This is a collection of papers already published (spanning the years from 1976 to 2002) covering mostly the history of philosophy, with the exception of Aristotle (papers on Aristotle are contained in vol. I). The bulk of the papers (eight) are on Plato (on the Meno, Phaedo, Republic and Sophist), two concern the Presocratics, one paper discusses the theory of sign with the Stoics, five are on modern philosophy (Descartes, Spinoza, Leibniz and Kant). Two papers are in English, the (...) rest in German. The book contains an index of proper names as well as a list of Ebert’s publications up to 2002. (shrink)

This is the first part of a two-volume study which may very well represent a turning point of scholarship on Heidegger and a step beyond his position. Paradoxically this work is outstanding both as criticism and as close interpretation of Heidegger. The critical perspectives on Heidegger developed by Regina carry to their natural conclusion some important analyses of the theme of finitude contributed by his colleague, E. Severino, in the mid-sixties. These analyses made clearer the relationship between finitude and the (...) nihilistic tendencies discovered by Heidegger in Western thought. What Heidegger calls metaphysics is the history of the efforts to negate finitude and contingency by ascribing necessity and original worth to one or another ontic property of beings. Heidegger promised on various occasions a destructive history of metaphysics, but his thought in this respect has developed in fragments--on Nietzsche, Descartes, Leibniz, Kant, Plato, Aristotle, and the Presocratics--which require a considerable work of piecing together. Regina's own thesis on finitude, which parallels the important contributions of Michel Henry, makes these pieces fit in what is possibly the best ensemble yet devised with them. A truly brilliant feature of this interpretation is its emphasis on the role attributed to Kant by Heidegger, a role which places Kant outside Western metaphysics and among the pioneers of theoretical investigation of the ties between finitude and transcendence. The direction in which this first part of Regina's work points is that of a possible refocusing on those aspects of Heidegger's work that revalue human dignity. Such refocusing can have so productive an impact on the unification of philosophical work in Europe that the second part of this study should be anxiously awaited.--A. M. (shrink)

This is a very useful collection of important, standard, primary sources. Two-thirds of volume one is taken up with Plato and Aristotle with the rest of the volume evenly divided among the Presocratics, Hellenistic philosophers and Medieval philosophers. Four of the Platonic dialogues are complete. Second edition changes in the first volume include: changes in translators and new entries. In both volumes Kaufmann's prefaces are very brief and mainly biographical. He consistently ties in information about each thinker's contemporaries. The second (...) volume has readings from Bacon, Descartes, Hobbes, Spinoza, Locke, Leibniz, Berkeley, Hume, and Kant. Almost half the second volume is taken up with Hume and Kant. The second edition changes in volume II are: expansion of Spinoza's Ethics, Locke's Essay, Berkeley's Principles; and additions of Descartes' correspondence with Princess Elizabeth, and a short Leibniz essay translated especially for this volume by M. Furth. The selections are adequately long and representational. The volumes contain double columns, no index, no bibliographies, no "Study Guides," just solid and important reading.--S. O. H. (shrink)

This history of Western philosophy is based upon two convictions: one is that this must be a subjective enterprise; the other is that its guiding aim should be to interpret the great diversity found among past philosophers as an understandable, connected, and progressive order. The author relates these philosophies to each other to discern a path through 2500 years of reflective thought as pointing toward a justifiable present position. Contents: Early Greek Philosophy; Plato; Aristotle; A Transition: The Stoics and Skeptics; (...) The Emergence of Faith; Saint Augustine; Saint Thomas Aquinas; Faith and the Re-Emergence of Reason; Descartes; Leibniz and Spinoza; The British Empiricists; Kant and Schopenhauer; Vico; Hegel; Hegel's Phenomenology of Mind; After Hegel; A Summary Conclusion and a Look Beyond; Index. (shrink)

The purpose of this paper is twofold. First, it aims at introducing the ontological argument through the analysis of five historical developments: Anselm’s argument found in the second chapter of his Proslogion, Gaunilo’s criticism of it, Descartes’ version of the ontological argument found in his Meditations on First Philosophy, Leibniz’s contribution to the debate on the ontological argument and his demonstration of the possibility of God, and Kant’s famous criticisms against the (cartesian) ontological argument. Second, it intends to critically (...) examine the enterprise of formally analyzing philosophical arguments and, as such, contribute in a small degree to the debate on the role of formalization in philosophy. My focus will be mainly on the drawbacks and limitations of such enterprise; as a guideline, I shall refer to a Carnapian, or Carnapian-like theory of argument analysis. (shrink)

Descartes, Leibniz, Spinoza, Locke, Berkeley, Hume, and Kant: these are the seven philosophers who stand out from the rest in what is known as the `modern' period in philosophy. Their thought defines the mainstream of classical or early modern philosophy, largely responsible for shaping philosophy as we now know it. In a clear and lively style, Richard Schacht has written a thorough introduction to the work of these seven founding fathers of modern philosophy. The bibliography has been updated for (...) this revised edition to take account of the recent explosion of writings on modern philosophy. (shrink)

Descartes, Leibniz, Spinoza, Locke, Berkeley, Hume, and Kant: these are the seven philosophers who stand out from the rest in what is known as the `modern' period in philosophy. Their thought defines the mainstream of classical or early modern philosophy, largely responsible for shaping philosophy as we now know it. In a clear and lively style, Richard Schacht has written a thorough introduction to the work of these seven founding fathers of modern philosophy. The bibliography has been updated for (...) this revised edition to take account of the recent explosion of writings on modern philosophy. (shrink)

In Western thinking, the tradition of the argument for the existence of God beganwith Plato and Aristotle. It was carried forward in medieval scholasticism,eminently in Aquinas‟s so-called quinque viae, and reached its peak in modernphilosophy. To date approximately 1850 different proofs for the existence of Godare known. The most frequently represented and well-known types of proofs arethe ontological, cosmological, teleological and the moral or deontological type,referring respectively to the arguments of Anselm, Aquinas , and Kant. In this paper I (...) will discuss the development of modernphilosophical proofs, from Descartes‟s and Spinoza‟s ontological arguments,through, Leibniz‟s cosmological argument to Swinburne‟s revision of Leibniz. (shrink)

Peter Sloterdijk turns his keen eye to the history of western thought, conducting colorful readings of the lives and ideas of the world's most influential intellectuals. Featuring nineteen vignettes rich in personal characterizations and theoretical analysis, Sloterdijk's companionable volume casts the development of philosophical thinking not as a buildup of compelling books and arguments but as a lifelong, intimate struggle with intellectual and spiritual movements, filled with as many pitfalls and derailments as transcendent breakthroughs. Sloterdijk delves into the work and (...) times of Aristotle, Augustine, Bruno, Descartes, Foucault, Fichte, Hegel, Husserl, Kant, Kierkegaard, Leibniz, Marx, Nietzsche, Pascal, Plato, Sartre, Schelling, Schopenhauer, and Wittgenstein. He provocatively juxtaposes Plato against shamanism and Marx against Gnosticism, revealing both the vital external influences shaping these intellectuals' thought and the excitement and wonder generated by the application of their thinking in the real world. The philosophical "temperament" as conceived by Sloterdijk represents the uniquely creative encounter between the mind and a diverse array of cultures. It marks these philosophers' singular achievements and the special dynamic at play in philosophy as a whole. Creston Davis's introduction details Sloterdijk's own temperament, surveying the celebrated thinker's intellectual context, rhetorical style, and philosophical persona. (shrink)

Few major philosophers show evidence of having studied the works of their predecessors with special care, even in cases where they were subject to particular influences which they were ready to acknowledge. Hume knew that he was working in the tradition of ‘some late philosophers in England, who have begun to put the science of man on a new footing’—‘Mr Locke, my Lord Shaftsbury, Dr Mandeville, Mr Hutchinson, Dr Butler, &c.’ But there is not much sign in the Treatise or (...) elsewhere in Hume's writings of any close acquaintance with the works of these authors; the presumption must be that he had read them at some time and extracted the main ideas, but was not in the habit of returning to their texts. He had something more important to do, namely to work at philosophical problems of his own. Similarly Kant, though he said that the Critique of Pure Reason was not meant to be ‘a critique of books and systems, but of the faculty of reason in general’, had clearly felt the impact of the thought of some important past philosophers, but equally had never spent much time in finding out just what these philosophers had to say. Plato, Aristotle, Descartes, Locke, Leibniz and Hume all get fairly frequent mention in his pages. But Kant takes his knowledge of Plato and Aristotle from J. J. Brucker's Historia critica philosophiae, a six-volume compilation which first appeared in 1742, or from doubtful sources such as Mendelssohn's doctored translation of the Phaedo, and though he doubtless knew the more recent authors at first hand clearly felt no need to study them in any depth. This was true even of writers to whom he attributed a particular importance, such as Leibniz and Hume. The references to Hume in the Critique and Prolegomena are all disappointingly general, and though the summary of Leibniz's philosophy in the section called ‘The Amphiboly of Concepts of Reflection’ has a certain force, it is not documented with references to Leibnizian texts. Kant knows that there is a difference between the views of the historical Leibniz and those which constituted the ‘Leibnizian-Wolffian system’ of his successors. But he is not very curious about the difference, or inclined to explore it. (shrink)

