The Battle of the Gods and Giants Redux
The Battle of the Gods and Giants Redux

Author: Patricia Easton

Publisher: BRILL

Published: 2015-09-07

Total Pages: 355

ISBN-13: 9004305920

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The Battle of Gods and Giants Redux is a collection of 14 original essays by leading scholars in the field. Part One includes figures and topics associated with Descartes, the chief idealist in the story, including Leibniz, Spinoza, and Malebranche; Part Two includes figures and topics that fall on the Gassendist materialist side of the battle, including Hobbes, Bayle, and Locke. In organizing these varied discussions along these themes and lines, something more than the sum of the parts emerges. The reader will gain a breadth and depth of insight into the battle of ideas in early modern thought—historical, philosophical, and interpretive. Contributors are: Margaret Atherton, Martha Brandt Bolten, Patricia Easton, Lorne Falkenstein, Nicolas Jolley, José Maia Neto, Steven Nadler, Alan Nelson, Lawrence Nolan, Donald Rutherford, Tad Schmultz, Kurt Smith, Julie Walsh, and Richard Watson.

The Routledge Handbook of Idealism and Immaterialism
The Routledge Handbook of Idealism and Immaterialism

Author: Joshua Farris

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2021-09-12

Total Pages: 829

ISBN-13: 100043334X

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The influence of materialist ontology largely dominates philosophical and scientific discussions. However, there is a resurgent interest in alternative ontologies from panpsychism (the view that at the base of reality exists potential minds, minds, or mind-lets) to idealism and dualism (the view that all of reality is material and mental). The Routledge Handbook of Idealism and Immaterialism is an outstanding reference source and the first major collection of its kind. Historically grounded and constructively motivated, it covers the key topics in philosophy, science, and theology, providing students and scholars with a comprehensive introduction to idealism and immaterialism. Also addressed are post-materialism developments, with explicit attention to variations of idealism and immaterialism (the view that reality depends on a mind or a set of minds). Comprising 44 chapters written by an international and interdisciplinary team of contributors, the Handbook is organised into five clear parts: Idealism and the history of philosophy Important figures in idealism Systematic assessment of idealism Idealism and science Idealism, physicalism, panpsychism, and substance dualism Essential reading for students and researchers in metaphysics, philosophy of science, philosophy of religion, and philosophy of mind, The Routledge Handbook of Idealism and Immaterialism will also be of interest to those in related discplines where idealist and immaterialist ontology impinge on history, science, and theology.

Descartes's Method
Descartes's Method

Author: Tarek R. Dika

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2023-02-27

Total Pages: 407

ISBN-13: 0192696947

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Descartes's Method develops an ontological interpretation of Descartes's method as a dynamic and, within limits, differentiable problem-solving cognitive disposition or habitus, which can be actualized or applied to different problems in various ways, depending on the nature of the problem. Parts I-II develop the foundations of an habitual interpretation of Descartes's method, while Parts III-V demonstrate the fruits of such an interpretation in metaphysics, natural philosophy, and mathematics. The first book to draw on the recently discovered Cambridge manuscript of Descartes's Rules for the Direction of the Mind, Descartes's Method concretely demonstrates the efficacy of Descartes's method in the sciences and the underlying unity of Descartes's method from Rules for the Direction of the Mind to Principles of Philosophy (1644).

Descartes's Method
Descartes's Method

Author: Tarek Dika

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2023-03-02

Total Pages: 407

ISBN-13: 0192869868

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Tarek Dika presents a systematic account of Descartes' method and its efficacy. He develops an ontological interpretation of Descartes's method as a dynamic and, within limits, differentiable problem-solving cognitive disposition or habitus, which can be actualized or applied to different problems in various ways, depending on the nature of the problem. Parts I-II of the book develop the foundations of such an habitual interpretation of Descartes's method, while Parts III-V demonstrate the fruits of such an interpretation in metaphysics, natural philosophy, and mathematics. This is the first book to draw on the recently-discovered Cambridge manuscript of Descartes's Rules for the Direction of the Mind (1620s): it gives a concrete demonstration of the efficacy of Descartes's method in the sciences and of the underlying unity of Descartes's method from Rules for the Direction of the Mind to Principles of Philosophy (1644).

The Dao of Madness
The Dao of Madness

Author: Alexus McLeod

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2021

Total Pages: 281

ISBN-13: 0197505910

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"Chapter One lays out the dominant views of self, agency, and moral responsibility in early Chinese Philosophy. The reason for this is that these views inform the ways early Chinese thinkers approach mental illness, as well as the role they see it playing in self-cultivation as a whole (whether they view it as problematic or beneficial, for example). In this chapter I offer a view of a number of dominant conceptions of mind, body, and agency in early Chinese thought, through a number of philosophical and medical texts"--

The Oxford Handbook of Berkeley
The Oxford Handbook of Berkeley

Author:

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2022-01-18

Total Pages: 704

ISBN-13: 0190873434

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The Oxford Handbook of Berkeley is a compendious examination of a vast array of topics in the philosophy of George Berkeley (1685-1753), Anglican Bishop of Cloyne, the famous idealist and most illustrious Irish philosopher. Berkeley is best known for his denial of the existence of material substance and his insistence that the only things that exist in the universe are minds (including God) and their ideas; however, Berkeley was a polymath who contributed to a variety of different disciplines, not well distinguished from philosophy in the eighteenth century, including the theory and psychology of vision, the nature and functioning of language, the debate over infinitesimals in mathematics, political philosophy, economics, chemistry (including his favoured panacea, tar-water), and theology. This volume includes contributions from thirty-four expert commentators on Berkeley's philosophy, some of whom provide a state-of-the-art account of his philosophical achievements, and some of whom place his philosophy in historical context by comparing and contrasting it with the views of his contemporaries (including Mandeville, Collier, and Edwards), as well as with philosophers who preceded him (such as Descartes, Locke, Malebranche, and Leibniz) and others who succeeded him (such as Hume, Reid, Kant, and Shepherd).

Distrust of Institutions in Early Modern Britain and America
Distrust of Institutions in Early Modern Britain and America

Author: Brian P. Levack

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2022-03-03

Total Pages: 211

ISBN-13: 0192663178

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Distrust of public institutions, which reached critical proportions in Britain and the United States in the first two decades of the twenty-first century, was an important theme of public discourse in Britain and colonial America during the early modern period. Demonstrating broad chronological and thematic range, the historian Brian P. Levack explains that trust in public institutions is more tenuous and difficult to restore once it has been betrayed than trust in one's family, friends, and neighbors, because the vast majority of the populace do not personally know the officials who run large national institutions. Institutional distrust shaped the political, legal, economic, and religious history of England, Scotland, and the British colonies in America. It provided a theoretical and rhetorical foundation for the two English revolutions of the seventeenth century and the American Revolution in the late eighteenth century. It also inspired reforms of criminal procedure, changes in the system of public credit and finance, and challenges to the clergy who dominated the Church of England, the Church of Scotland, and the churches in the American colonies. This study reveals striking parallels between the loss of trust in British and American institutions in the early modern period and the present day.

Pierre-Daniel Huet (1630–1721) and the Skeptics of his Time
Pierre-Daniel Huet (1630–1721) and the Skeptics of his Time

Author: José R. Maia Neto

Publisher: Springer Nature

Published: 2022-06-28

Total Pages: 227

ISBN-13: 3030947165

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This book offers a detailed and scholarly historical and philosophical examination of French scepticism from Descartes to the beginning of the Enlightenment by examining the views of Pierre-Daniel Huet (1630–1721). It shows the crucial role played by Huet in the modification of the early modern sceptical tradition: from a practical perspective closer to ancient scepticism, mostly presented by Montaigne and Charron, to an epistemological and metaphysical perspective strongly influenced by Descartes’s doubt. The book examines and gives original interpretations of the various sceptical (and semi-sceptical) views held in the period and their connections to Huet’s own scepticism. Besides known philosophers such as Descartes, Gassendi, Pascal and Bayle, the book also accesses sceptical views held by secondary figures such as La Mothe Le Vayer and Simon Foucher and others who have not thus far been connected to the sceptical tradition such as Jean-Baptiste du Hamel and Madeleine de Scudéry. The book is useful for scholars in the field of early modern ideas: philosophical, religious and scientific.

Spinoza: Reason, Religion, Politics
Spinoza: Reason, Religion, Politics

Author:

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2024-09-05

Total Pages: 479

ISBN-13: 019258748X

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At his death, Spinoza left two major works, very different from one another. The first is the Ethics, rigorously set out in geometrical terms, with definitions, axioms, and theorems. In the Ethics, Spinoza takes the reader down the path of reason to an ultimate beatitude, a rational salvation, a kind of peace of mind attained through the true knowledge of God, oneself, and one's place in the world. The other is of a very different sort. The Tractatus theologico-politicus is set out in twenty chapters. It begins with a discussion of prophecy and revelation, followed by a detailed description of Scripture, and what we can learn from it, the message of scripture. And that message is to be obedient to God, and to love our neighbours as ourselves. Two books, two styles of argument, two very different paths to salvation, arguably two Gods and arguably two very different kinds of kinds of salvation at the end. But one author. The challenge is evident: how do these books fit together? One is about reason, the other about revelation, one is about personal salvation, the other more focused on how we live together. Spinoza's writing has always drawn strong reactions, both positive and negative: he was accepted by some as a kind of secular prophet offering us a guide to life, and rejected by others as a kind of atheist and heretic. In this book, a diverse international group of seventeen scholars confronts these two central works in the philosophical canon, and explores what Spinoza is trying to tell us about life, the world, and our place in it.

Early Modern Cartesianisms
Early Modern Cartesianisms

Author: Tad M. Schmaltz

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2017

Total Pages: 393

ISBN-13: 0190495227

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This new comparative study considers the impact of Descartes's thought on early modern philosophy, theology and science. This consideration reveals that competing Cartesianisms emerged in the Netherlands and France during a period dating from the last decades of Descartes's life to the century or so following his death in 1650.