This edited volume systematically addresses the connection between Wilfrid Sellars and the history of modern philosophy, exploring both the content and method of this relationship. It intends both to analyze Sellars’s position in relation to singular thinkers of the modern tradition, and to inquire into Sellars’s understanding of philosophy as a field in reflective and constructive conversation with its past. The chapters in Part I cover Sellars’s interpretation and use of Descartes, Leibniz, Hume, Kant and Hegel. Part II features essays (...) on his relationship with Peirce, Frege, Carnap, Wittgenstein, American pragmatism, behaviorism and American realism, particularly his father, Roy Wood. Sellars and the History of Modern Philosophy features original contributions by many of the most renowned Sellars scholars throughout the world. It offers an exhaustive survey of Sellars’s views on the historical antecedents and metaphilosophical aspects of his thought. (shrink)

Aim of this work is to dispel the myth of the "vagueness" of naturalism. Between the Thirties and the Forties, naturalism moves “from old Europe to dynamic America” (as the historian Larrabee said). The controversy with visionary and fascist European theories was indeed very strong in the academic culture of the Thirties and Forties. The idea was to oppose to the former the virtue of a liberal democracy, supported by the liberality of the scientific method.In short, the cultural fight was (...) between naturalism and metaphysics (considered as theology). Naturalizing the "spirit" was the great ambition of American naturalistic programs of the Forties. They culminated with the publication of the ideological manifesto “Naturalism and the Human Spirit” (New York, 1944), edited by the John Dewey's group of Columbia. From Ernest Nagel to Sydney Hook, Roy Wood Sellars, William Sheldon and Arthur E. Murphy, all prominent American philosophers took part, in one way or another, to the naturalistic project. This latter aimed to be more than a simple "doctrine", by presenting itself as an expression of a new “mental attitude”, a fresh way of considering traditional unsolved problems. All this lead to the production of a new form of rhetoric, which in turn carried with itself a hidden ideology. Objective rationality embodied by scientific procedures became the totem to play against everything that would present itself as “just-subjective”, metaphysical, all-encompassing. A new idea of philosophy began to emerge, one that was less metaphysical, more humanistic and democratic, and concerned itself with “restricted, but manageable questions” (E. Nagel). (shrink)

In this paper, I would like to focus upon two things. The first concerns the intertwining of naturalism and religion, namely the fact that early American naturalism defined itself as a “secular religion”. This expression sounds like an oxymoron, but the analysis of a dazzling text by Francis Ellingwood Abbot will help us to clarify the concept of “godless religion”, which will be taken up in the following years by all the major naturalists of the time. The second concerns the (...) power of the symbolic dimension of naturalism, especially in the debates of the 1940s. In those years naturalism was engaged in a battle for the survival of democracy. “Science”, “democracy” and “freedom” were not only concepts debated on a theoretical level, but they outlined a system of archetypes by virtue of which post-war liberal and democratic America would build a relevant part of its self-image. (shrink)

The other aim of the volume is to show that there is a close semantic connection between the concepts of individual, mind and body in Leibniz.

The aim of this paper is twofold. First, I would like to bring into the light the almost unexplored Sellars’s theory of particulars. Second, I would like to show its surprising degree of compatibility with the thesis supported by some contemporary tropists, Tropes, Universals and the Philosophy of Mind, Ontos Verlag, 2008; Moltmann, Mind 113:1–41, 2004 and Moltmann, Noûs 47:346–370, 2013). It is difficult to establish whether Sellars possessed an own theory of tropes, developed independently by the classical form it (...) took in Williams 1953, but as a matter of fact the peculiar features of his “complex particulars” model it is very much like Williams’s theory. So much so that to all intents and purposes it represents a tropes variation. One of its strengths is that it is not part of a constituent ontology, since it is essentially developed from a linguistic and phenomenological point of view. It is for these reasons that this theory manages to avoid some of the classic objections to tropes and it shows to be compatible with the argument of Jonathan Lowe’s “proper visibility” as well as with Friederike Moltmann’s exquisitely linguistic interpretation of tropes. (shrink)

