Both critics and defenders of Kant’sReligion within the Boundaries of Mere Reasonhave raised worries about its alleged employment of an ‘Augustinian’ conception of moral evil as well as the accounts of grace and moral regeneration consequent to it. Combined, these aspects of theReligionare often seen as responsible for its principal ‘wobble’, ‘conundrum’ or ‘internal contradiction’, and are likewise among the key reasons why theReligionis commonly seen as at odds with the epistemic strictures and moral principles which shape Kant’s broader Critical (...) corpus. It is the purpose of this article to reassess these charges and to show thereby that rather than accepting this alleged Augustinianism, Kant engages with and ultimatelyrejectsits core tenets. (shrink)

Camus himself called The Plague his most anti-Christian text, and most theologically oriented readings of the text agree. This paper shows how the sermons of Fr. Paneloux—an Augustine scholar--as well as Dr. Rieux’s mother present an Augustinian picture of love. This love opposes the passionate concupiscence for possession of things with the divine love which wishes for the constant conscious presence of the beloved in the light of the good. Such is possible for us, as Augustine exhibits and helps us (...) practice, if one reads the world as it really is—temporal signs of the eternal goodness, wisdom and presence of God—which Augustine discovers “too late.” While the doctor describes Oran as a city “without intimations” many elements of the text intimate otherwise. In such an Augustinian sacramental reading the “problem of evil” disappears. (shrink)

That Oakeshott and Arendt's political works contain Augustinian references is well known. What historians of political thought have had difficulty in is assessing the consistency and importance of the Augustinian themes within their work. It transpires that the traces of existentialism and personalism in Augustine are amplified and clarified by their use in Oakeshott and Arendt, to the extent that they form an important subtext to their work. One stumbling block for scholars attempting to link the ?mature? works of Oakeshott (...) and Arendt to Augustine has been a sense of disparity between the eschatological character of Augustine's writings and the civic worldliness of Oakeshott's associations and Arendt's public realm. Returning to several strands of twentieth-century Augustinianism, from the personalist to the existentialist to the liberal, reveals an Augustinianism that is much more credibly linked to the whole of Oakeshott and Arendt's writings. (shrink)

It is a great virtue of Robin Douglass’s new book that it distinguishes clearly between the various elements of Mandeville's thought. Douglass's primary concern in Mandeville's Fable is what he cal...

I analyze the complex relations between Pascal and the three figures of Montaigne, Descartes, and St. Augustine, and the relations the first two figures bear to St. Augustine. For Pascal's philosophy, one is in effect a resource , another a way of thinking that he makes his own , and yet another serves as a model . I further investigate Pascal's anti-Augustinism, that is, some of the points of resistance in Pascal against the thought of St. Augustine. Central to this (...) investigation is the famous rapprochement between the cogitos of Augustine and Descartes, which requires a consideration of what, for Pascal, it means "to say the same thing." This analysis leads us to two conclusions: first, Augustine's The City of God should be placed among the number of works that Pascal did not read; second, there are fundamental philosophical reasons for Pascal to reject certain theses central to that work. Above all, there should no longer be any need to assume a merely abstract conception of an unproblematic Augustinianism in Pascal. (shrink)

Since Brentano, intentionality has become a key feature of debates within philosophy of mind and epistemology, expressing the directedness and the aboutness of mental acts. In recent decades, a wide range of studies has shown the historical background of this concept beyond the historical sources Brentano himself acknowledged. Augustine (354–430) has been prominently mentioned in some of these studies, the focus of which has mostly been on the aboutness aspect, that is to say on how this mental event is about (...) a particular thing. I think there is yet another side to Augustine’s account of intentionality and this is the general undetermined directedness of the soul to the world, which results from its way of being in the body. Such an account commits Augustine to a certain account of perception, one which does not accept that we are causally acted upon by material things, but rather suggests that we are the agents, and causes, of our own cognitive acts. This is true not only of Augustine but also of many medieval authors within the tradition of Augustinian philosophy of perception. The focus of this article is how this position is elaborated in some thinkers of the Middle Ages, namely Henry of Ghent (1217–1293) and Peter John Olivi (1248–1298). (shrink)

