In an attempt to provide a deeper understanding of the early development of Berkeley, this is a reprinting of the manuscript introduction to Principles of Human Knowledge. The manuscript introduction is shown to express a philosophy different from the doctrine he published.

Simplicius surveys ideas about place and time from the preceding thousand years of Greek philosophy. Translation of text with commentary and notes.

Of the many translators who carried the Buddhist doctrine to China, Paramartha, a missionary-monk who arrived in China in AD 546, ranks as the translator par excellence of the sixth century. Introducing philosophical ideas that would subsequently excite the Chinese imagination to develop the great schools of Sui and T'ang Buddhism, Paramartha's translations are almost exclusively of Yogacara Buddhist texts on the nature of the mind and consciousness. This first study of Paramartha in a Western language focuses on the Chuan (...) shih lun (Evolution of Consciousness), a text that reveals the outline of Paramartha's Yogacara thought. The study begins with a discussion of Paramartha's life, the historical and political context of the time in India and south China, and the roles of his main disciples in disseminating his work. It then describes Paramartha's treatment of Yogacarin views on language and the process of cognition, both central to this system of thought. The final chapter analyzes the history and content of the Chuan shih lun, and the book concludes with a new translation of the text, with extensive annotations. (shrink)

Die hier vorliegende Neuübersetzung von Platons Menon enthält eine ausführliche Einführung, in der die Umstände der Abfassung, die möglichen Adressaten, die Figuren des Dialogs sowie dessen Thema und Fragestellung erörtert werden. Die Übersetzung beruht auf dem griechischen Text von Bluck (1964). Daher sind in dem reproduzierten griechischen Text (nach Burnet 1903) die Änderungen eingearbeitet, die sich aus dem Text von Bluck ergeben. Darüber hinaus werden an einer Reihe von Stellen Änderungen für den griechischen Text vorgeschlagen, teils aufgrund eigener oder fremder (...) Konjekturen, teils aufgrund anderer Lesarten in den Handschriften, von denen einige auch für das philosophische Verständnis des Dialogs von Bedeutung sind. Die Erläuterungen legen zum einen Wert auf eine genaue Analyse der Argumente des Gesprächs, zum anderen auf die literarischen Aspekte. Hierbei sprechen die Bezüge zu sizilischen Autoren (Gorgias, Empedokles, Theognis) zusammen mit den an die Komödie erinnernden Elementen dafür, dass Platon bei der Abfassung ein sizilisches Publikum vor Augen hatte. Aus diesen Voraussetzungen ergibt sich ein neues Verständnis verschiedener Positionen, die diesem Dialog zugeschrieben werden. (shrink)

The thirteenth century mystic Ibn ʻArabi was the foremost Sufi theorist of the premodern era. For more than a century, Western scholars and esotericists have heralded his universalism, arguing that he saw all contemporaneous religions as equally valid. In Rethinking Ibn ʻArabi, Gregory Lipton calls this image into question and throws into relief how Ibn ʻArabi's discourse is inseparably intertwined with the absolutist vision of his own religious milieu-- that is, the triumphant claim that Islam fulfilled, superseded, and therefore abrogated (...) all previous revealed religions. Lipton juxtaposes Ibn ʻArabi's absolutist conception with the later reception of his ideas, exploring how they have been read, appropriated, and universalized within the reigning interpretive field of Perennial Philosophy in the study of Sufism. The contours that surface through this comparative analysis trace the discursive practices that inform Ibn ʻArabi's Western reception back to the eighteenth and nineteenth century study of 'authentic' religion, where European ethno-racial superiority was wielded against the Semitic Other - both Jewish and Muslim. Lipton argues that supersessionist models of exclusivism are buried under contemporary Western constructions of religious authenticity in ways that ironically mirror Ibn ʻArabi's medieval absolutism. (shrink)

It used to be that everyone read the "notorious" Bernard Mandeville (1670-1733). He was a great satirist and come to have a profound impact on economics, ethics and social philosophy. "The Fable of the Bees" begins with a poem and continues with a number of essays and dialogues. It is all tied together by the startling and original idea that "private vices" (self-interest) lead to "publick benefits" (the development and operation of society).

