(1993). Evolutionary competence in the postmodern family: An idealized design approach. World Futures: Vol. 36, Evolutionary Consciousness, pp. 81-105.

There is a general sense that the philosophy of Descartes was a dominant force in early modern thought. Since the work in the nineteenth century of French historians of Cartesian philosophy, however, there has been no fully contextualized comparative examination of the various receptions of Descartes in different portions of early modern Europe. This study addresses the need for a more current understanding of these receptions by considering the different constructions of Descartes's thought that emerged in the Calvinist United Provinces (...) and Catholic France, the two main centers for early modern Cartesianism, during the period dating from the last decades of his life to the century or so following his death in 1650. It turns out that we must speak not of a single early modern Cartesianism rigidly defined in terms of Descartes's own authorial intentions, but rather of a loose collection of early modern Cartesianisms that involve a range of different positions on various sets of issues. Though more or less rooted in Descartes's somewhat open-ended views, these Cartesianisms evolved in different ways over time in response to different intellectual and social pressures. Chapters of this study are devoted to: the early modern Catholic and Calvinist condemnations of Descartes and the incompatible Cartesian responses to these; conflicting attitudes among early modern Cartesians toward ancient thought and modernity; competing early modern attempts to combine Descartes's views with those of Augustine; the different occasionalist accounts of causation within early modern Cartesianism; and the impact of various forms of early modern Cartesianism on both Dutch medicine and French physics. (shrink)

If asked whether stereotypes about people have the potential to help overcome injustice, I suspect that many think there is a clear-cut answer to this question, and that answer is “no.” Many stereotypes do have harmful effects, from the blatantly dehumanizing to the more subtly disruptive. Reasonably then, a common attitude toward stereotypes is that they are at best shallow, superficial assumptions, and at worst degrading and hurtful vehicles of oppression. I argue that on a broad account of stereotypes, this (...) is not is not an inherent feature of them nor a foregone conclusion about them. At least some positive stereotypes have the potential to help resist certain forms of epistemic injustice--though they likely can only play a limited or temporary role in this regard. The takeaway is that we should approach moral and epistemic analyses of stereotypes by thinking about them as (crude) cognitive tools, and as such, focus on what these tools are being used for, and what their actual impact is. (shrink)

This study traces the development of the metaphysics of the material world in early modern thought. It starts with the scholastic innovator Suárez, proceeds to a consideration of Suárez's connections to Descartes, and ends with an examination of Spinoza's fundamental re-conceptualization of the Cartesian material world.

This is a book-length study of two of Descartes's most innovative successors, Robert Desgabets and Pierre-Sylvain Regis, and of their highly original contributions to Cartesianism. The focus of the book is an analysis of radical doctrines in the work of these thinkers that derive from arguments in Descartes: on the creation of eternal truths, on the intentionality of ideas, and on the soul-body union. As well as relating their work to that of fellow Cartesians such as Malebranche and Arnauld, the (...) book also establishes the important though neglected role played by Desgabets and Regis in the theologically and politically charged reception of Descartes in early modern France. This is a major contribution to the history of Cartesianism that will be of special interest to historians of early modern philosophy and historians of ideas. (shrink)

This volume is a collection of new essays by specialists that trace the concept of efficient causation from its discovery in Ancient Greece, through its development in late antiquity, the medieval period, and modern philosophy, to its use in contemporary metaphysics and philosophy of science.

Spinoza seems to argue both that “God or Nature” is mereologically simple, and that this being is mereologically complex insofar as it is composed of parts. This chapter proposes on Spinoza's behalf a resolution of this antinomy. This resolution focuses on Spinoza's mereology of the material world. It offers an alternative interpretation according to which Spinoza adheres both to the indivisibility of extended substance and to the reality of the finite modal parts that compose an infinite modal whole. In the (...) Oldenburg Letter, Spinoza claims that “concerning whole and parts, the chapter considers things as parts of some whole to the extent that the nature of the one so adapts itself to the nature of the other so that they agree with one another as far as possible”. The chapter argues that a similar assumption underlies Peterson's argument against the reality in Spinoza of divisible spatial quantity. (shrink)

The Mode of Relativity in Agrippa’s Five Modes does not fit with the other four modes, and disrupts an otherwise elegant system. We argue that it is not the familiar argument from epistemic relativism, but a formal condition on the structure of justifications: the principle that epistemic grounding relations cannot be reflexive. This understanding of Agrippan Relativity leads to a better understanding of the Modes of Hypothesis and Reciprocity, a clearer outline of the structure of Agrippa’s system as a whole, (...) and a new insight into the Two Modes that follow the Five. (shrink)