Phenomenologists turn to Augustine to remedy the neglect of life, love, and language in the Cartesian cogito: (1) concerning life, Edmund Husserl appropriates Augustine’s analysis of distentio animi, Edith Stein of vivo, and Hannah Arendt of initium; (2) concerning love, Max Scheler appropriates Augustine’s analysis of ordo amoris, Martin Heidegger of curare, and Dietrich von Hildebrand of affectiones; (3) concerning language, Ludwig Wittgenstein appropriates Augustine’s analysis of ostendere, Hans-Georg Gadamer of verbum cordis, and Jean-Luc Marion of confessio. Phenomenology’s non-Cartesian (...) class='Hi'>Augustinianism can tell us something about phenomenology, namely that it is engaged in the project of recontextualizing the cogito, and something about Augustine, namely how radically different his project is than Descartes’s. Phenomenology presents an Augustine that is well positioned for the debates of our times concerning mind and world, desire and the human person, and language and embodiment. (shrink)

This paper argues that the neo-Augustinian outlook of the French moral tradition has been used for too long as a Procrustean bed, thereby depreciating the Dutch background of Mandeville's thought. In particular, Johan and Pieter de la Court were an important source of inspiration for Mandeville. In trying to come to terms with commercial society, the brothers developed a positive theory of interest and the passions, emphasizing the social utility of self-interest and honour in securing the health and wealth of (...) the commonwealth. By combining elements from neo-Augustinian and Dutch commercial republican discourses, Mandeville devised a new logic for interpreting the nature and growth of commercial society, which was to inspire intense debate. (shrink)

In 12th-Century France, political Augustinianism inherited from Gregory and Isidore was based on the absolute supremacy of spiritual power over temporal power in the name of the absolute primacy of grace over fallen nature. This could easily solve the question of what should true dominium be in a society based on Christian values. Just rule was connected with a ruler who was sanctioned by the Church: the king of France, defender of the Pax Dei. The Siege of Germigny shows (...) how cynical realpolitik finds philosophical justification in political Augustinianism. (shrink)

This chapter examines the views of seventeenth-century British philosophers on passions and affections. It explains that about 8,000 books published during this period mentioned passion and that it started with Thomas Wright's Passions of the Mind in General. The chapter also explores the intellectual basis of the writers who wrote about passion – which includes Augustinianism, Aristotelianism, stoicism, Epicureanism, and medicine – and furthermore, analyzes the relevant works of Francis Bacon, Thomas Hobbes, Henry More, and Lord Shaftesbury.

The limits and secularity of political life have been signature themes of modern Augustinianism, often couched in non-theological language of realism and the role of religion in public life. In dialogue with Gilbert Meilaender, this article inverts and theologizes that interest by asking how Augustinian pilgrims might characterize the positive relation of political history to saving history and the ways in which political action in time might teach us something about the nature of salvation that comes to us from (...) beyond history. This relation of continuity and discontinuity eludes dogmatic formulation, but the goal of the present article is to see where a shared Augustinianism and a shared commitment to aspects of the liberal political tradition might find illuminating disagreement. (shrink)

This book examines the contributions of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century French women philosophers and intellectuals to moralist writing. Moralist writing, a distinctively French genre, draws on philosophical and literary traditions extending back to classical antiquity. Closely connected to salon culture and influenced by Augustinianism, it engages social and political questions, epistemology, moral psychology, and virtue ethics. The first half of the book analyzes women’s use of moralist forms such as the essay, maxim, and “character” or portrait to explore classical topics: (...) self-knowledge and knowledge of the self, the ethics and obligations of friendship, the relation of the passions to happiness. The second half focuses on topics that relate directly to women’s lifeworld: the critique of the institution of marriage, the status of older women, and the question of women’s nature and capabilities. Each chapter traces the evolution of women’s moralist thought from the late seventeenth century to the Enlightenment and the decades immediately following the French Revolution, a period of tremendous change in the horizon of possibilities for women as public figures and intellectuals. (shrink)

