranche, and Kant. A couple of new faces also come on stage: Damaris Cudworth , best known as Locke's companion but presented here as a philosopher in her own right, and the Cartesian Bernard le Bouvier de.. (shrink)

ABSTRACTA primary theme in Leo Strauss’s early work is how medieval Jewish and Islamic political philosophy, while influenced by Plato, differs from him in crucial ways. This theme is central to Strauss’s 1935 book Philosophy and Law. Philosophy and Law concerns the medieval ‘philosophic foundation of the law,’ which provides a rational justification of revelation. For Strauss, the foundation provides this justification by virtue of some difference it has from Plato. In this paper, I offer a new (...) interpretation of Strauss’s view of this difference. I suggest that, for Strauss, whereas Plato conceived of the legislator and his legislation, the foundation conceives of the sovereign and his sovereign laws. On this basis, I also suggest a solution to a perennial mystery of Philosophy and Law: Strauss claims that the medieval foundation reveals ‘ultra-modern thoughts,’ yet does not explicitly state the identity of these thoughts. I suggest that their author is Carl Schmitt. (shrink)

The moral reinterpretation of Jesus conducted by Kant, Lessing and Feuerbach, is an interesting matter when it comes to the philosophy of religion. The abovementioned German philosophers claimed that Jesus ought to be understood only as a moral archetype and a revolutionist in morality. This concept arose on the grounds of moral religion which was one of the most interesting ideas of the Enlightenment. Thus, exploring this moral reinterpretation of Jesus is just an excuse to study the concept of (...) moral religion. Despite the fact that this idea is no longer current, it has immense influence on the contemporary philosophy of religion. Therefore, understanding the concept of moral religion can broaden the context of the contemporary discussion. (shrink)

Although there is a deep channel dividing British philosophy of religion from French thought associated with poststructuralism, much is to be gained from communication between the two. In this paper I explore three central areas of difference: the understanding of the subject, of language, and of God/religion. In each case I show that continental philosophy pursues these areas in ways which make issues of gender central to their understanding; and suggest that, while continental thought is neither monolithic nor (...) beyond criticism, its understandings of difference are of great value to religious thought. (shrink)

This volume contains four lectures that were offered by members of Yale University who have been engaged in studying Kant in the conviction that his ideas and reasonings are of particular value for us in our modern world.

The article analyzes the issues of the philosophy and ideology of the future from the point of view of the theory of self-organization, or synergetics. This interdisciplinary approach allows researchers to focus their efforts on the key problems of the development of civilization and, in particular, on designing the future. In the theory of valuable information developed by D.S. Chernavsky, it is shown that there is a number of knowledge, skills, and abilities that increase the probability of their holders (...) to survive and convey essential information to the future generations. In the 21st century, civilizational choice and ideology will be such knowledge. Several “brief histories of the future” are currently popular, from S. Lem and A. Toffler to J. Attali and S.P. Huntington. All of them focus on the projection onto society of achieved or promising industrial technical changes. D. Bell’s theory of post-industrial development as well as the theory of the humanitarian and technological revolution, which is actively developing at the present time, show that this is not correct. The key factor will be the image of the desired future, which underlies the ideology adopted by the elites and public consciousness. The article shows that now a choice is being made between the society that adopts a new leftist ideology or the New Middle Ages. The current socio-economic and military-political instability in the world, which was clearly demonstrated by the situation of the COVID-19 pandemic, shows that without it the world will be dependent on the establishment and other centers of power pursuing their own, far from common, interests. (shrink)

Indian monism and western thought.--Indian idealist metaphysics and western culture.

In the replies to my critics that follow I offer a more detailed account of the specific papers that they discuss or examine. The papers that they are especially concerned with are: “The Material World and Natural Religion in Hume’s Treatise” (Ryan) [Essay 3], “Hume’s Skepticism and the Problem of Atheism” (Fosl) [Essay 12], and “Hume’s Philosophy of Irreligion and the Myth of British Empiricism (Gautier) [Essay 16].

Oxford Studies in Early Modern Philosophy is an annual series, presenting a selection of the best current work in the history of early modern philosophy. It focuses on the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries--the extraordinary period of intellectual flourishing that begins, very roughly, with Descartes and his contemporaries and ends with Kant. It also publishes papers on thinkers or movements outside of that framework, provided they are important in illuminating early modern thought. The articles in OSEMP (...) will be of importance to specialists within the discipline, but the editors also intend that they should appeal to a larger audience of philosophers, intellectual historians, and others who are interested in the development of modern thought. (shrink)

This paper examines some sources of the concepts of existence, explanation, and force in ancient thought, and shows how those ideas have been altered in fundamental ways in modem physics. Some lessons for the philosophy of science, in particular implications for its methodology, are considered.

The early modern period in Western philosophy is the source of many of our most powerful and seductive intellectual commitments. While we may disagree with philosophers of this period, the terms of philosophical inquiry and our standards of rational argumentation are in part derived from the work of Descartes, Leibniz, Locke, Berkeley, Hume and Kant. For this reason, we will pursue a rigorous and sustained introduction to this episode of human intellectual history. We will cover topics in Metaphysics, (...) Epistemology and Philosophy of Mind. (shrink)