Few major philosophers show evidence of having studied the works of their predecessors with special care, even in cases where they were subject to particular influences which they were ready to acknowledge. Hume knew that he was working in the tradition of ‘some late philosophers in England, who have begun to put the science of man on a new footing’—‘Mr Locke, my Lord Shaftsbury, Dr Mandeville, Mr Hutchinson, Dr Butler, &c.’ But there is not much sign in the Treatise or (...) elsewhere in Hume's writings of any close acquaintance with the works of these authors; the presumption must be that he had read them at some time and extracted the main ideas, but was not in the habit of returning to their texts. He had something more important to do, namely to work at philosophical problems of his own. Similarly Kant, though he said that the Critique of Pure Reason was not meant to be ‘a critique of books and systems, but of the faculty of reason in general’, had clearly felt the impact of the thought of some important past philosophers, but equally had never spent much time in finding out just what these philosophers had to say. Plato, Aristotle, Descartes, Locke, Leibniz and Hume all get fairly frequent mention in his pages. But Kant takes his knowledge of Plato and Aristotle from J. J. Brucker's Historia critica philosophiae, a six-volume compilation which first appeared in 1742, or from doubtful sources such as Mendelssohn's doctored translation of the Phaedo, and though he doubtless knew the more recent authors at first hand clearly felt no need to study them in any depth. This was true even of writers to whom he attributed a particular importance, such as Leibniz and Hume. The references to Hume in the Critique and Prolegomena are all disappointingly general, and though the summary of Leibniz's philosophy in the section called ‘The Amphiboly of Concepts of Reflection’ has a certain force, it is not documented with references to Leibnizian texts. Kant knows that there is a difference between the views of the historical Leibniz and those which constituted the ‘Leibnizian-Wolffian system’ of his successors. But he is not very curious about the difference, or inclined to explore it. (shrink)

This anthology of readings in the survey of Western philosophy--from the Ancient Greeks to the 20th Century--is designed to be accessible to today's readers. Striking a balance between major and minor figures, it features the best available translations of texts--complete works or complete selections of works-- which are both central to each philosopher's thought and are widely accepted as part of the canon. The selections are readable and accessible, while still being faithful to the original. Includes Introductions to each historical (...) period and to each philosopher, and an abundance of drawings, diagrams, photographs, and a timeline. This Combined Volume contains the most important works from Baird's Philosophic Classics, Volumes I-V. ANCIENT GREEK PHILOSOPHY. Plato. Aristotle. HELLENISTIC PHILOSOPHY. Epicurus. Epictetus. Plotinus. MEDIEVAL PHILOSOPHY. Augustine. Boethius. Anselm (and Guanilo). Moses Maimonides. Thomas Aquinas. William of Ockham. Pico Della Mirandola. MODERN PHILOSOPHY. Ren Descartes. Thomas Hobbes. Blaise Pascal. Baruch Spinoza. John Locke. Gottfried Leibniz. George Berkeley. David Hume. Immanuel Kant. NINETEENTH-CENTURY PHILOSOPHY. G.W.F. Hegel. John Stuart Mill. Soren Kierkegaard. Karl Marx. Friedrich Nietzsche. TWENTIETH-CENTURY PHILOSOPHY. Edmund Husserl. Bertrand Russell. Martin Heidegger. Ludwig Wittgenstein. A.J. Ayer. Jean-Paul Sartre. Willard Van Orman Quine. Jacques Derrida. For anyone interested in Philosophy, History of Philosophy, or History of Intellectual Thought. (shrink)

Pre-Socratic -- Socrates (469-399 B.C.) -- Plato (429-347 B.C.) -- Existentialism -- Aristotle (384-322 B.C.) -- The ship of Theseus -- Francis Bacon (1561-1626) -- The cow in the field -- David Hume (1711-1776) -- Hedonism -- Prisoner's dilemma -- St. Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274) -- Hard determinism -- Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778) -- The trolley problem -- Realism -- Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) -- Dualism -- Utilitarianism -- John Locke (1632-1704) -- Empiricism versus Rationalism -- Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770-1831) -- (...) René Descartes (1596-1650) -- A-Theory -- The liar paradox -- Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679) -- Philosophy of language -- Metaphysics -- Jean-Paul Sartre (1905-1980) -- Free will -- Philosophy of humor -- The Enlightenment -- Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900) -- The Sorites paradox -- Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889-1951) -- Aesthetics -- Philosoph of culture -- Epistemology -- Twin Earth -- Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860) -- Karl Marx (1818-1883) -- Martin Heidegger (1889-1976) -- Voltaire (1694-1778) -- Relativism -- Eastern philosophy -- Avicenna (980-1037) -- Bertrand Russell (1872-1970) -- Phenomenology -- Nominalism -- Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (1646-1716) -- Ethics -- Philosophy of science -- Baruch Spinoza (1632-1677) -- Philosopy of religion. (shrink)

Peter Sloterdijk turns his keen eye to the history of western thought, conducting colorful readings of the lives and ideas of the world's most influential intellectuals. Featuring nineteen vignettes rich in personal characterizations and theoretical analysis, Sloterdijk's companionable volume casts the development of philosophical thinking not as a buildup of compelling books and arguments but as a lifelong, intimate struggle with intellectual and spiritual movements, filled with as many pitfalls and derailments as transcendent breakthroughs. Sloterdijk delves into the work and (...) times of Aristotle, Augustine, Bruno, Descartes, Foucault, Fichte, Hegel, Husserl, Kant, Kierkegaard, Leibniz, Marx, Nietzsche, Pascal, Plato, Sartre, Schelling, Schopenhauer, and Wittgenstein. He provocatively juxtaposes Plato against shamanism and Marx against Gnosticism, revealing both the vital external influences shaping these intellectuals' thought and the excitement and wonder generated by the application of their thinking in the real world. The philosophical "temperament" as conceived by Sloterdijk represents the uniquely creative encounter between the mind and a diverse array of cultures. It marks these philosophers' singular achievements and the special dynamic at play in philosophy as a whole. Creston Davis's introduction details Sloterdijk's own temperament, surveying the celebrated thinker's intellectual context, rhetorical style, and philosophical persona. (shrink)

Aristotle and Aquinas - Pascal - Descartes and the Cartesian revolution - Hume - The logical and the psychological - Plato and Locke; Kant - Leibniz - The soul.

Kant believed that true enlightenment is the use of reason freely in public. This book systematicaaly traces the philosophical origins and development of the idea that the improvement of human understanding requires public activity. Michael Losonsky focuses on seventeenth-century discussions of the problem of irresolution and the closely connected theme of the role of volition in human belief formation. This involves a discussion of the work of Descartes, Hobbes, Locke, Spinoza and Leibniz. Challenging the traditional views of seventeenth-century philosophy (...) and written in a lucid, non-technical language, this book will be eagerly sought out by historians of philosophy and students of the history of ideas. (shrink)

This volume examines the limitations of mathematical logic and proposes a new approach to logic intended to overcome them. To this end, the book compares mathematical logic with earlier views of logic, both in the ancient and in the modern age, including those of Plato, Aristotle, Bacon, Descartes, Leibniz, and Kant. From the comparison it is apparent that a basic limitation of mathematical logic is that it narrows down the scope of logic confining it to the study of deduction, (...) without providing tools for discovering anything new. As a result, mathematical logic has had little impact on scientific practice. Therefore, this volume proposes a view of logic according to which logic is intended, first of all, to provide rules of discovery, that is, non-deductive rules for finding hypotheses to solve problems. This is essential if logic is to play any relevant role in mathematics, science and even philosophy. To comply with this view of logic, this volume formulates several rules of discovery, such as induction, analogy, generalization, specialization, metaphor, metonymy, definition, and diagrams. A logic based on such rules is basically a logic of discovery, and involves a new view of the relation of logic to evolution, language, reason, method and knowledge, particularly mathematical knowledge. It also involves a new view of the relation of philosophy to knowledge. This book puts forward such new views, trying to open again many doors that the founding fathers of mathematical logic had closed historically. (shrink)

John Yolton describes this collection of nine essays as "a kind of a sequel" to his 1984 book Perceptual Acquaintance from Descartes to Reid. Four of the chapters have previously appeared in print, and most can stand on their own, presuming little or no familiarity with previous chapters. Indeed, the title is somewhat misleading, for the material is not presented in chronological fashion, and there is little attention given to Leibniz and none to Spinoza--not what one would expect to find (...) in a history from Descartes to Kant. (shrink)

Following a comparative historical chart, this student text features readings from Descartes, Spinoza, Locke, Berkeley, Hume, Leibniz and Kant.

Desde o ano de 1643, Descartes (1596-1650) e a princesa Elizabeth (1618-1680) já trocavam cartas a respeito da geometria, da metafísica e até da física cartesiana. Todavia, no ano de 1645, por conta de um grave estado melancólico da princesa, houve uma intensa correspondência entre ambos. À princípio, o debate se mantinha em torno das condições especificas da princesa. O tema central girava em torno de questões fisiológicas e morais (ou psicofisiológicas). À medida, porém, em que a troca de correspondência (...) se intensificava, o debate ia tornando-se cada vez mais teórico, passando pela discussão da Vida Beata, de Sêneca, até forçar Descartes a apresentar os primeiros esboços de sua própria concepção moral. Dessa troca de correspondência, escolhemos duas cartas de setembro de 1645: uma do filósofo a Elizabeth (carta CDIII) e outra da princesa a Descartes carta (CDVI). (shrink)

Philosophy is a dangerous profession, risking censorship, prison, even death. And no wonder: philosophers have questioned traditional pieties and threatened the established political order. Some claimed to know what was thought unknowable; others doubted what was believed to be certain. Some attacked religion in the name of science; others attacked science in the name of mystical poetry; some served tyrants; others were radical revolutionaries. This historically based collection of philosophers' reflections--the letters, journals, prefaces that reveal their hopes and hesitations, their (...) triumphs and struggles, their deepest doubts and convictions--allow us to witness philosophical thought-in-process. It sheds light on the many--and conflicting--aims of philosophy: to express skepticism or overcome it, to support theology or attack it, to develop an ethical system or reduce it to practical politics. As their audiences differed, philosophers experimented with distinctive rhetorical strategies, writing dialogues, meditations, treatises, aphorisms. Ranging from Plato to Hannah Arendt, with contributions from 44 philosophers (Augustine, Maimonides, AlGhazali, Descartes, Pascal, Leibniz, Voltaire, Rousseau, Hobbes, Hume, Kant, Nietzsche, Kierkegaard, Wittgenstein, among others) this remarkable collection documents philosophers' claim that they change as well as understand the world. In her introductory essay, "Witnessing Philosophers," Amelie Rorty locates philosophers' reflections in the larger context of the many facets of their other activities and commitments. (shrink)