One of the unsolved problems for the historical and philosophical thought of Ukraine is the lack of reflection on the phenomenon of Ukrainian neo-Thomism. Today, there has not been reconstructed the history of this trend, which had been actively developing in the interwar Western Ukraine since the time of socio-ethical letters by Andrei Sheptytsky in the early XX century, gained new connotations in the diaspora from 1940s to 1990s and acquired new forms in Roman Catholic thought in Ukraine at the (...) beginning of the XXI century. Moreover, a comprehensive historical and philosophical assessment of the achievements and shortcomings of Ukrainian neo-Thomism at different stages of its development has not been made. Meanwhile, Ukrainian neo-Thomism is experiencing a crisis, which it is trying to overcome by translating controversial works devoted mainly to the history of moral theology. The main feature of the proposed works is the oscillation between the need to recognize the presence of a person’s spiritual-intellectual and moral-volitional intuitions and the reluctance to recognize it openly, because it would be contrary to the very principles of Thomism. Modern Ukrainian neo-Thomism inherits this contradiction, and therefore the choice of classic books for translation reflects the dialectic of the struggle of different tendencies, which objectively cannot contribute to the legitimization of neo-Thomism in the Ukrainian philosophical discourse. Especially significant in this regard was the translation of the book by the classic of Polish neo-Thomism Mieczysław Krąmpiec “Why evil?”, because this monograph shows the contradiction of neo-Thomistic thought in the key issues about the possibility of person’s moral intuition, moral responsibility and dignity. The very refusal of Krąmpiec to recognize the existence of a person’s spiritual-intellectual and moral-volitional intuitions, despite all the prerequisites for such recognition, leads the monograph Why evil? to failure and to inability to answer the question stated in the title of the monograph. All this justifies that in the time of Pope Benedict XVI and Pope Francis moral theology and social doctrine moved to neo-Augustinianism, which unequivocally recognizes that the person has spiritual-intellectual and moral-volitional intuitions. (shrink)

Pascal, turning Augustinianism inside out, radically expanded the powers of imagination implicit in the work of Montaigne and Descartes, and made imagination ...

Augustine—for all of his influence on Western culture and politics—was hardly a liberal. Drawing from theology, feminist theory, and political philosophy, Eric Gregory offers here a liberal ethics of citizenship, one less susceptible to anti-liberal critics because it is informed by the Augustinian tradition. The result is a book that expands Augustinian imaginations for liberalism and liberal imaginations for Augustinianism. Gregory examines a broad range of Augustine’s texts and their reception in different disciplines and identifies two classical themes which (...) have analogues in secular political theory: love—and related notions of care, solidarity, and sympathy—and sin—as well as related notions of cruelty, evil, and narrow self-interest. From an Augustinian point of view, Gregory argues, love and sin constrain each other in ways that yield a distinctive vision of the limits and possibilities of politics. In providing a constructive argument for Christian participation in liberal democratic societies, Gregory advances efforts to revive a political theology in which love’s relation to justice is prominent. _Politics and the Order of Love _will provoke new conversations for those interested in Christian ethics, moral psychology, and the role of religion in a liberal society. (shrink)

In Augustinian fashion, James B. Ashbrook and Carol Rausch Albright develop a neurotheology that finds evolutionarily based correlations between the functions of the human mind‐brain and the roles God plays in human life. I argue that their assumptions of anthropomorphism, that the human mind‐brain must conceptualize its environment in human terms, and realism, that anthropomorphism is correct, are evolutionarily unlikely. I conclude that the image of God (imago dei) the authors find reflected in the human mind‐brain appears to derive from (...) their Christian religious commitments rather than from evolutionary theory. (shrink)

A widespread historiographical portrayal represented Descartes' dualism as constituted in direct contrast with Aquinas' concept of soul-form. In the wake of the many studies that have opposed this prejudice in recent decades, this book reconstructs the fifteenth and seventeenth-century debate on psychology, focusing primarily on the Jesuit context and on the intersection between Aristotelianism, Platonism, and Augustinianism in early modern France. Beginning with a rigorous investigation of the theories of the separated soul, particular attention is then given to the (...) indirect derivation of the Cartesian cogito and innatism from angelological themes of the time. Indeed, in the years in which Descartes elaborates his metaphysics, the immediate proximity between souls and angels is somehow a matter of fact, in the light of which many of the argumentative choices of the Meditations, and even the relationship that closely joins the "thinking substance" with the body-machine, appear clear. -/- . (shrink)