This article explores the creative work of Hryhorii Savych Skovoroda from the standpoint of the leading trends in contemporary philosophic thought: a communicative turn in philosophy, neo-Socratic dialogue, and ethics of discourse. Skovoroda’s philosophy is interpreted not only in line with the ‘know yourself’ principle as a method of cognition, but, first of all, within the Socratic dialogue dimension when the methods of maieutics and elentics are used for joint searching for truth and solving moral problems. Skovoroda did (...) not reduce philosophy to life, but he raised life to philosophy; philosophy itself was his life and in the first place, it was the practical philosophy of dialogue. Socratic dialogue appears in the practices of communication with people, in particular in the wandering habitus of the thinker. Wandering is an important element of his philosophy, his life, and his habitus. The wandering nature of Skovoroda’s habitus takes his dialogues beyond epistemology bringing the dialogue into a practical, or rather moral and practical plane. As an educator, Skovoroda draws on the Ukrainian culture habitus and practices and transcends this habitus and thus elevating it to the habitus of reason. This paper asserts the idea of the need and necessity to develop and to practice the neo-Skovoroda’s dialogue as a component of the global trend of dialogic civilization development. (shrink)

If Paideia means education in the classical sense, that is, education of the whole person, then authentically justifying such education in the modern world is extremely problematic. We are first drawn to practical defenses of a liberal education, that it is in itself of service and useful, both to society and to the individual. However, a practical defense of Paideia in the classical sense simply comes across as feeble and even a bit desperate and every savvy student knows it. (...) Far better, it seems, to take courses aimed at general problem solving, or at honing critical thinking skills, or at developing socio-political sophistication, than to read Shakespeare or Plato. (shrink)

"Comparative table : The chief philosophical woeks in France, Germany, England and America from 1851 to 1921." : [341] - [347].

Although this collection of articles is not formally a commentary on Elizabeth Anscombe's famous article of the same title, in which she criticised the moral philosophy prevalent in 1958, a number of the contributors do take Anscombe's work as a starting point. Taken together the collection could be seen as a demonstration of the extent to which moral philosophers have since attempted to answer Anscombe's challenge, and to develop an approach to their subject which, while psychologically plausible, is neither (...) based on divine law nor permissive of the impermissible. (shrink)

Philosophy seems to be an obsolete human interest today not because it is really obsolete but because its development comes into the full and thus becomes hidden into the scene in the name of development itself. The trend of this so-called modern time is technological and practical. This is so because philosophy in the history of mankind reaches its second level i.e. the level of praxis, the practical level. Even the trend in education as well as in (...) the field of industry is more on hands-on, manual, technological and practical level. Philosophy belongs to speculative science but is a perfect science which contains both the level of knowledge (philos) and the level of wisdom (Sophia). It also adheres to education as a lifelong process because it aims at learning new theories. Its ultimate aim is to turn thought into action, knowledge into wisdom, science into technology, theory into praxis, and faith into charity. And so its essence and spirit moves the current trend of modern education and industry in the process of development in search for the truth. KEYWORDS: Introduction to Philosophy, Foundation, Modern Education, Qualitative ResearchDesign, Philippines. (shrink)

This Is A New Release Of The Original 1910 Edition.

Abstract Psychology's goal has been to become a science, taking the modern natural sciences as the model. It has not been understood that each science undergoes a transition from early disunification to later unification, that a fundmental dimension is involved that differentiates sciences. Psychology is a modern disunified science, distinguished by its chaotic knowledge and ways of operating. A philosophy of science based on modem unified science, as philosophies generally are, is inappropriate as a means of understanding (...) psychology or of guiding its development. We need a philosophy to describe the special problems of theory construction of modern disunified sciences, and to advance paths by which to work on those problems. Theory tasks to be undertaken in large quantities range from articles to reduce artificial diversity to the construction of grand unified theory. Psychology must begin those tasks, and it must understand its characteristics as a modern disunified science, if it is to make good decisions concerning its development and organization. Otherwise it will continue on its path towards fragmentation, an impenetrable obstacle to full development as a science and a profession. (shrink)

This provocative reassessment of modern philosophy explores its nonrational dimensions and connection to ancient mysteries. Delving beneath the principal discourses of philosophyfrom Descartes through Kant, Bernard Freydberg plumbs the previously concealed dark forces that ignite the inner power of modern thought. He contends that reason itself issues from an implicit and unconscious suppression of the nonrational. Even the modern philosophical concerns of nature and limits are undergirded by a dark side that dwells in them and makes (...) them possible. Freydberg traces these dark sources to the poetry of Hesiod, the fragments of Heraclitus and Parmenides, and the Platonic dialogues and claims that they rear their heads again in the work of Spinoza, Schelling, and Nietzsche. Freydberg does not set forth a critique of modern philosophy but explores its intrinsic continuity with its ancient roots. (shrink)

Modern Philosophy is an exploration of the ideas of six major thinkers from Descartes to Hume. It takes a fresh and engaging look at the common themes that dominate this period, as well as examining the differences in the work of the six philosophers. Through vivid and witty prose, Richard Francks skilfully presents ideas that have informed the development of philosophy as we know it, and which present a challenge to beliefs and attitudes that most of us (...) now share. In this work we find the source of modern philosophical inquiry - questions such as the existence of God, the Mind and Body problem, the idea of self, and the existence of the world had their birth in these texts - as well as broader questions about political and social philosophy. Thinkers discussed: Rene Descartes Baruch Spinoza Gottfried Willhelm Leibniz John Locke George Berkeley David Hume This will be ideal for anybody coming to the ideas of these philosophers for the first time. (shrink)

While people have a remarkable facility for understanding often hugely complex forms of communication and interaction in everyday cultural and social contexts, from the structures of symphonic works to what their partner means when they say “I don't understand Brahms”, philosophical analysis seeks to isolate one form of understanding as if it were the key to all others. In order to become language, noises and marks have to be in a manner in which non‐linguistic things are not. The essential divide (...) in contemporary approaches to these concerning language and understanding lies between those, who think that a theory of meaning must also give us an account of the notion of truth without presupposing an understanding of truth, and those, like Heidegger, who think truth must in some way be presupposed. It is here that the hermeneutic tradition allows to consider one of the least adequately addressed issues in modern philosophy. (shrink)