I examine the significance of the Stoic theory of pathē for Kant’s moral psychology, arguing against the received view that systematic differences block the possibility of Kant’s drawing anything more than rhetoric from his Stoic sources. More particularly, I take on the chronically underexamined assumption that Kant is committed to a psychological dualism in the tradition of Plato and Aristotle, positing distinct rational and nonrational elements of human mentality. By contrast, Stoics take the mentality of an adult (...) human being to be rational through and through, while recognising that this rationality is not normally in a state of health or excellence. I show how Kant’s account of affections—chiefly the “affects” and “passions” that he identifies as targets of a duty of apathy—draws substantive lessons from his Stoic sources, and how he accepts on his own terms the monistic principles of Stoic moral psychology. (shrink)

In the early modern period, many authors held that sensation or sensory reception is in some way passive and that perception is in some way active. The notion of a more passive and a more active aspect of perception is already present in Aristotle: the senses receive forms without matter more or less passively, but the “primary sense” also recognizes the salience of present objects. Ibn al-Haytham distinguished “pure sensation” from other aspects of sense perception, achieved by “discernment, inference and (...) recognition,” which included perception of properties such as size and distance as well as similarity, difference, and beauty. Descartes regarded light and color as experiences passively caused in the mind by bodily processes, but he also included distance, perceived through accommodation and convergence, as an immediately caused sensory idea. On the perception side, most theorists held that size and distance perception occurs through unnoticed psychological operations, whether mediated by judgment or associative processes. Association is, in a sense, passive, as it occurs through nonreflective habit formation. But such habits mark a contribution of the subject to perception and are in that way active. The decision of whether sensation and perception are active or passive is highly sensitive to what counts as activity and to what is included as sensation or perception. There is no simple formula, but the generalization that sensation is for the most part passive and perception for the most part active may stand as an imprecise summary of early modern thought on the topic. (shrink)

In this book, Ben Lazare Mijuskovic uses both an interdisciplinary and History of Ideas approach to discuss four forms of intertwined theories of human consciousness and reflexive self-consciousness (Plato, Augustine, Descartes, Leibniz, Kant, and Hegel; Schopenhauer’s subconscious irrational Will; Brentano and Husserl’s transcendent intentionality; and Freud’s dynamic ego). Mijuskovic explores these theories within the context of psychological issues, where the discussion is undergirded by the conflict between loneliness and intimacy. He also explores them in the context of ethics, where (...) the dynamic is between the values of good and evil. The book historically traces these issues in both a personal as well as a political framework. (shrink)

Alain Badiou’s 1983–1984 lecture series on “the One” is the earliest of his seminars that he has chosen to publish. It focuses on the philosophical concept of oneness in the works of Descartes, Plato, and Kant—a crucial foil for his signature metaphysical concept, the multiple. Badiou declares that there is no “One”: there is no fundamental unit of being; being is inherently multiple. What is novel in Badiou’s view of multiplicity is his reliance on mathematics, and set theory in (...) particular. A set is a collection of things—yet, as he observes, it often is taken to “count as one” operationally for the purposes of mathematical transformations. In this seminar, distinguishing between “the One” and “counting as one” emerges as essential to Badiou’s ontological project. His analysis of reflections on oneness in Descartes, Plato, and Kant prefigures core arguments of his defining work, Being and Event. Showcasing the seeds of Badiou’s key ideas and later thought, The One features singular readings, breathtaking theorizations, and frequently astonishing offhand remarks. (shrink)

In the second edition of Hermann Cohen’s Kant’s Theory of Experience, he abandons the interpretation of Kant’s Anticipations of Perception that he gave in the first edition, in favourof a radically different one. On his early interpretation, the Anticipations is largely of psychological interest for its influence on, and continuing significance for, physiological psychology and psychophysics. But on his mature interpretation, it defends the superiority of a dynamic conception of nature over a mechanical conception. Further, on his early (...) interpretation, Cohen thought the Anticipations was not a central part of Kant’s critical theory of knowledge. But on his mature interpretation, he thinks it is absolutely central to that project. What is more, Cohen seems to have revised his interpretation in a relatively short period of time, in 1880-1. This paper argues that Cohen’s change in views about Kant’s Anticipations is explained by his reception of Leibniz in the very early 1880s, and specifically Cohen’s reception of Leibniz’s arguments against Descartes’ view that extension is the essence of matter. (shrink)

This paper describes Kant’s complex position on extension, showing how it emerges from the various ways in which he reacts to the views of Descartes, Locke, Newton, and Leibniz. Specifically, the paper argues that Kant’s views are closer to Leibniz’s than they are to those of Descartes, Locke, and Newton, insofar as Kant and Leibniz both reject the view that extension is a fundamental property, holding instead that it is explicable (at least in part) on the basis (...) of more fundamental forces. Kant disagrees with Leibniz, however, insofar as he rejects Leibniz’s distinctive commitments to certain metaphysical doctrines (such as pre-established harmony) and to active and passive primitive and derivative forces, opting, instead, for a Newtonian inspired conception of attractive and repulsive forces. In this way, the Critical Kant develops a hybrid position that attempts to make good use of aspects of both Leibniz’s and Newton’s accounts as he articulates his own distinctive position. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Plato and Leibniz against the MaterialistsEmily GrosholzImportant parallels hold between Leibniz’s attitude towards materialism and that of Plato. Both philosophers were interested in and hostile to materialism, and their qualified rejection of materialism became crucial to the systems of their maturity. Leibniz’s attachment to Plato began very early: in a text of 1664 Leibniz quoted the Timaeus, 1 and in another of 1670 he claimed that the Timaeus, along (...) with the Parmenides and the Phaedo, were his favorite dialogues. 2 The influence of the Timaeus is quite apparent in Leibniz’s correspondence with the French Platonist Nicholas Remond (1713–16) and certain essays (particularly “On the Ultimate Origination of Things” [1697] and “Tentamen Anagogicum”), where he appeals to Plato in distinguishing his own position from the materialism of his day, which revived and transformed that of Leucippus and Democritus, Epicurus, and the poet Lucretius.The way in which Leibniz resists and circumvents materialism in these letters and essays has a family resemblance with the way Plato addresses and solves certain metaphysical problems, some of them raised by materialism, in the Timaeus. All the same, the Platonic and Leibnizian strategies also diverge in significant respects. For Plato belongs to the ancient world and Leibniz to the modern world, in which the topic of subjectivity becomes central. Although both philosophers make essential use of abstract mathematical schemata to organize and inform their philosophical positions, Plato tends to give them a constitutive role and Leibniz a regulative role. [End Page 255]What is the point of establishing this analogy, a likeness nuanced by unlikeness, in the metaphysical strategies of Plato and Leibniz? First, it is important to examine philosophical genealogies. In this case the genealogy is attested by Leibniz himself, who feels at once indebted to and impatient with his forebear. Yet it has received much less scholarly recognition than the more obvious link between Aristotle and Leibniz. Second, this kind of examination exhibits the shape and tensile strength of metaphysical systems, as tragedy or fiction exhibits the extent and limits of moral and political systems. I assume that certain metaphysical problems and certain possibilities for metaphysical systems recur through time and that those things that are perennial in philosophy point to what is eternal about it, but I also believe that there is something peculiar about modernity, which imposes a sea-change on philosophy after Descartes. Materialism is a recurrent metaphysical possibility with which contemporary philosophers must still come to terms; the peculiar nature of modern philosophy introduces new ways to address materialism. Surely the study of how Plato and Leibniz took the measure of materialism will be illuminating for philosophers interested in such questions.I. Modern scholars debate over whether Plato knew the writings of Democritus and addressed himself to them. The classical authors were unanimous in the opinion that Plato regarded Democritus as one of his most important opponents. According to an often repeated anecdote, Plato wanted all the writings of Democritus burnt and only gave up this wish when it was clear that the writings were already too widely circulated. 3Commentators have pursued this alleged opposition in various directions. Hammer-Jensen 4 and Natorp 5 have argued that Plato discovered the works of Democritus in the midst of writing the Timaeus and that one can trace their influence in the latter part of the dialogue. Thus they find Plato heavily indebted to Democritus. Taylor, by contrast, rejects the influence of Democritus on Plato altogether. [End Page 256]There is no need to bring in Democritus, and it is perhaps most likely that Plato had never read his works. We cannot prove such a proposition, but we shall at least see that there is not a single sentence in the Timaeus which shows any knowledge of Democritus. Moreover, it is very doubtful whether Plato would have learned anything from Democritus if he had read him. 6However, Taylor’s conviction that Plato would not have been interested in Democritus is based on the assumption, central to his commentary, that the Timaeus must be read as a Pythagorean text, and this in itself is debatable. After all, Plato chose Timaeus the Locrian as the protagonist of... (shrink)

Der erste Teilband des umfangreichen Seminarbandes 84 der Gesamtausgabe gehort in den grossen Kontext von Martin Heideggers Auseinandersetzung mit Immanuel Kant und Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz. Leibniz ist fur Heidegger von herausragender Bedeutung fur die Geschichte der neuzeitlichen Metaphysik zwischen Descartes und Kant. Im Band 84.1 kommen drei Seminare zu Kant und ein Seminar zu Leibniz erstmals zur Veroffentlichung. Die drei Kant-Seminare befassen sich mit Kants Preisschrift uber die aFortschritte der Metaphysik (Sommer 1931), mit Kants aTranszendentaler Dialektik (...) aus der Kritik der reinen Vernunft im Hinblick und Vorgriff auf Kants praktische Philosophie (Winter 1931/32) und nochmals mit aHauptstucken aus der Kritik der reinen Vernunft (Sommer 1934). Das Leibniz-Seminar (Winter 1935/36) gibt erstmals eine grundlegende und wegweisende Gesamtinterpretation der aMonadologie. (shrink)