This article reconstructs Bernard Mandeville’s pride-centred theory of recognition and advances two main arguments. First, I maintain that Mandeville really did regard pride as a vice and took the prevalence of this passion as evidence of our morally compromised nature. Mandeville’s account of pride may have been indebted to French neo-Augustinian moralists, yet I show that the moral connotations he associated with the passion are based on a naturalistic analysis of our moral psychology and do not depend upon endorsing any (...) theological assumptions about our fallen condition. Second, I offer a qualified defence of Mandeville’s pride-centred theory against other eighteenth-century philosophers – Archibald Campbell, David Hume and Adam Smith – who presented the desire for social esteem in a more positive light. Even if there is nothing troubling about a moderate and well-regulated desire for esteem, I suggest that Mandeville’s analysis remains deeply unsettling in so far as it reveals the extent of pride behind our desire for recognition. (shrink)

Herdt's Putting On Virtue has two chief aims. The first is to champion the virtue tradition against Christian moral quietism and modern deontological ethics. The second is to facilitate reconciliation between Augustinian and Emersonian virtue. To accomplish these tasks Herdt constructs a counter-narrative to Schneewind's Invention of Autonomy, in which Luther's resignation and Kant's innovation are tragic consequences of “hyper-Augustinianism”—a competitive conception of divine and human agency, which leads to excessive suspicion of acquired virtue. This review argues that Putting (...) On Virtue succeeds in its first aim but leaves its second intriguingly uncompleted. Despite this deficiency, however, this essay also argues that Putting On Virtue makes plausible Herdt's audacious suggestion that Augustinian and Emersonian perfectionism may be reconciled by bringing acquired and infused virtue under a single term. (shrink)

In order to understand the place Max Scheler occupied in the debates of his time around the notion of Europe, this article aims to shed some light on the possible convergences between Max Scheler and Rudolf Eucken, who was his thesis director at Jena. The article begins by outlining Rudolf Eucken's conception of Europe, then it identifies a number of points in common between the two authors, before finally measuring the extent of these convergences in Scheler's conception of Europe. At (...) the end of the discussion, it appears that the reception of Augustinianism and a shared conception of community reveal interesting links between the two authors. This connection will give the twenty-first-century reader a better understanding of the framework in which Max Scheler's reflections on Europe are set. (shrink)

_God Owes Us Nothing_ reflects on the centuries-long debate in Christianity: how do we reconcile the existence of evil in the world with the goodness of an omnipotent God, and how does God's omnipotence relate to people's responsibility for their own salvation or damnation. Leszek Kolakowski approaches this paradox as both an exercise in theology and in revisionist Christian history based on philosophical analysis. Kolakowski's unorthodox interpretation of the history of modern Christianity provokes renewed discussion about the historical, intellectual, and (...) cultural omnipotence of neo-Augustinianism. "Several books a year wrestle with that hoary conundrum, but few so dazzlingly as the Polish philosopher's latest."—Carlin Romano, _Washington Post Book World_ "Kolakowski's fascinating book and its debatable thesis raise intriguing historical and theological questions well worth pursuing."—Stephen J. Duffy, _Theological Studies_ "Kolakowski's elegant meditation is a masterpiece of cultural and religious criticism."—Henry Carrigan, _Cleveland Plain Dealer_. (shrink)

Part I. Reflections on the past : a mor et memoria / Ugo Perone -- Givenness, grace, and Marion's Augustinianism / Felix O Murchadha -- Way of being given / Pierre-Jean Renaudie -- On the threshold of distance / Ryan Coyne -- Part II. Present openings : reading textual dramatics / Stephen E. Lewis -- The moving icon / Jodie McNeilly -- Love without bodies / Cassandra Falke -- As an Orpheus of phenomenality -- Part III. Breaching future horizons (...) : discovering human insufficiency with Marion / Jennifer Rosato -- Marion's spirituality of adoration and its implications for a phenomenology of religion / Christina M. Gschwandtner -- From negative theology of hermeneutics / Claudio Tarditi -- An excess of happiness / Jeffrey L. Kosky -- Flight from the flesh / Brian Becker. (shrink)