Greek Philosophers of the Hellenistic Age examines an important but frequently neglected group of philosophers writing after Aristotle between the third and first centuries B.C. The work of a distinguished intellectual historian, this book is based on an erudite reading of a vast number of primary sources: the Greek and Latin writings of the philosophers, and the fragments, paraphrases, and testimonies from their lost works. Kristeller explores the thought of Epicurus; Zenon and Cleanthes, the founder of the Stoic school and (...) his successor; Pyrrhon and Arcesilaus, the founder of Skepticism and the philosopher who introduced it into the Platonic Academy; and Chrysippus, the third head of the Stoic school and its most important representative. Other figures include Carneades and Philo of Larissa, the second and third representatives of Skepticism in the Platonic Academy, respectively; Panaetius, the first leader of Middle Stoicism; and Antiochus of Ascalon, the head of the Academy, who led it back from Skepticism and prepared Middle Platonism, which paved the way for Neoplatonism. Originally presented as a series of lectures before the Scuola Normale Superiore in Pisa, Italy, Greek Philosophers of the Hellenistic Age assesses a group of philosophers who exerted an enormous influence upon pagan and Christian writers of late antiquity - including Cicero and St. Augustine - and on many medieval and early modern philosophers, theologians, and other thinkers. (shrink)

These range from merely good reads to really outstanding books; but rather than trying to rate each one, or (what would be more to the point) explain my ratings, I've merely listed them without any particular indication of rank. Horror novels are included here for want of anyplace better to put them. Titles are added as they occur to me.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:What Has Cartesianism To Do with Jansenism?Tad M. SchmaltzMy title is modeled on the famous query of the third-century theologian, Tertullian: “What has Athens to do with Jerusalem?” Tertullian’s question asks what pagan Greek learning has to do with the theology of the early Church. By comparison my question asks what philosophical Cartesianism has to do with theological Jansenism, and more specifically what these movements had to do with (...) each other in the France of Louis XIV. To anticipate, the answer is: not much and plenty. I say not much, in the sense that there are profound differences in the approaches and interests of the namesakes of these two movements: in the case of Cartesianism, the French critic of scholastic natural philosophy, René Descartes, and in the case of Jansenism, the Louvain critic of Jesuit theology, Cornelius Jansen (Jansenius). Yet I also say plenty, in the sense that there was in the second half of the seventeenth century a fairly widespread belief in France of an intimate link between the two movements that the work of Descartes and Jansen inspired. What we need here is a story that shows how despite the differences between these two thinkers, their French followers were commonly associated with each other.In order to tell such a story I need to consider some basic difficulties in pinning down the nature of the movements themselves. There are of course familiar problems with the appeal to generic “isms” in the history of ideas, but I also want to consider special concerns pertaining to the definition of French Jansenism and French Cartesianism. In the course of this consideration I suggest that since both movements are to some extent constructs that emerged from intellectual battles in late-seventeenth-century France, they must be understood in light of the political, theological, and philosophical goals of the polemicists involved in these battles.Perhaps the most obvious reason for the connection between the Jansenist and Cartesian movements is that one of the most prominent of the Jansenist theologians, the Port-Royalist Antoine Arnauld, was also an enthusiastic defender [End Page 37] of Descartes’s metaphysical system. But while Arnauld undoubtedly played an important role in the emergence of this link, I think that the full story of its emergence must include a consideration of the different role played by a somewhat neglected figure in the history of early modern Cartesianism, namely, the Lorraine Benedictine Robert Desgabets (1610–78). Desgabets was more deeply involved than Arnauld in the 1671 “Eucharist affair,” which was important for the polemical linkage of Jansenism to Cartesianism in France. Whereas Arnauld attempted to separate Jansenist theology from Cartesian philosophy, Desgabets tried to provide Cartesian foundations for a theology with strong Jansenist overtones. It was Desgabets more than Arnauld, then, who was concerned to apply Cartesian principles to issues of importance for the Jansenist theologian.What Has Descartes To Do with Jansen?A primary trigger for the bitter “Jansenist controversies” in France during the seventeenth century was the posthumous publication in 1640 of the Augustinus of Jansen, the late Bishop of Ypres in the Spanish Netherlands. This technical three-volume work attempts to draw from Augustine responses to Pelagian and semi-Pelagian views concerning the prelapsarian state of innocence, the fall from this state, and the grace required to overcome that fall. Jansen’s emphasis is on the pervasive corruption of original sin and on the impossibility of meritorious action that does not derive from God’s grace to the elect. The Jesuits in Louvain saw the work as a throwback to the theses of Michel du Bay (Baius) that Pope Paul V had condemned in 1567 due to pressure exerted by their order, and they made an unsuccessful attempt to stop the publication of the book. 1 After its publication this text drew the suspicion of Cardinal Richelieu, who (correctly) believed Jansen to be the author of Mars Gallicus, an anonymous pamphlet protesting Richelieu’s anti-Habsburg policies. Richelieu chose a theologian of Notre-Dame-de-Paris, Isaac Habert, to launch an attack against the Augustinus. In a series of sermons starting in 1642 Habert criticized Jansen’s assertion of the necessity of contrition... (shrink)