Political Philosophy of Kautilya: The Arthashastra and After offers a critical analysis of ideas and institutions as described in the ancient political economy text Arthashastra. It discusses the contributions of pre-Kautilyan, Kautilyan and post-Kautilyan political thought to the evolution and development of political theory, in general, and the impact and influence of Kautilya's contributions, in particular. The book examines Kautilya's theory of state, power, law and justice, administration, security, society and social well-being. This book examines the nature of the (...) Kautilyan state and argues that it followed the principles of a 'welfare state', a concept coined much later. It talks about the relationship between moralism and realism in the treatment of international relations. It highlights the Kautilyan strategies in dealing with a hostile environment in the neighbourhood and beyond, which will be particularly interesting to scholars of contemporary international relations. (shrink)

This volume offers clear and forceful contemporary translations of the most important of Seneca's 'Moral Essays': On Anger, On Mercy, On the Private Life and the first four books of On Favours. They give an attractive, full picture of the social and moral outlook of an ancient Stoic thinker intimately involved in the governance of the Roman empire in the mid first century of the Christian era. A general introduction describes Seneca's life and career and explains the fundamental ideas underlying (...) the Stoic moral, social and political philosophy that informs the essays. Individual introductions, footnotes and biographical notes place the essays in their historical and philosophical contexts, and further assistance to students is provided by section headings in the translations which organize the principal transitions in the argument and the more unfamiliar aspects of Seneca's writing. (shrink)

The search for God is dictated not from without but from a profound sense of one's own moral being and worthiness to be happy. The core of Immanuel Kant's argument remains relevant to the experience of ordinary men and women. He wished to strengthen, not undermine, belief in God and in the spiritual nature of humankind. This 1763 essay is imporrtant in understanding the development of Kant's thought. It exposed the flaw in the Cartesian argument that the existence of a (...) perfect being could be deduced from an idea or concept of such. Similarly, Kant saw the problem inherent in the Leibnizian view of a philosophical system modeled on mathematics: a philosopher who, like a mathematician, began with an arbitrary definition remained trapped in a circle of words. In The One Possible Basis for a Demonstration of the Existence of God , Kant diverged from the familiar forms of ontological argument. The result was a brilliant approach to divine being that anticipated his mature Critique of Pure Reason. With this Bison Book edition, The One Possible Basis appears in paperback for the first time. Gordon Treash's English translation, the only modern one, faces pages containing the original German. Treash, who is a professor of philosophy at Mount Allison University, Sackville, New Brunswick, edited, with Paul A. Bogaard, Metaphysics as Foundation: Essays in Honor of Ivor Leclerc . Also available as a Bison Book is Kant's last major essay, The Conflict of the Faculties (1992). (shrink)

Few figures have been of such enduring importance as Ibn Sina, also known as Avicenna (980-1037 AD), the great Persian philosopher and physician of the Abassid period. This work is a study of the fourth part of Ibn Sina's late and most comprehensive book al-Isharat wat-Tanbihat, Remarks and Admonitions, a book which Ibn Sine describes as 'the cream of the truth', containing 'the best pieces of wisdom' expressed 'in sensitive words'. The present volume includes an introduction, discussing the nature of (...) the fourth part of al-Isharat and the procedures followed in analyzing and translating it; a lengthy analysis of Ibn Sina's ideas on the three main topics in this part of al-Isharat (the nature of happiness, the stations of the knowers, and the signs manifested by the knowers); and a translation of this part. The work shows that, to Ibn Sina, knowledge of the eternal aspects of the universe, primarily of God, is the highest human objective and the only thing that secures human happiness or heavenly existence. While no permanent knowledge of this kind is possible for a human being on earth, signs of its temporary acquisition are evidenced in many ways, one of which is possession of powers that a person who does not know the secrets of the universe may consider extraordinary. Although the focus of this volume is on the fourth part of al-Isharat, many references are made to some of Ibn Sina's other writings by way of clarifying certain points and placing this part of al-Isharat in the context of Ibn Sina's general philosophy. (shrink)