At the center of this important writer’s thought lies a paradox in his constant implicating of ethical norms in historical writing while simultaneously deriding all forms of moral judgment in history. This article investigates the relationship between Butterfield’s ethics and his religion in order to suggest ways of resolving the paradox. It focuses on his unconventional style of Augustinianism and the levels of historical analysis involved in what he called “technical history,” on the one hand, and his own search (...) for a history that went beyond it, on the other, during a century that threw up particular challenges in barbarous war and genocide. The project requires some consideration of Butterfield’s own substantive historical writing against the background of such events, but also silhouettes something more decisive: the degree to which he came to see the enterprise of historiographical analysis as itself ethical. What emerges from the argument is a framework within which Butterfield’s search for meaning in the past can be laid beside his hostility to moral judgments of past actors on the part of historians without the contradictions that are often assumed. A further implication of the study is that Butterfield was often his own worst enemy in conflating distinctions that he himself had made and blurring lines of argument that demanded sharp separation. (shrink)

Étienne Gilson ha dedicato numerosi lavori alla riflessione filosofica di Agostino e alla tradizione agostiniana medievale. Lo storico francese ha cercato di rilevare i tratti principali e lo spirito della filosofia agostiniana e si è interessato ai complessi sviluppi dell’agostinismo. Gilson ha introdotto la categoria storiografica delle indeterminazioni agostiniane per esprimere la complessità del pensiero di Agostino: questa filosofia sarebbe caratterizzata da numerose questioni irrisolte dovute al tentativo agostiniano di dare alla filosofia neoplatonica un significato cristiano. In alcuni suoi lavori, (...) Gilson ha sostenuto che la convergenza fra queste indeterminazioni e alcuni sistemi di pensiero, giunti nell’occidente latino fra il XII e il XIII secolo, avrebbe ispirato la cosiddetta riforma tomista. A questo proposito è molto importante un articolo del 1926, Pourquoi saint Thomas a critiqué saint Augustin. L’articolo mostra l’importanza delle indeterminazioni negli studi dello storico: questa intrinseca incompletezza dell’opera di Agostino consentirebbe di comprendere non solo gli sviluppi del pensiero agostiniano, ma anche il pensiero di Tommaso d’Aquino e della scuola domenicana. L’articolo tratteggia, inoltre, l’interpretazione di Gilson del pensiero agostiniano in relazione all’adesione dello storico alla filosofia neoscolastica. Étienne Gilson devoted several studies to Augustine’s thought and to medieval Augustinian tradition. The French historian attempted to paint the main tracts and the spirit of Augustine’s philosophy and he studied the complex developments of Augustinianism. Gilson introduced the historical category of the indéterminations augustiniennes to express the problematic nature of Augustine’s thought: this philosophy would be characterized by several unexplained questions due to the Augustinian attempt to attach a Christian meaning to the Neoplatonic philosophy. In numerous of his works, Gilson pointed out that the confluence of these indéterminations and some philosophies, penetrated into Latin west during XII-XIII centuries, would have inspired the so-called Thomistic reform. On this subject it is very revealing an essay written in 1926, “ Pourquoi saint Thomas a critiqué saint Augustin ”. This paper aims to outline the importance of the indéterminations in the Gilsonian studies: this intrinsic incompleteness of the Augustinian texts would allow understanding not only the Augustinian tradition, but also Thomas Aquinas’ philosophy and Dominican thought. This article outlines Gilson’s reading of the Augustinian thought with regard to Gilsonian Neo-Scholastic philosophy. (shrink)

This paper illustrates the need for a more integrated theoretical account of two large but typically isolated subjects in twentieth century Augustine studies: love and the ambiguous relation of Augustinianism to liberalism. The paper is divided into three parts. First, by aligning Augustinian caritas with a feminist "ethic of care," it presents a morally robust ethics of liberalism that differs from both liberal-realist and antiliberal extrapolations of the Augustinian tradition. Second, and most extensively, it presents Hannah Arendt's provocative reading (...) of Augustine that issues both "Kantian" and "Nietzschean" challenges to a political ethic that moves beyond liberal reciprocity and relates love for neighbor to love for God. Finally, and more tentatively, it argues that Augustine's much maligned categories of "use" and "enjoyment" should be redeemed by those who defend a version of Augustinian liberalism that does not sentimentalize or privatize love. (shrink)