"Descartes is rightly considered the father of modern philosophy" - Schopenhauer "The effect of this man on his age and the new age cannot be imagined broadly enough... René Descartes is indeed the true beginner of modern philosophy, insofar as it makes thinking the principle. "- Hegel "Descartes was the first to bring to light the idea of a transcendental science, which is to contain a system of knowledge of the conditions of possibility of all knowledge." - Kant A (...) new 2023 translation directly from the original manuscripts into English of Descartes' famous work "Rules for the Direction of the Mind" (Règles pour la direction de l'esprit). This edition contains a new introduction and afterword from the translator, as well as a timeline of Descartes' life and summaries of each of his works. Here, Descartes lays out a method for approaching problems and seeking knowledge. The importance of this work lies in the fact that it established the scientific method as a way of investigating the world, and had a significant influence on the development of modern science. This work is one of the foundational texts of Western Philosophy. (shrink)

La cuestión referente a la verdad y falsedad de las ideas es tratada fervorosamente en la actualidad por hombres ilustres; y puesto que el propio Descartes no ha encontrado una solución satisfactoria a este problema, el cual es de gran significado para el conocimiento de la verdad, quisiera exponer brevemente mi interpretación acerca de los rasgos característicos y los criterios de las ideas y de los conocimientos. Pues bien, un conocimiento es oscuro o claro; un conocimiento claro es a su (...) vez confuso o distinto; un conocimiento distinto, inadecuado o adecuado; simbólico o intuitivo; finalmente, el conocimiento más completo será aquel que sea al mismo tiempo adecuado e intuitivo. (shrink)