The word “organism” represents an original keyword of the early-modern philosophical world. As it was first developed by Leibniz, it seems to blend together two different conceptual paradigms: the Cartesian model of the “machines” and the Aristotelian legacy of the “individual natures”. According to the first, nature represents itself the prototype of any good mechanical functioning, but at the same time its inner development is explained by the occurrence of a normative dimension that rules the world of primitive forces in (...) the dynamics. For such reasons, the “organism” lexicon is affected by an internal stress that is extremely interesting to analyze for it seems to posit a normative turn acting from the within of a mechanically conceived notion of life. (shrink)

What kind of relationship subsists between an “organism” and a “monas dominans »? In some texts, Leibniz claims that the soul « actuat » the organic body and in the late debate with Stahl he describes the « monas dominans » as a « monas actuatrix ». But how does the monas « actualize » the organic body ? and what implies the semantic of the word « agere » here used by Leibniz ? Is it also possibile to describe (...) this event in terms of « whole/part » relationship ? The aim of this paper is to sketch out the status quaestionis of the topic by discussing some of the most recent studies. More specifically to propose an interpretation of the « monas dominans » as the « nota distinguens » of the whole organism. (shrink)

It is certainly true that in early modern thought the emergence of a new science changed the image of the universe in a mechanistic way. It must be considered, though, that most of the main protagonists of this revolution (Kepler, Newton, Leibniz, ‘biologists’ like Leeuwenhoek, Hartsoeker, Hooke, Malpighi, Redi, etc.) still continued to consider the importance and the utility of a finalistic explanation of natural phenomena. Concepts like “function”, “self-organization”, “organism” have roots in early modern thought: not only from a (...) linguistic and semantic point of view. They were the basis of an epistemology in which different kinds of categories are strictly related. The aim of the paper is to take into account the relevance of the mechanical explanation of natural phenomena in Leibniz’s thought and at the same time to highlight the polarization between mechanical explanations and finalistic consideration that emerges in his philosophy. The specific aim of the paper is to analyze and to develop this kind of dialectic between “teleology” and "mechanism", with particular reference to the concept of “living being”. (shrink)

What kind of relationship subsists between an "organism" and a "monas dominans"? In some texts, Leibniz claims that the soul "actuat" the organic body and in the late debate with Stahl he describes the "monas dominans" as a "monas actuatrix". But how does the monas "actualize" the organic body? And what is implied by Leibniz's use of the word "agere" to describe this? Is it also possibile to describe this event in terms of "whole/part" relationship? The aim of this paper (...) is to sketch out the status quaestionis of the topic by discussing some of the most recent studies. More specifically to propose an interpretation of the "monas dominans" as the "nota distinguens" of the whole organism. (shrink)

Usually scholars think of Marvin Farber as an American pupil of Husserl and his figure is given historical and institutional credit. It is also said that his thought misrepresented the intentions of the master and that his idea of a naturalization of phenomenology was devoid of hermeneutical grounds. All this has fed the myth of his heresy, the idea that his philosophical proposal could be summarized as a deviation from the orthodox canon. In this paper the legitimacy of this perspective (...) is widely discussed. Is it really correct to think of him as a child of the phenomenological continental tradition transplanted on American soil? Or would it not be more fruitful to consider him, beyond the canon, as an American philosopher fully immersed in the epistemological debates of his time? The paper argues in favor of this way of interpretation, discussing Farber’s own theoretical proposal in conjunction with the ecosystem of the American philosophical history. (shrink)

Aim of this paper is to reconsider the controversial problem of the relationship between the philosophy of Hegel and Leibniz. Beyond the tick courtain of historical references (which have been widely developed by scholars), it is in fact possible to assume some guideline concepts (i.e. those of "singularity" and "infinity") to reconstruct the deep theoretical influence which Leibniz played in Hegel's thought since the Jaener Systementwurf of 1804/1805.