The article discusses the philosophical and theological currents that made their appearance at the university of Paris in the thirteenth century and prepared the rise of the philosophy and theology of John Duns Scotus. The principal rival orientations were newly the introduced Aristotelianism, as represented by Roland of Cremona, Albert the Great, Thomas Aquinas and his Dominican pupils, Siger of Brabant, and Boethius of Dacia, and the traditional and conservative Augustinianism, which found its defenders above all within the Franciscan (...) order, where two schools of thought can be distinguished before Scotus: the older school culminating in St Bonaventure, and the second school, with Matthew of Aquasparta, William of La Mare, William of Ware, Peter Olivi and others. The heterodox tendencies within the thirteenth century Aristotelianism lead to an official condemnation in 1277 by Church and university authorities of 219 of its tenets regarded as erroneous, yet this fact did not stop further continuance and development of this current. After this condemnation there appeared syncretistic solutions by Henry of Ghent and Giles of Rome; also mysticism of Pseudo-Dionysian inspiration (Eckhart) made its appearance. Against this background the origin and rise of the doctrine of John Duns Scotus can be explained as one more attempt to steer a middle course between the rival extremes of Aristotelianism and Augustinian Platonism and to include in a comprehensive synthesis the most valuable elements present in both currents. This attempt prepared the way for the new philosophy of the fourteenth century, although at the same time became the target of criticism by its representatives. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Virtues of the Will: The Transformation of Ethics in the Late Thirteenth Century by Bonnie KentTimothy B. NooneBonnie Kent. Virtues of the Will: The Transformation of Ethics in the Late Thirteenth Century. Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 1995. Pp. viii + 270. Cloth, $44.95.In this admirably written study, Bonnie Kent presents researchers on medieval philosophy with a survey of moral psychology during the crucial period (...) between the death of Thomas Aquinas and the summit of Duns Scotus’s career in the first decade of the fourteenth century. Although there have been many studies of particular issues in particular thinkers during this period and a generous presentation of texts with commentary by the great Dom Lottin (Psychologie et morale aux XIIe et XIIIe siècles, 7 vols. Louvain, 1942–1954), there has not been any lengthy study to date devoted to the period of the late thirteenth century that focused on moral psychology and the will. Simply in drawing attention to this period in the history of moral psychology, Professor Kent has made a tremendous contribution to the study of medieval philosophy, since she has rendered accessible authors that are more often than not neglected and overlooked. Kent, in fact, attempts something more: she places her study in the framework of the general historiography of Scholastic thought and the more recent interest in medieval ethics prompted by those championing virtue ethics.In order to highlight the distinguishing features of recent studies on medieval ethical thought, Kent reviews the established interpretation of philosophy in the thirteenth century. In the opening chapter, entitled “Heroes and Histories,” she points out the features common to the scholarly approaches of Gilson, Van Steenberghen, and even Copleston: (1) a prominent role is assigned to schools and movements, especially Aristotelianism and Augustinianism; (2) metaphysics and epistemology are the primary objects of study along with the relation between philosophy and theology; and (3) the Thomistic point of view is the organizing principle for telling the drama of the period. The last feature means that the history of the period is fundamentally told as streams of influence leading to Aquinas, followed by the golden age of Aquinas and his contemporaries and succeeded by a gradual decline after Aquinas, leading to the demise of Scholastic thought. In the context of the established historiography, accordingly, the approach of Alasdair MacIntyre represents a restatement of the common view, but one more radical in form. Instead of being merely different schools or movements, Augustinianism and Aristotelianism are different worldviews with their own paradigmatic conceptions of rationality, each of which is subsumed into the higher synthesis of Thomism. According to MacIntyre, the passage to modernity is begun by Scotus whose innovative theses in moral psychology and ethics are considered revolutionary.Kent’s stated aim is to challenge the “standard story” found in Gilson and others as well as its revised version in MacIntyre’s writings by providing a detailed study of the [End Page 462] period just prior to Scotus and establishing precisely how revolutionary Scotus’s teachings were when compared to his immediate predecessors. She accomplishes this aim masterfully in a series of chapters dedicated to the sources of medieval thought and elements of moral psychology. Beginning with late thirteenth-century thinkers’ attitude toward Aristotle in her second chapter, she shows in considerable detail that there is little evidence for any serious anti-Aristotelianism in the vast majority of late thirteenth-century authors. Indeed, the posture of these thinkers was to separate Aristotle from radical Aristotelianism and Thomism in order to claim that ancient wisdom was on the side of Christian ethics and psychology. The only exception that Kent finds to this widespread attitude is in the writings of Peter John Olivi whose hostility to pagan philosophy is clearly evident.The focus in the next chapter is on ethical voluntarism, a position characterized by the endorsement of the superiority of will over reason, the claim that human freedom resides primarily in the faculty of the will, that the will can act contrary to reason’s judgment, and that the will, not the intellect, commands the lower powers of the soul. In detailing the advent of... (shrink)