The book reconstructs the history of Western ethics. The approach chosen focuses the endless dialectic of moral codes, or different kinds of ethos, moral doctrines that are preached in order to bring about a reform of existing ethos, and ethical theories that have taken shape in the context of controversies about the ethos and moral doctrines as means of justifying or reforming moral doctrines. Such dialectic is what is meant here by the phrase ‘moral traditions’, taken as a name for (...) threads of moral discourse, made in turn of other interwoven threads, including transmission of shared codes, appeals to reform of prevailing custom, rational argument about the justification of some precept on the basis of some shared general teaching or principle, and rational argument about the ultimate basis for principles and justification of authoritative teaching. That is, the approach adopted to the reading of ethical texts depends on a firm belief in the fact that philosophers hardly created any ethical doctrine out of nothing. The main point this book tries to highlight is how different philosophical theories emerged and followed each other as a result of attempts at accounting for what was going on in the world of moral traditions. Changes were propelled by controversies between different schools, and highly abstract arguments were the unintended effects of moves made by controversialists forced to transform (and occasionally to turn upside down) their own doctrines in order to face the challenge posed by other arguments. This is the reason why the book examines not only texts that already enjoy pride of place in the history of philosophy (Aristotle, Kant, Hegel), but also other texts usually treated in the histories of religions (the Bible, the Talmud, the Quran), and others considered to be much less philosophical (Plutarchus, Pufendorf). -/- 1. Plato and a response to ethical scepticism. Two different traditions of morality in VI-V century Greece are described. The birth of philosophical questioning of traditional morality and temporal and spatial variation of custom is described within the context of the v century crisis, the demise of traditional aristocratic and tyrannical rule and the birth of democracy. Two conflicting answers to the challenge are reconstructed, namely conventionalist or immoralist theories formulated by the Sophists and the eudemonist and intellectualist Socratic theory. Plato’s own reformulation of Socrates answer to the Sophists is reconstructed. His psychological views, his classification of the four cardinal virtues and his political theory are described as parts of a unitary system, culminating in an extremely realist moral ontology identifying the idea of the good with the essence of the (moral and extra-moral) world itself. -/- 2. Aristotle and the invention of practical philosophy. Aristotle’s invention of practical philosophy as a field separated from first philosophy is shown to be an implication of his break with Plato moral ultra-realism. Aristotle’s agenda in his moral works is arguably dependent on a polemical intention, namely dismantling Socratic intellectualism. The semi-inductive or virtuously circular method of practical philosophy is illustrated, starting with the received opinions of the better and wiser individuals and trying dialectically to sift what is left of mistake and inconsistence in such opinions, finally trying to correct mistakes and make the overall practical science more consistent. The chapter illustrates then the relationship of individual ethics, or ‘monastics’, with the art and the science of the pater familias, or ‘economics’, and the science of the ruler and citizen, or politics. The nature of virtues, or better, excellences of character, is discussed, highlighting the basic role of hexis, or ‘disposition’. Prudence, or better practical wisdom, is the focus of the chapter. Its relationship with bouleusis or deliberation is examined, and its autonomous status vis-à-vis theoretical knowledge is stressed. -/- 3. Diogenes and philosophy as a way of life. The chapter provides an overview of Hellenistic ethics, which almost amounts to Hellenistic schools of philosophy, in so far as ‘philosophy’ became in these centuries primarily the name for a way of life. The typical character of the Cynical movement is highlighted, that of a school of life, not a school aimed at providing any kind of intellectual training was to be provided. -/- 4. Epicurus and ethics as self-care. The peculiar character of the Epicurean school is described, a combination of a science of well-being aiming, more than at pleasure as in the popular view, at reduction of useless suffering, of unnecessary needs, and at a balanced selection of pleasures of the best and most durable kind. -/- 5. Epictetus and ethics as therapy of the passions. The various phases of Stoicism are described, and the shifting place given to ethics in the Stoic system of idea, culminating in the paradoxical view of ethics, its impossibility in principle notwithstanding, as the only truly significant and necessary part of philosophy. Cicero is treated, showing how his own synthesis of various Hellenistic trends is as a truly philosophical enterprise, deserving serious consideration after one or two centuries when he was confined to the role of literate. Epictetus is chosen as the best example of what the Stoic tradition could yield, an art of living based on sophisticated introspection, in turn aimed at making a kind of cognitive therapy possible, dismantling obnoxious passions at their root by systematically correcting false representations. -/- 6. Philo and the reconciliation of Torah and Platonism. A reconstruction of basic ideas from a few books of the Hebrew Bible is provided, starting with the Prophetic tradition and the focus on God’s mercy as the source of motivation and standard for human behaviour. Then a comparative analysis is undertaken of a parallel tradition, namely the three codifications of the Torā (Law or, better, Instruction), highlighting how a core of moral ideas may be recognized as a basis and preamble of codification of civil law, cultural practice, and regulation of ritual purity. The importance of Leviticus is stressed as the turning point when emphasis mercy, typical of the Prophetic tradition, is combined with the legal tradition, yielding the change in sensibility of the Second Temple time. Philo of Alexandria is described as one of the three leading figures – together with Rabbi Hillel and Rabbi Yeshua – at the apex the emergence of the mentioned new sensibility, gradually including mercy as an essential part of justice and establishing the starting point of both the Rabbinic and the Christian tradition. This consists precisely in the precept of one’s neighbour’s love or of the golden rule, two eventually identical precepts whose meaning is arguably more sober and sensible than the long-lasting Christian tradition deriving from John and Augustine has made us believe and no novelty vis-à-vis so-called Ancient-Testament teachings. -/- 7. Augustine and Christianity as Neo-Platonism. The first section examines the moral doctrines of so-called 'ethical Treaties' from the Talmud, a group of treaties, among which the best known is Pirqé Avot, that were left out of the six "orders" of the canon as they did not fit in any of the six groups of issues ritual or legal on which the division was based. According to Maimonides, their peculiar theme is provided by the Deòt, 'opinions', i.e., mental dispositions, that is, the translation of the Greek term hexeis and Arab akhlak (in turn providing in this language the name for ethics as such). The three topics I reconstruct are: i) the notion of Torah: The Torah is understood as the world order itself, or as the ‘Wisdom’ that existed even before creation and was ‘the tool by which the world was built’; however, the Torah is an earthly and human entity, as it was "received" by humans, and from that very moment belongs to them; ii) the relationship between love of God and love of neighbour; the treaties require us to study and practice the Torah ‘for its own sake’, that is, require us to act out of love, not out of fear or hope of reward; iii) the idea of sanctification of daily life: having disappeared with the destruction of the Temple the possibility of any conflict between liturgical service and everyday life, the latter is assumed to be in itself divine service: to give food to the poor has the same value as sacrifices in the Temple, and as an implication, the insistence become recurrent on the goodness of created things in themselves along with a polemic against ascetic currents. The conclusions drawn are: i) the moral teachings of the Talmud and those of Yeshua are, rather than similar, virtually identical; one may safely say that the precept of love and the golden rule are central ones for all Talmudic rabbis, that mercy plays an indispensable role alongside with justice, and the latter is not a different thing from one’s neighbour’s love; ii) a peculiarity of Talmud rabbis facing Yeshua is the idea of study as worship, and knowledge as a source of justice; but this is an idea of Judaism after the Temple's destruction that cannot be attributed to the Pharisees of Yeshua’s time; iii) the relation of study and practice in the Talmud parallels that between faith and deeds in Paul's epistles, that is, respectively faith or learning are a necessary and sufficient condition to be recognized as righteous , but deeds are the inevitable effect of either faith or learning. The sayings ascribed to Yeshua are examined first, yielding the conclusion that a close equivalent may be found for every saying in Talmudic literature and yet the whole is ascribed to one rabbi, with rather consistent stress on God’s mercy and unconditional forgiving as the mark of true imitation of God. Thus, Yeshua’s teaching is pure Judaism. The third section describes briefly the galaxy of Gnostic currents and Manichaeism, trying to sketch the profile of moral teachings resulting from an encounter of Asian spiritual traditions, Hellenistic lore and sparks of teachings from apocalyptic Jewish currents. The last section summarizes the turbulent history of several encounters between Christian currents and Hellenistic philosophical schools. The first one was with late Cynicism. Recent, rather controversial, literature discovered the jargon and a few topics from the Stoic-Cynical popular philosophy in a few books from the New Testament itself. This, far from proving that Rabbi Yeshua had been influenced by cynic preachers, is a proof of the necessity felt by Christian preachers to translate the original ‘Christian’ teaching into a Greek lexicon deeply impregnated with cynic terminology. The second was with Platonism, yielding the mild and temperate moral teaching of Clemens of Alexandria, teaching the sanctity of nature and the human body, the joy of moderate fruition of ‘natural’ kinds of pleasures, and the beauty of the marital life – in short, the opposite of the standard picture of Medieval Christianity. Ambrose of Milan brings about a different kind of synthesis, namely with Middle Platonism, where Stoic themes prevail. The most shocking case is Augustine, where an early Manichean education is overcome in a former phase by a synthesis of Plotinian Neo-Platonism and Christian preaching, yielding a sustained polemic with the Manicheans and rather optimistic views on life and Creation, the body and sexuality, and Hebrew-Judaic tradition not far from Clemens of Alexandria. In a later phase, occasioned by controversy on the opposite front, with such Christian currents as the Pelagians and Donatists, Augustine comes back to heavily anti-Judaic and world-denying ascetic attitudes where is earlier Manichean upbringing seems to emerge again. The tragedy of medieval Christianity will be the later Augustine’s overwhelming influence. A final section is dedicated to the monastic tradition where a curious mixture of world-denying asceticism with an astonishingly penetrating ‘science’ of introspection emerges. -/- 8. Al Farabi and the reconciliation of Islam and Platonism. The Qurān and the qadit, that is, collections of sayings ascribed to the prophet Muhammad contain a wealth of precepts and catalogues of virtues mirroring moral contents from the Jewish and the Christian traditions, among them the basic notion of imitation of the Deity, where mercy is assumed to be its basic trait. An important tradition within Islam, namely Sufism, stressed to the utmost degree the role of mercy, turning Islam into a mystic doctrine centred on retreat from the world, abandonment to God’s will, and a peaceful and fraternal attitude to our fellow-beings. A secular literary tradition originating in the Sassanid Empire, the literature of advice to the Prince had for a time a widespread influence in the newly constituted Arabic-Islamic commonwealth. In a later phase, the legacy of Hellenic philosophy made its way into the intellectual elite of the Islamic world. The first important legacy was Platonic, and the Republic became the main text for Islamic Platonism. Al-Farabi wrote an enjoyable remake of the Platonic Republic, arguing that the citizen’s virtues were the basis on which the political building needs to rest. The secular lawgiver is enlightened by the light of reason in his everyday practice of governance, but room is made for the Prophet as the voice of revealed truth that confirms and completes the rational truth that philosophy may afford. In a second phase also Aristotelian and Stoic influence were assimilated. Miskawayh’s treatise was the masterwork at the time Arabic philosophy reached its Zenith. It is a treatment of the soul’s diseases and their remedies, combining the Aristotelian doctrine of the golden mean with the Stoic doctrine of the passions and elements of Galenic medicine. Towards the eleventh-twelve centuries a war raged among theologians and philosophers, finally won by the former with disappearance of philosophy as such. The newly established mainstream, yet, was no kind of intolerant fanaticism. It drew from the work of mystic theologian Al-Ghazālī, the best heir of Sufism, teaching a tolerant and peaceful attitude to our fellow-beings and a passive attitude to destiny as an expression of the Divine will. -/- 9. Moshe ben Maimon and the reconciliation of Torah and Aristotelian ethics. The encounter between the Talmudic tradition and Hellenic philosophy had taken place a first time in Alexandria at the time of Philo but the two traditions had parted way again. In fact, the kind of Platonic Judaism founded by Philo survived only within Christianity, in the fourth Gospel and then in writings by Clemens of Alexandria. The Talmudic literature had absorbed just less striking traits from the Hellenic Philosophy, namely an idea of ethics as care of the self and a role for the education of character as propaedeutic to theoretical knowledge. In the Arabic-Islamic world, a second round started when Jewish authors writing in Arabic undertook the task to prove the full compatibility of the tradition deriving from Torah and Platonic philosophy. The culmination of this attempt is provided by Moshe ben Maimon who tried to use Aristotelian ethics as a language into which the teaching from the Pirké Avot could be translated. -/- 10. Thomas Aquinas and the reconciliation of Christian morality and Aristotelian ethics. In the first section the fresh start is described of philosophical ethics in Latin Europe at the turn of the Millennium. In a first phase, Anselm and Peter Abelard built on a Platonic and Augustinian legacy. In this phase. remarkable innovations are introduced, including Abelard’s claim of the obliging character of erring consciousness. In a second phase, the rediscovery of Nicomachean Ethics thanks to Latin translation of Arabic versions gives birth to a new wave of ethical studies, recovering the very idea of Aristotelian practical philosophy, with the potential implication of full legitimization of natural morality, i.e. ethics without Revelation. Aquinas’s ethics is a theological ethics out of which it would be vain to try to extract a self-contained philosophical ethics. His treatment of topics in philosophical ethics, yet, does not boil down to repetition of Aristotelian arguments but is rather a creative reshaping of such arguments. For example, he introduces also in the practical philosophy a first principle parallel to the principle of non-contradiction; and he also carries out a synthesis of Aristotelianism, Stoicism, and neo-Platonism. Even though it is essentially moral theology, Aquinas’s doctrine - unlike Augustine – grants full citizenship to "natural" morality, firstly by rejecting the claim that the corruption of human nature due to the original sin is so radical as to leave "pure nature" incapable of moral goodness. The doctrine is presented in a more sophisticated formulation in a few of the Quaestiones, such as De Malo and De Veritate, in the Summa contra Gentes and in the commentaries to Aristotle than in the famous Summa Theologica, but the latter work includes the only or the largest exposition of some decisive part of the theory. Thus, the Summa Theologica should be read for what it is more than criticized for not being what it was not meant to be. It was not meant to be the brilliant synthesis of all that Reason he had been able to produce with what Revelation had added about which the Neo-Thomists used to dream, but rather a manual for the training of preachers and confessors, where theoretical claims are not too demanding and a few serious tensions are left. Besides a jump between the Prima Secundae and the Secunda Secundae, being the former an essay in virtue theory and the latter a handbook for confessors, the most serious tension is perhaps the one between the ethics of right reason presented in most of Ia-IIae and the eudemonistic ethics developed in quaestiones 1-5 of the same part; the alternative ethical theory which also may be found in Augustine, the Stoic view of a cosmic reason eventually coincident with the moral law, was believed by Anselm (followed by John Duns Scotus and William of Ockham) to be incompatible with eudemonism. It is questionable whether Thomas could reduce the tension proving that it is just an apparent tension, in so far as the right reason and bliss derived from knowledge of God tend to coincide, but this is just a conjecture. Thomas’s ethics is a virtue ethic, not a law-based one, and moral judgment focuses on the virtues, particularly charity, not on the commandments and even less on absolute prohibitions; Thomas, however, would not have considered a drastic alternative between law and the virtues such as the one which has been advanced in late twentieth-century philosophy to be justified. Nonetheless, when it discusses ‘special’ virtues, it ceases to be an ethics of virtue and becomes a disappointing and often contradictory discussion of legal and illegal acts. Such a discussion takes most of the time ‘reasonable’ middle positions on controversial issues but not the alternative approach that Aristotelianism would have made possible; even when some occasional Aristotelian claim shows up, such as money’s barrenness as a reason against usury, this seems to be made by an author who apparently ignores the Aristotelian Thomas of the Prima Secundae. It is an ethic of human autonomy which recognizes the binding character of the individual conscience and, potentially, even a duty to disobey unjust laws. It is true that what Thomas writes in his discussion of death penalty and persecution of heretics is simply disgusting, and yet we should blame Thomas the man, not Thomist ethical theory. Finally, Thomas’s ethics is not ethical ‘absolutism’, as both traditionalist Catholic theologians and secularist enemies of dogmatic morality tend to believe. It is instead an ethic of prudential judgment. Exceptions to this approach – or better results of logical fallacies – are such claims as the absolute character of negative precepts and of the existence of "intrinsically evil acts", claims that simply cease to make sense in the light of Thomas’s own distinction between human act and natural act, carrying consequences Thomas did not live long enough to draw or was not consistent enough to dare to draw. -/- 11. Francisco de Vitoria and casuistry. The first topic illustrated is the discussion about the notion of pura natura, namely the human condition after the original sin and before divine revelation. The core notion was already there in Aquinas but was later developed by Caietanus (Thomas de Vio) with a number of interesting implications: firstly a view of human nature as such much more positive than Augustine’s and his followers’ view, including both Calvinists and Jansenists; secondly, the implication that the philosopher’s morality, as opposed to the Christian’s morality, is a quite respectable kind of morality; thirdly, that theocracy and