Tad Brennan explains how to live the Stoic life--and why we might want to. Stoicism has been one of the main currents of thought in Western civilization for two thousand years: Brennan offers a fascinating guide through the ethical ideas of the original Stoic philosophers, and shows how valuable these ideas remain today, both intellectually and in practice. He writes in a lively informal style which will bring Stoicism to life for readers who are new to ancient philosophy. The Stoic (...) Life will also be of great interest to philosophers and classicists seeking a full understanding of the intellectual legacy of the Stoics. (shrink)

This book defends the consistency, plausibility, and interest of the brand of Ancient Skepticism described in the writings of Sextus Empiricus, both through detailed exegesis of the original texts, and through sustained engagement with an array of modern critics.

I consider a somewhat obscure but important feature of Descartes’s physics that concerns the notion of the “force of rest.” Contrary to a prominent occasionalist interpretation of Descartes’s physics, I argue that Descartes himself attributes real forces to resting bodies. I also take his account of rest to conflict with the view that God conserves the world by “re-creating” it anew at each moment. I turn next to the role of rest in Malebranche. Malebranche takes Descartes to endorse his own (...) occasionalist version of physics. However, he nonetheless rejects Descartes’s account of rest by appealing to the fact that whereas God’s production of motion requires a power beyond the mere power to create, his production of rest requires only the latter power. It turns out that this argument in Malebranche is incompatible with the sort of “re-creationist” account of divine conservation that he is widely thought to have inherited from Descartes. (shrink)

Supernatural illustrates two dominant ideals of masculinity, the warrior and the sovereign. The sovereign has what Isaiah Berlin described as both positive and negative liberty. Negative liberty is freedom from things, like restrictions, restraints, obstacles, coercion, or force. The season finale reveals that this feud is based on an overly simplistic understanding of their two masculine ideals. Positive liberty is the freedom to do things. For the sovereign, this means having the unfettered ability to choose goals and accomplish them. Supernatural (...) is largely about men navigating their masculinity. The characters and the show itself appear to have some vacillating opinions of women and femininity. Love is a paradox in Supernatural with its masculine ideals of strength and independence. But in order to be masculine, one must first and foremost be human. And to be human, one needs love. (shrink)

Slavoj Žižek often refers to an obscene excess-supplement that, depending on the subject’s pathological disposition, serves to either 1) sustain a conscious injunction by disavowing an unconscious “underside” or 2) instruct the subject to transgress the injunction. This supplemental excess is at work in neurotic and perverse belief but functions in significantly different modes depending on whether the supplement affects the ego or superego. This paper surveys and analyzes Žižek’s use of the obscene excess-supplement in his theological and political applications (...) of psychoanalytic theory. (shrink)

Après avoir rappelé quelques éléments de l’histoire de la police et décrit ses fonctions administratives et judiciaires, l’auteur souligne les évolutions de nos modes de vie, de l’insécurité, et leurs réponses institutionnelles massivement répressives, punitives et onéreuses qui ont prévalu jusqu’à présent. Le sentiment d’insécurité est à la croisée de l’insécurité réelle et de l’insécurité subjective liée à des facteurs autres, tels l’effritement des liens sociaux, la précarité du travail ou l’aménagement urbain. Face à ces bouleversements, la police doit négocier (...) avec les populations mais aussi avec les contraintes institutionnelles et les réformes successives des organisations. Dans le même temps, elle subit un virage technologique important autour des numéros d’appels centralisés et du recours aux véhicules d’intervention. Ces réformes éloignent la police de la population et des lieux sensibles où les patrouilles à pied marquaient la présence de la force publique. La police communautaire ou la police de proximité tentent de remédier au problème. On attend d’elles polyvalence, responsabilité et résultats. Généralisée, présentée comme le remède à tous les maux, cette mise en œuvre fait pourtant face à de multiples difficultés techniques, comme au sein des partenariats locaux, et à des résistances internes. Désarçonnée, la police a besoin d’une vision politique qui lui permette de situer sa mission et ses fonctions dans une société complexe en perpétuel mouvement. (shrink)