Religion within the Boundaries of Mere Reason is a key element of the system of philosophy which Kant introduced with his Critique of Pure Reason, and a work of major importance in the history of Western religious thought. It represents a great philosopher's attempt to spell out the form and content of a type of religion that would be grounded in moral reason and would meet the needs of ethical life. It includes sharply critical and boldly constructive discussions on (...) topics not often treated by philosophers, including such traditional theological concepts as original sin and the salvation or 'justification' of a sinner, and the idea of the proper role of a church. This new edition includes slightly revised translations, a revised introduction with expanded discussion of certain key themes in the work, and up-to-date guidance on further reading. (shrink)

The original edition of Kant: Political Writings was first published in 1970, and has long been established as the principal English-language edition of this important body of writing. In this new, expanded edition two important texts illustrating Kant's view of history are included for the first time, his reviews of Herder's Ideas on the Philosophy of the History of Mankind and Conjectures on the Beginning of Human History, as well as the essay What is Orientation in Thinking?. In addition (...) to a general introduction assessing Kant's political thought in terms of his fundamental principles of politics, this edition also contains such useful student aids as notes on the texts, a comprehensive bibliogaphy and a new postscript, looking at some of the principal issues in Kantian scholarship that have arisen since the first edition. (shrink)

A guiding light to America’s Founding Fathers, Hobbes created the first truly modern political philosophy. In Leviathan, one of the greatest works of political philosophy of all time, English philosopher Thomas Hobbes created the idea of a “social contract” and set out to explicate a doctrine for the foundation of states and legitimate forms of government. In On Hobbes, Alan Ryan explains how Hobbes created the secular conception of the state and politics in one of the (...) first truly modern works of political philosophy. Inverting Aristotle’s view of politics, Hobbes argued that humans organize themselves into political communities not out of any sociable impulse to pursue the good life in common, but rather out of an unsociable fear of one another and for the sake of avoiding the greatest evil of all: death. Ryan explicates how modern notions of individual rights, sovereignty, representative government, and almost all liberal political theory find their foundation in the work of Hobbes. Excerpted here are: Leviathan, The Elements of Law. (shrink)