prosecution of the unfaithful lacked justification, with more far-fetching consequences than Aquinas himself had dared to draw. The second topic is casuistry, a new name for a comparatively older way of thinking, which was already there in late Stoicism and Cicero as well as in the Talmudic literature. This is an approach aimed at yielding probable enough solutions for doubtful cases even in absence of completely safe staring points. The genre developed from medieval reference books for confessors and became by the sixteenth-century a sophisticated tool-box for dealing with various fields of applied ethics. Francisco Vitoria, the main authority of Baroque Scholasticism, was a controversial figure, among the proponents of the new discipline of casuistry and a consistent proponent of more separation between the religious and the civil authority, stricter limits to the legitimacy of war, innate rights of non-Christian nations in the New World based on the notion of pura natura, providing a standard of ‘natural’ goodness, previous to revelation, on which the Indian nations were judged to live in a naturally good condition, provided with the institutions of family, justice, and religion had accordingly a right to full respect by Christian sovereigns. Bartolomé de Las Casas, arguing along similar lines, was the leader of a historical battle in defence of the rights of the Indios. -/- 12. Michel de Montaigne and the art of living. A short description of one of the Renaissance Phyrronism, one of the classical philosophies revived in the fifteenth and sixteenth century. Montaigne combines the sceptical epistemology with an understanding of ethics – indeed of philosophy as a whole – in terms of an art of living inspired by two basic ideas, sagesse, that is, practical wisdom as the only kind of rationality available after theology, science, and tradition have declared bankrupt, and an aesthetic ideal of self-transformation through the art of writing and introspection. -/- 13. Pierre Nicole and neo-Augustinianism. The chapter illustrates first the vicissitudes of Augustinianism newly born after the late medieval triumph of Thomist Aristotelianism in the alternative Protestant and Catholic versions processed by the Calvinists and the Jansenists. Then it illustrates the doctrines of Pierre Nicole, Blaise Pascal’s best disciple, on the impossibility of introspection, on the ubiquity of self-deception, on the incurably evil character of the passion of love, and on the two moralities, the one of the man of the world, the morality of honesty which is indispensable for granting peace and order but devoid of any true value for eternal salvation, since the same external behaviour may be prompted by opposite motivations, and the morality of charity, the only true one but also useless to society. The third topic is Pierre Malebranche’s view of self-deception as a ubiquitous phenomenon accounting for human action and responsibility and his reformulated theory of self-love, no less ubiquitous than for Nicole and yet not as incurably evil, given the distinction between morally indifferent and even necessary amour de soi and vicious amour proper, a distinction on which the whole of Rousseau’s moral and political theory rests. -/- 14. Samuel von Pufendorf and the new science of morality. The chapter is dedicated to the discovery of the idea of a ‘new moral science’. Hugo Grotius is discussed first highlighting the real character of his project, much closer to the Thomist idea of a natural law accessible to non-corrupted human reason when human beings are living in a state of pura natura. Then Hobbes’s combination of scepticism, voluntarism, and conventionalism is described and both the continuity with Grotius’s new science, in the search for non-revealed rational morality, and the break with him, in the adoption of voluntarism and refusal of an intellectualist view of natural law, are illustrated. Pufendorf’s work is illustrated as a synthesis of the two previous attempts and the – up to Schneewind underestimated – paradigmatic example of the new science of morality. -/- 15. Richard Cumberland and consequentialist voluntarism. The chapter gives an overview of eighteenth-century Anglican ethics, noticing how the Cambridge tradition gave special weight to natural theology as opposed to positive or revealed theology – and how two Cambridge fellows, John Gay and Thomas Brown, elaborated on Cumberland’s (and Malebranche’s, as well as Leibniz’s) strategy for finding a third way between intellectualist view and voluntarist view of the laws of nature. The result of their elaboration was a kind of a rational-choice account of the origins of natural laws, where a law-giver God chooses among a number possible sets of laws on a maximizing criterion, and God’s maximandum is happiness for his creatures. The chapter notices also how such a solution aimed at solving at once the problem of evil and that of the foundation of moral obligation by proving how God’s choice was justified as far as it was the one minimising the amount of suffering in the world. 16. Richard Price and intuitionism. The chapter describes first the doctrines of the Cambridge Platonists, an example of hyper-rationalist reaction to Calvinism. Secondly it describes the sophisticated and universally ignored – from Sidgwick to Anscombe –version of what was later labelled ‘ethical intuitionism’ – showing how it escapes familiar objections and misrepresentations of intuitionism – from Mill to Rawls – in grounding its argument on transcendental arguments while carefully avoiding recourse to introspection and psychological evidence, which has been taken as a too easy target by critics of intuitionism. Thirdly, the chapter discusses Whewell’s ‘philosophy of morality’, as opposed to ‘systematic morality’, not unlike Kant’s distinction between a pure and an empirical moral philosophy. Whewell worked out a systematization of traditional normative ethics as a first step before its rational justification; he believed that the point in the philosophy of morality is justifying a few rational truths about the structure of morality such as to rule hedonism, eudemonism, and consequentialism; yet a system of positive morality cannot be derived solely from such rational truths but requires consideration of the ongoing dialectics between idea and fact in historically given moralities. Whewell’s intuitionism turns out closer to Kantian ethics than commentators have made us believe until now, and quite different from what Sidgwick meant by intuitionism. -/- 17. Adam Smith and the morality of role-switch. The chapter describes first, Hutcheson’s attempt at basing the ‘new science’ of natural law on different bedrock than Pufendorf and the English Platonists, namely a moral sense, a faculty whose existence is assumed to be proved on an empirical basis. The second step is a reconstruction of Hume’s rejoinder in terms of a new science of man including morality on an ‘experimental’ basis, that is, a ‘Newtonian’ hypothetical-deductive approach, distinguished from Hutcheson’s allegedly uncritical descriptive approach to human nature. The third step is a reconstruction of Adam Smith theory of morality understood as emerging from a spontaneous interplay of exchanges of situations (the most basic meaning of the word ‘sympathy’ as construed by this author). -/- 18. Jeremy Bentham and utilitarianism. The bulk of the chapter is dedicated to the doctrines of Jeremy Bentham. The Enlightenment spirit that suggested the idea of a new morality, free from religion, is illustrated. The notion of utility is illustrated as well as the subsequent formulations of the principle of utility. The idea of felicific calculus is discussed, showing how its inner difficulties prompted several reformulations of the principle of utility in order to avoid undesirable implications of proposed formulations. The role of the thesis of spontaneous convergence between interest and duty is discussed, showing how it left numberless questions open, and the distinction between the virtues of prudence, justice and beneficence is described as a way out of the deadlocks of classical utilitarianism. After Bentham, Mill’s reformed utilitarianism is reconstructed, showing how it is a kind of mixed system – as closer to common sense as it gives up Bentham’s claims to consistency and simplicity – resulting as unintended consequences from the controversies in which Mill was too keen to engage. The hidden agenda of the controversy between Utilitarianism and Intuitionism, going beyond the image of the battle between Prejudice and Reason, is described, showing how both competing philosophical outlooks turn out to be more research programs than self-contained doctrinal bodies, and such programs appear to be implemented, and indeed radically transformed while in progress thanks to their enemies no less than to their supporters. -/- 19. Immanuel Kant, practical reason and judgment. The chapter argues that Kant took from Moses Mendelssohn the idea of a distinction between geometry of morals and a practical ethic. He was drastically misunderstood by his followers precisely on this point. He had learned from the sceptics and the Jansenists the lesson that men are prompted to act by deceptive ends, and he was aware that human actions are also empirical phenomena, where laws like the laws of Nature may be detected. His practical ethics made room for judgment as a holistic procedure for assessing the saliency of relevant moral qualities in one given situation; this procedure yields the same results as the geometry of morals does for abstract cases but does so immediately and without balancing conflicting duties with each other, since what makes for the salient quality of a situation is perceived from the very beginning. Kant's practical philosophy is richer than the received image, making room for an ‘empirical moral philosophy’ or moral anthropology including treatment of commerce, needs, value and price, happiness and well-being; the overall social theory and philosophy of history is less different from Adam Smith's than the received image makes believe; the paradox of happiness is central to Kant's philosophy; a distinction between happiness and well-being is clearly drawn; the distinction plays a basic role in establishing a link between the economic and the moral life. -/- 20. Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel and the critique of abstract universalism. The chapter describes first the Romantic movement and the implications some of its concerns, rescuing passions, community, tradition, the individual as the bearer of a unique destiny, and the longing for organic unity between the individual, mankind and nature. Hegel’s contribution is discussed then, highlighting how, on the one hand, he shared a number of these concerns and on the other he had more rationalist leanings. The notion of morality is the pivotal point of the reconstruction, highlighting how Hegel construes this notion as a key to his own diagnosis of the malaise of modernity – the separation of individual and Gemeinschaft – and how his attack on Kant turns around this very idea. -/- 21. Friedrich Nietzsche against Christianity and the Enlightenment. The chapter illustrates first the idea of deconstruction of the back-world of values. Nietzsche claims to be legitimate heir of the French moralists, Leibniz, Kant and Hegel, in so far as he allegedly carries out to its deepest implications their discovery of what lies behind traditional naïve belief in the existence of an objective realm of values just waiting for description by the philosopher. The two exemplars form which genealogy draws inspiration are the classical philologist’s historical reconstructions of lost meanings and the chemist’s decomposition of elements. Then the genealogy of the notions of good and evil carried out in the first dissertation of Genealogy of morals is illustrated with its paradoxical conclusion that will to power is in fact the only ‘genuine’ kind of goodness. The third point illustrated is the dialectic of ascetism and self-realization with its ambiguous outcome. The suggested interpretation of such outcome is that Nietzsche’s normative ethics is a kind of virtue ethics taking an aesthetic ideal as a normative standard -/- 22. George Edward Moore and ideal utilitarianism. The chapter discusses the ideas of common sense and common-sense morality in Sidgwick. I argue that, far from aiming at overcoming common-sense morality, Sidgwick aimed purposely at grounding a consist code of morality by methods allegedly taken from the natural sciences to reach, also in ethics, the same kind of “mature” knowledge as in the natural sciences. His whole polemics with intuitionism was vitiated by the a priori assumption that the widespread ethos of the educated part of humankind, not the theories of the intuitionist philosophers, was what was worth considering as the expression of intuitionist ethics. In spite of a naïve positivist starting-point, Sidgwick was encouraged by his own approach in exploring the fruitfulness of coherentist methods for normative ethics. Thus, Sidgwick left an ambivalent legacy to twentieth-century ethics: the dogmatic idea of a “new” morality of a consequentialist kind, and the fruitful idea that we can argue rationally in normative ethics albeit without shared foundations. Then it reconstructs the background of ideas, concerns and intentions out of which Moore’s early essays, the preliminary version, and then the final version of Principia Ethica originated. I stress the role of religious concerns, as well as that of the Idealist legacy. I argue that PE is more a patchwork of rather diverging contributions than a unitary work, not to say the paradigm of a new school in Ethics. I add a comparison with Rashdall’s almost contemporary ethical work, suggesting that the latter defends the same general claims in a different way, one that manages to pave decisive objections in a more plausible way. I end by suggesting that the emergence of Analytic Ethics was a more ambiguous phenomenon than the received view would make us believe, and that the wheat (or some other gluten-free grain) of this tradition, that is, what logic can do for philosophy, should be separated from the chaff, that is, the confused and mutually incompatible legacies of Utilitarianism and Idealism. -/- 23. Edmund Husserl and the a-priori of action. The chapter illustrates first the idea of phenomenology and the Husserl’s project of a phenomenological ethic as illustrated in his 1908-1914 lectures. The key idea is dismissing psychology and trying to ground a new science of the a priori of action, within which a more restricted field of inquiry will be the science of right actions. Then the chapter illustrates the criticism of modern moral philosophy carried out in the 1920 lectures, where the main target is naturalism, understood in the Kantian meaning of primacy of common sense. The third point illustrate is Adolph Reinach’s theory of social acts as a key the grounding of norms, a view that basically sketches the very ideas ‘discovered’ later by Clarence I. Lewis, John Searle, Karl-Otto Apel and Jürgen Habermas. A final section is dedicated to Nicolai Hartman, who always refused to define himself a phenomenologist and yet developed a more articulated and detailed theory of ‘values’ – with surprising affinities with George E. Moore - than philosophers such as Max Scheler who claimed to Husserl’s legitimate heirs. -/- 24. Bertrand Russell and non-cognitivism. The chapter reconstructs first the discussion after Moore. The naturalistic-fallacy argument was widely accepted but twisted to prove instead that the intuitive character of the definition of ‘good’, its non-cognitive meaning, in a first phase identified with ‘emotive’ meaning. Alfred Julius Ayer is indicated as a typical proponent of such non-cognitivist meta-ethics. More detailed discussion is dedicated to Bertrand Russell’s ethics, a more nuanced and sophisticated doctrine, arguing that non-cognitivism does not condemn morality to arbitrariness and that the project of a rational normative ethics is still possible, heading finally to the justification of a kind of non-hedonist utilitarianism. Stevenson’s theory, another moderate version of emotivism is discussed at some length, showing how the author comes close to the discovery of the role of a pragmatic dimension of language as a basis for ethical argument. Last of all, the discussion from the Forties about Hume’s law is described, mentioning Karl Popper’s argument and Richard Hare’s early non-cognitivist but non-emotivist doctrine named prescriptivism. -/- 25. Elizabeth Anscombe and the revival of virtue ethics. The chapter discusses the three theses defended by Anscombe in 'Modern Moral Philosophy'. I argue that: a) her answer to the question "why should I be moral?" requires a solution of the problem of theodicy, and ignores any attempts to save the moral point of view without recourse to divine retribution; b) her notion of divine law is an odd one more neo-Augustinian than Biblical or Scholastic; c) her image of Kantian ethics and intuitionism is the impoverished image manufactured by consequentialist opponents for polemical purposes and that she seems strangely accept it; d) the difficulty of identifying the "relevant descriptions" of acts is not an argument in favour of an ethics of virtue and against consequentialism or Kantian ethics, and indeed the role of judgment in the latter is a response to the difficulties raised by the case of judgment concerning future action. A short look at further developments in the neo-naturalist current is given trough a reconstruction of Philippa Foot’s and Peter Geach’s critiques to the naturalist-fallacy argument and Alasdair MacIntyre’s grand reconstruction of the origins and allegedly unavoidable failure of the Enlightenment project of an autonomous ethic. -/- 26. Richard Hare and neo-Utilitarianism. The chapter addresses the issue of the complex process of self-transformation Utilitarianism underwent after Sidgwick’s and Moore’s fatal criticism and the unexpected Phoenix-like process of rebirth of a doctrine definitely refuted. A glimpse at this uproarious process is given through two examples. The first is Roy Harrod Wittgensteinian transformation of Utilitarianism in pure normative ethics depurated from hedonism as well as from whatsoever theory of the good. This results in preference utilitarianism combined with a ‘Kantian’ version of rule utilitarianism. The second is Richard Hare’s two-level preference utilitarianism where act utilitarianism plays the function of eventual rational justification of moral judgments and rule-utilitarianism that of action-guiding practical device. -/- 27. Hans-Georg Gadamer and rehabilitation of practical philosophy. The post-war rediscovery of ethics by many German thinkers and its culmination in the Sixties in the movement named ‘Rehabilitation of practical philosophy’ is described. Among the actors of such rehabilitation there were a few of Heidegger’s most brilliant disciples, and Hans-Georg Gadamer is chosen as a paradigmatic example. His reading of Aristotle’s lesson I reconstructed, starting with Heidegger’s lesson but then subtly subverting its outcome thanks to the recovery of the central role of the notion of phronesis. -/- 28. Karl-Otto Apel and the revival of Kantian ethics. Parallel to the neo-Aristotelian trend, there was in the Rehabilitation of practical philosophy a Kantian current. This started, instead than the rehabilitation of prudence, with the discovery of the pragmatic dimension of language carried out by Charles Peirce and the Oxford linguistic philosophy. On this basis, Karl-Otto Apel singled out as the decisive proponent of the linguistic and Kantian turn in German-speaking ethics, worked out the performative-contradiction argument while claiming that this was able to provide a new rational and universal basis for normative ethics. An examination of his argument is some detail is offered, followed by a more cursory reconstruction of Jürgen Habermas’s elaboration on Apel’s theory. -/- 29. John Rawls and public ethics as applied ethics. Rawls’s distinction between a “political” and a “metaphysical” approach to one central part of ethical theory, namely the theory of justice, is interpreted as a formulation of the same basic idea at the root of both the principles approach and neo-casuistry, both discussed in the following chapter, namely that it is possible to reach an agreement concerning positive moral judgments even though the discussion is still open – and in Rawls’ view never will be close – on the basic criteria for judgment. -/- 30. Beauchamp and Childress and bioethics as applied ethics. The chapter presents the revolution of applied ethics while stressing its methodological novelty, exemplified primarily by Beauchamp and Childress principles approach and then by Jonsen and Toulmin’s new casuistry. -/- . (shrink)