Music raises many problems for those who would understand it more deeply. It is rooted in time, yet timeless. It is pure form, yet conveys emotion. It is written, but performed, interpreted, improvised, transcribed, recorded, sampled, remixed, revised, rebroadcast, reinterpreted, and more. Music can be studied by philosophers, psychologists, sociologists, mathematicians, biologists, computer scientists, neuro-scientists, critics, politicians, promoters, and of course musicians. Moreover, no single perspective seems either sufficient or invalid. This situation is not so different from that of other (...) arts, but perhaps more intense, due to the pervasiveness of pop, the inaccessability of much contemporary classical music, the strong cultural associations of many styles, the infusions of technology, and the combination with lyrics. (shrink)

This chapter contains section titled: Life and Works Vision in God and Ideas Cartesian Matter and the Soul Occasionalism and Theodicy Influences.

Though stereotype threat is most well-known for its ability to hinder performance, it actually has a wide range of effects. For instance, it can also cause stress, anxiety, and doubt. These additional effects are as important and as central to the phenomenon as its effects on performance are. As a result, stereotype threat has more far-reaching implications than many philosophers have realized. In particular, the phenomenon has a number of unexplored “epistemic effects.” These are effects on our epistemic lives—i.e., the (...) ways we engage with the world as actual and potential knowers. In this paper I flesh out the implications of a specific epistemic effect: self-doubt. Certain kinds of self-doubt can deeply affect our epistemic lives by exacerbating moments of epistemic injustice and by interacting with pernicious ideals of rationality. In both cases, self-doubt can lead to a person questioning their own humanity or full personhood. Since we have reasons to believe that stereotype threat can trigger this kind of self-doubt, then stereotype threat can affect various aspects of ourselves besides our ability to perform to our potential. It can also affect our very sense of self. (shrink)

Dans les discussions concernant la sous-représentation des femmes dans le domaine de la philosophie professionnelle, ceux et celles qui sont sceptiques quant à l’explication par la discrimination suggèrent souvent que les différences de genre dans les intérêts constituent une autre hypothèse possible. Certain.e.s croient que si les intérêts différents des femmes expliquaient la sous-représentation, les interventions suggérées par l’hypothèse de la discrimination ne seraient pas nécessaires, voire seraient risquées. Je maintiens qu’on doit considérer la façon dont les stéréotypes exerceraient une (...) influence sur les intérêts, et que ce faisant, on peut offrir une évaluation plus équilibrée des risques découlant des interventions proposées. (shrink)

This article considers complications for the principle in Descartes that effects are similar to their causes that are connected to his own denial that terms apply "univocally" to God and the creatures He produces. Descartes suggested that there remains an "analogical" relation in virtue of which our mind can be said to be similar to God's. However, this suggestion is undermined by the implication of his doctrine of the creation of the eternal truths that God's will differs entirely from our (...) own. The disappearance of analogy is even more evident in Spinoza and Regis. Both linked Descartes's doctrine to the principle that an effect differs from its cause with respect to what it receives from that cause, and both argued from that principle to the conclusion that we differ from God in both essence and existence. (shrink)

This book is a systematic study of Descartes' theory of causation and its relation to the medieval and early modern scholastic philosophy that provides its proper historical context. The argument presented here is that even though Descartes offered a dualistic ontology that differs radically from what we find in scholasticism, his views on causation were profoundly influenced by scholastic thought on this issue. This influence is evident not only in his affirmation in the Meditations of the abstract scholastic axioms that (...) a cause must contain the reality of its effects and that conservation does not differ in reality from creation, but also in the details of the accounts of body-body interaction in his physics, of mind-body interaction in his psychology, and of the causation that he took to be involved in free human action. In contrast to those who have read Descartes as endorsing the "occasionalist" conclusion that God is the only real cause, a central thesis of this study is that he accepted what in the context of scholastic debates regarding causation is the antipode of occasionalism, namely, the view that creatures rather than God are the causal source of natural change. What emerges from the defense of this interpretation of Descartes is a new understanding of his contribution to modern thought on causation. (shrink)