Charting a genealogy of the modern idea of the self, Felix Ó Murchadha explores the accounts of self-identity expounded by key Early Modern philosophers, Montaigne, Descartes, Pascal, Spinoza, Hume and Kant. The question of the self as we would discuss it today only came to the forefront of philosophical concern with Modernity, beginning with an appeal to the inherited models of the self found in Stoicism, Scepticism, Augustinianism and Pelagianism, before continuing to develop as a subject of philosophical debate. (...) Exploring this trajectory, The Formation of the Modern Self pursues a number of themes central to the Early Modern development of selfhood, including, amongst others, grace and passion. It examines on the one hand the deep-rooted dependence on the divine and the longing for salvation and, on the other hand, the distancing from the Stoic ideal of apatheia, as philosophers from Descartes to Spinoza recognised the passions as essential to human agency. Fundamental to the new question of the self was the relation of faith and reason. Uncovering commonalities and differences amongst Early Modern philosophers, Ó Murchadha traces how the voluntarism of Modernity led to the sceptical approach to the self in Montaigne and Hume and how, by way of Hamann and Jacobi's reception of Hume, this sceptical strand, in turn, culminated in Kant's rational faith. More than a history of the self in philosophy, The Formation of the Modern Self inspires a fresh look at self-identity, uncovering not only how our modern idea of selfhood developed but just how embedded the concept of self is in external considerations: from ethics, to reason, to religion. (shrink)

The present essay contends that progressive readings of Smith ignore the influence of theological concepts and religious ideas on his work, notably three distinct strands: first, seventeenth- and eighteenth-century natural theology; second, Jansenist Augustinianism; third, Stoic arguments of theodicy. Taken together, these theological elements help explain why Smith’s moral philosophy and political economy intensifies the secular early modern and Enlightenment idea that the Fall brought about ‘radical evil’ and a ‘fatherless world’ in need of permanent divine intervention. As such, (...) Smith views the market as divine regulation of human sinfulness and an instrument to serve God’s providential plan. Indeed, the ‘invisible hand of the market’ represents a nominalist realm where human cooperation intersects with divine providence, blending private self-interest with the public commonweal. I will also argue that Smith’s conception of a morally neutral market is ultimately incompatible with creedal Christianity, in particular orthodox catholic Christian ideas of the common good in which all can share and the practice of charity for those most in need who have been abandoned by state bureaucracy and the marketplace. The main reason is that Smith, not unlike Calvin, tends to divorce human contract from divine gift by dividing the theo-logic of gratuitous reciprocal giving from the economic logic of contract – a dualism that bears an uncanny resemblance with Suárez’s Baroque scholasticism of which Smith’s friend David Hume was rightly critical. In particular, the Reformation and Counter-Reformation theology of Calvin, Luther and Suárez sunders ‘pure nature’ from the supernatural and develops a ‘two ends’ account of human nature, according to which human beings have a natural end separate from their supernatural finality. So instead of participating in the divine oikonomia of asymmetrical gift-exchange, human society and the economy operate autonomously and are ordered towards a purely natural end. Smith conceptualises the market mechanism as both a fundamental precondition for interpersonal relationality and at the same time separate from the sociality it engenders. Smith’s anthropology hovers half-way between Machiavelli and Mandeville’s homo œconomicus in search for maximal profit, on the one hand, and the diametrically opposed conception of man as a gift-exchanging animal striving for mutual social recognition, on the other hand. By viewing market exchange as separate from the private virtues of benevolence, justice and prudence, he introduces a split between the exercise of moral virtues and the operation of commercial society. Such a divide is wholly foreign to the project of an overarching civil compact in the writings of Smith’s contemporary Antonio Genovesi and other members of the Italian schools of civic humanism and civil economy. In consequence, Smith’s œuvre marks a decisive shift from civil to political economy. (shrink)