Immanuel Kant's Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals ranks alongside Plato's Republic and Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics as one of the most profound and influential works in moral philosophy ever written. In Kant's own words its aim is to search for and establish the supreme principle of morality, the categorical imperative. Kant argues that every human being is an end in himself or herself, never to be used as a means by others, and that moral obligation is an (...) expression of the human capacity for autonomy or self-government. This edition presents the acclaimed translation of the text by Mary Gregor, together with an introduction by Christine M. Korsgaard that examines and explains Kant's argument. (shrink)

Kant's Moral Law: Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals ranks with Plato's Republic and Aristotle's Ethics as one of the most important works of moral philosophy ever written. In Moral Law, Kant argues that a human action is only morally good if it is done from a sense of duty, and that a duty is a formal principle based not on self-interest or from a consideration of what results might follow. From this he derived his famous and controversial (...) maxim, the categorical imperative: "Act as if the maxim of your action were to become by your will a universal law of nature." H. J. Paton's translation remains the standard in English for this work. It retains all of Kant's liveliness of mind, suppressed intellectual excitement, moral earnestness, and pleasure in words. The commentary and detailed analysis that Paton provides is an invaluable and necessary guide for the student and general reader. (shrink)

What philosophical reasons are there that could ground Kant’s Declaration in 1799 against Fichte’s Doctrine of Science? To answer this question, the present paper reconstructs what Kant could have said but did not. The first section traces the possible peer influences on Kant’s stance toward Fichte expressed in the Declaration and derives from it what Kant conceived to be the problems with the Doctrine of Science. The second section establishes three formation conditions for transcendental paralogisms. The (...) third section proposes a Fichtean variant of paralogism and shows how in Fichte’s case the three formation conditions obtain. (shrink)

Controversies are boiling these days among distinguished men over true and false ideas. This is an issue of great importance for recognizing truth—an issue on which Descartes himself is not altogether satisfactory. So I want to explain briefly what I think can be established about the distinctions and criteria that relate to ideas and knowledge. [Here and in..

This interesting volume approaches Heidegger in a fresh and suggestive way. The author views Heidegger's thought as a confrontation with the history of metaphysics, an assumption which can hardly be contested. After a preliminary characterization of the essence of "metaphysics" as the later Heidegger understands that word, Laffoucreière reconstructs, chronologically, the history of metaphysics as Heidegger conceives it, studying in turn Heidegger's interpretation of: Parmenides, Plato, Aristotle, Descartes, Leibniz, Kant, Schelling, Hegel, and Nietzsche. She approaches Heidegger's thought through the (...) eyes of his Nietzsche-interpretation. Heidegger sees the history of the west in profoundly Nietzschean tones: it is the history of nihilism and of the domination of western thought by Christian-Platonic metaphysics whose pivotal concept, God as the first cause, has deteriorated to the point of meaninglessness. The times are needy and it is only by a new turn, a new sending of Being as Mission, that nihilism can be overcome. Laffoucreière explains clearly and forcefully that Heidegger's Seinsdenken is not atheistic, except in the sense of the theos of western metaphysics. She shows that a major concern of Heidegger's thought is to overcome the God of metaphysics in favor of the divine God to whom man can bend his knee. She argues that Heidegger's attempt to retrieve the original sense of Being and man, far from being atheistic, aims in fact at making possible a renewed sense of the living God. The interpretation is sound and for those who doubt it there is a three sentence endorsement of the work by Heidegger himself in which he welcomes the publication of "a clear and pertinent exposition of my thought."--J. D. C. (shrink)

René Descartes's Regulae ad directionem ingenii ('Rules for the Direction of the Understanding') is his earliest surviving philosophical treatise, and in many respects his most puzzling text. It is a profoundly original work with few intellectual precursors, and offers the fullest account anywhere in Descartes's work of his theory of method. Yet Descartes left it unfinished, and unpublished, at his death in 1650. The versions currently known to modern readers are all posthumous: a manuscript copied for Leibniz in the late (...) seventeenth century, a Dutch translation of 1684, and the version printed in 1701 in Amsterdam. As a result, the details and date of its composition, its fragmentary, unfinished state, and its philosophical content have long puzzled scholars. The discovery by Richard Serjeantson in 2011 of a previously unknown, early manuscript draft of the Regulae in Cambridge University Library was a hugely significant event in Cartesian scholarship. This edition presents the Cambridge manuscript of the Regulae alongside the 1701 Amsterdam version of the text to allow comparison between the early manuscript draft and the version best-known to modern readers, together with a full English translations of both texts. It is also the first critical edition of the Regulae to take into account the full range of textual witnesses to the text, both manuscript and printed. The new Cambridge manuscript sheds important light on the composition, date, and philosophical content of the Regulae, and will provoke scholars to rethink key questions about Descartes's early philosophical development. (shrink)

The German humanist Johann Reuchlin (1455-1522) defended the value of Jewish scholarship and literature when it was unwise and unpopular to do so. As G. Lloyd Jones points out, "A marked mistrust of the Jews had developed among Christian scholars during the later Middle Ages. It was claimed that the rabbis had purposely falsified the text of the Old Testament and given erroneous explanations of passages which were capable of a christological interpretation." Christian scholars most certainly did not advocate learning (...) the Hebrew language. Reuchlin was exceptional in pursuing and promoting Hebrew studies, believing that a working knowledge of that language was essential for a true appreciation of the Bible and rabbinic literature. Refusing to join Christian contemporaries who wished to destroy the Kabbalah and the Talmud, he spoke out against ignorance. Christians could have a useful dialogue with Jews if they gained a thorough knowledge of the writings of Jewish exegetes and philosophers. Toward that end he proposed university endowments that aroused the fury of opponents and led to the famous "battle of the books." Reuchlin's keen interest in Jewish mysticism resulted in the publication of De arte cabalistica in 1517. The first part of this dialogue reflects on messianism, the second part on the relation of the Pythagorean system to the Kabbalah, and tdhe third on the "practical Kabbalah." According to Jones, "Reuchlin demonstrates how Christians can make profitable use of Jewish mystical writings, and therefore shares with the reader his understanding of the art of the Kabbalah." That art will reach more readers in this modern English-language translation by Martin and Sarah Goodman.In addition to an introduction by G. Lloyd Jones, this edition of On the Art of the Kabbalah features a new introduction by Moshe Idel, a professor at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem and the author of many books, including Kabbalah: New Perspectives. (shrink)

Plato.--Aristotle.--Plotinus.--Descartes.--Spinoza.--Leibniz.--Locke.--Berkeley.--David Hume.--Immanuel Kant.--Post-Kantian movements.

This set of problems first came to light with the Eleatic criticism of Pythagorean theory, and dramatically revealed their importance in the paradoxes of Zeno, which have retained their relevance down the ages, and play a significant role, as we shall see, in the thought of Whitehead. In antiquity Aristotle had attained the clearest realization of these problems. It was in terms of them that he analyzed and rejected the theory of Leukippos and Demokritos of atoms and the void, and (...) worked out his own alternative theory. In the Renaissance these problems became crucial again, especially in the thought of Bruno and Patrizzi. Leibniz saw them as the basic issue presented by the theories of the seventeenth century, and it was in terms of these problems that he made his examination of Descartes' doctrine of res extensa, of Gassendi's revival of Democritean atomism, as well as of Newton's doctrine of space. Insufficient attention to these problems had resulted in his contemporaries getting caught in what he referred to as the "labyrinth of the composition of the continuum"-adopting this phrase from the title of a book by Libertius Fromond which had been published in 1631. Leibniz believed himself to have found the Adriadne's thread out of the labyrinth in the conception of body, as well as of space and time, as phenomenal. In Kant's view this way out was tenable only with a considerable philosophical reconstruction, which he provided with his transcendental philosophy. (shrink)

Le corps entier des sciences peut estre consideré comme l’ocean, qui est continué partout, et sans interruption ou partage, bien que les hommes y conçoivent des parties, et leur donnent des noms selon leur commodité. Et comme il y a des mers inconnues, ou qui n’ont esté navigeés que par quelques vaisseaux que le hazard y avoir jettés: on peut dire,[10] de même qu’il y a des sciences dont on a connu quelque chose par rencontre seulement et sans dessein. L’art (...) des combinaisons est de ce nombre; elle signifie chez moy, autant que la science des formes ou formules ou bien des variations en general. En un mot, c’est la Specieuse universelle ou la Characteristique. De sorte qu’elle traite de eodem et diverso; de simili et dissimili; de absoluto et relato; comme la Mathematique ordinaire traite de [15] uno et multis, de magno et parvo, de toto et parte. On peut même dire que la Logistique ou bien l’Algebre luy est sousordonnée en un certain sens. Car lorsqu’on se sert de plusieurs notes indifferentes, ou qui au commencement du calcul pouvoient estre echangées et substituées mutuellement sans faire tort au raisonnement, en quoy les lettres d’Alphabet sont fort propres; et lors que ces lettres ou notes signifient des grandeurs, ou [20] des nombres generaux, il en vient l’Algebre ou plus tost la Specieuse de Viete. Et c’est justement en cela que consiste l’avantage de l’Algebre de Viete et de Descartes sur celle des anciens, qu’en se servant des lettres au lieu des nombres tant connus, qu’inconnus, on vient a des formules, ou il y a quelque liaison et ordre, qui donne moyen à nostre esprit de. (shrink)

Le corps entier des sciences peut estre consideré comme l’ocean, qui est continué partout, et sans interruption ou partage, bien que les hommes y conçoivent des parties, et leur donnent des noms selon leur commodité. Et comme il y a des mers inconnues, ou qui n’ont esté navigeés que par quelques vaisseaux que le hazard y avoir jettés: on peut dire,[10] de même qu’il y a des sciences dont on a connu quelque chose par rencontre seulement et sans dessein. L’art (...) des combinaisons est de ce nombre; elle signifie chez moy, autant que la science des formes ou formules ou bien des variations en general. En un mot, c’est la Specieuse universelle ou la Characteristique. De sorte qu’elle traite de eodem et diverso; de simili et dissimili; de absoluto et relato; comme la Mathematique ordinaire traite de [15] uno et multis, de magno et parvo, de toto et parte. On peut même dire que la Logistique ou bien l’Algebre luy est sousordonnée en un certain sens. Car lorsqu’on se sert de plusieurs notes indifferentes, ou qui au commencement du calcul pouvoient estre echangées et substituées mutuellement sans faire tort au raisonnement, en quoy les lettres d’Alphabet sont fort propres; et lors que ces lettres ou notes signifient des grandeurs, ou [20] des nombres generaux, il en vient l’Algebre ou plus tost la Specieuse de Viete. Et c’est justement en cela que consiste l’avantage de l’Algebre de Viete et de Descartes sur celle des anciens, qu’en se servant des lettres au lieu des nombres tant connus, qu’inconnus, on vient a des formules, ou il y a quelque liaison et ordre, qui donne moyen à nostre esprit de. (shrink)

Le corps entier des sciences peut estre consideré comme l’ocean, qui est continué partout, et sans interruption ou partage, bien que les hommes y conçoivent des parties, et leur donnent des noms selon leur commodité. Et comme il y a des mers inconnues, ou qui n’ont esté navigeés que par quelques vaisseaux que le hazard y avoir jettés: on peut dire,[10] de même qu’il y a des sciences dont on a connu quelque chose par rencontre seulement et sans dessein. L’art (...) des combinaisons est de ce nombre; elle signifie chez moy, autant que la science des formes ou formules ou bien des variations en general. En un mot, c’est la Specieuse universelle ou la Characteristique. De sorte qu’elle traite de eodem et diverso; de simili et dissimili; de absoluto et relato; comme la Mathematique ordinaire traite de [15] uno et multis, de magno et parvo, de toto et parte. On peut même dire que la Logistique ou bien l’Algebre luy est sousordonnée en un certain sens. Car lorsqu’on se sert de plusieurs notes indifferentes, ou qui au commencement du calcul pouvoient estre echangées et substituées mutuellement sans faire tort au raisonnement, en quoy les lettres d’Alphabet sont fort propres; et lors que ces lettres ou notes signifient des grandeurs, ou [20] des nombres generaux, il en vient l’Algebre ou plus tost la Specieuse de Viete. Et c’est justement en cela que consiste l’avantage de l’Algebre de Viete et de Descartes sur celle des anciens, qu’en se servant des lettres au lieu des nombres tant connus, qu’inconnus, on vient a des formules, ou il y a quelque liaison et ordre, qui donne moyen à nostre esprit de. (shrink)