English summary: Condillacs 1746 Essai sur lorigine des connaissance humaines represents a pioneering approach to the philosophy of knowledge. Working through a semiotic method, Condillac is able to radically revisit the theory of ideas developed by predecessors such as Malebranche and Locke. This critical edition allows readers to better understand Condillacs essential contributions to Enlightenment philosophy. French description: L'Essai sur l'origine des connaissances humaines que Condillac publie en 1746 est un texte surprenant a plusieurs points de vue. Il (...) l'est tout d'abord du fait qu'on ne sait pas exactement dans quelles conditions il a ete compose, et que, faute de manuscrits, il reste impossible a ce jour d'en connaitre la redaction initiale. Dans ses ouvrages ulterieurs, Condillac en a par ailleurs critique plusieurs elements, mais rien ne nous permet de savoir s'il a touche a l'Essai quand il a entrepris de reviser ses ecrits en vue de leur publication dans ses oeuvres completes qu'il n'aura pas eu le temps de mener a bonne fin. Il l'est aussi dans son contenu qui s'efforce d'articuler une philosophie de la connaissance avec ce que nous considererions comme une semiotique generale. Dans cet effort, le genie de Condillac prend appui sur toute la culture de son temps pour ouvrir avec alacrite une voie de recherche dans laquelle il fait oeuvre de pionnier. Ayant en effet arrime l'idee au signe, il entreprend l'inventaire des modalites de fonctionnement de toutes les especes de signes d'institution. Il lui devient alors possible de bousculer de l'interieur la theorie des idees sous les formes qu'elle a prises chez ses predecesseurs, en particulier Malebranche et Locke, et de reconduire sans reste l'idee jusqu'a la sensation. Au cours de ce travail, il met en place non seulement les bases, mais jusqu'au projet, destine a alimenter pour longtemps les discussions, d'une theorie de l'esprit. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Philosophy 40.4 (2002) 549-550 [Access article in PDF] Book Review The Millenarian Turn: Millenarian Contexts of Science, Politics, and Everyday Anglo-American Life in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries James E. Force and Richard H. Popkin, editors. The Millenarian Turn: Millenarian Contexts of Science, Politics, and Everyday Anglo-American Life in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries. Vol. 3 of Millenarianism and Messianism in Early (...) Modern European Culture. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2001. Pp. xxv + 190. Cloth, $85.00. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, a significant body of scholars called attention to the idea of the millennium in English thought during the seventeenth century. These scholars argued that, especially during the epoch of the Civil Wars and Commonwealth, 1640 to 1660, religious speculation that history was moving toward its imminent consummation in a thousand-year reign of Christ exercised powerful influence on English politics and society, both in England itself and in colonial New England. To a lesser extent, scholars also noted the persistence of millennial anticipation after the Restoration, including speculation by mathematicians and scientists such as Isaac Newton.Richard H. Popkin, in addition to his well-known work on the history of skepticism, has played an important role in fostering and contributing to continued scholarship on millenarian and messianic ideas in the early modern era. In The Millenarian Turn: Millenarian Contexts of Science, Politics, and Everyday Anglo-American Life in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries, Popkin collaborates with James E. Force to publish eleven papers from a 1998 conference at the William Andrews Clark Memorial Library, UCLA. The book interprets the work of biblical exegetes, theologians, and scientists in the two centuries from 1600 to 1800 and places millenarian ideas in such varied contexts as Whig politics, the production of almanacs, Jewish-Christian relations, and early modern theories of geological history.The essays that comprise The Millenarian Turn are most successful when they reconstruct the millennial ideas of particular thinkers, relate these ideas to other aspects of a given individual's thought, and trace the revision of millennial ideas through successive generations. For example, Sarah Hutton of the University of Hertfordshire carefully describes the influential commentary on the Book of Revelation by the Cambridge biblical scholar Joseph Mede (1586-1638), in order to demonstrate the paradoxical point that Mede's theories were appropriated for dramatically different political and ecclesiastical purposes by Puritan radicals and by Church of England apologists. Margaret J. Osler of the University of Calgary shows that the physicist and chemist Robert Boyle (1627-1691) was not only preoccupied with questions about the extent and limitations of human knowledge, but also consistently extended these questions into his views on the afterlife, in which he identified heaven with enlarged capacities for knowing the beauty and harmony of the cosmos. And Reiner Smolinski of Georgia State University expertly traces the series of exegetical and theological shifts from early seventeenth-century millenarians to the New England minister Cotton Mather (1663-1728), who became "the first American to develop a fully coherent premillennialist system in the modern sense" organized around the idea that Christ's return at the beginning of the millennium would purify the world from "wickedness, death, and destruction" (166).As these three examples suggest, The Millenarian Turn makes an important contribution through the chronological span of its essays. Chapters usefully describe the principal millenarian exegetes of the early seventeenth century (Thomas Brightman, Joseph Mede, J. H. Alsted), but nine of the book's eleven chapters focus on the continued vitality of millenarian ideas after 1660. In this regard, the book stakes out an important agenda for future scholarship on the cultural history of millenarian and messianic beliefs and movements.At the same time, it must be said that Force, Popkin, and their colleagues could have done more to explore the cultural work done by millenarianism in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Having provided extensive evidence of the... (shrink)

In 1746 the French philosophe Condillac published his Essay on the Origin of Human Knowledge , one of many attempts during the century to determine how we organize and validate ideas as knowledge. In investigating language, especially written language, he found not only the seriousness he sought but also a great deal of frivolity whose relation to the sober business of philosophy had to be addressed somehow. If the mind truly reflects the world, and language reflects the mind, why (...) is there so much error and nonsense? Whence the distortions? How can they be remedied? In The Archeology of the Frivolous , Jacques Derrida recoups Condillac's enterprise, showing how it anticipated--consciously or not--many of the issues that have since stymied epistemology and linguistic philosophy. If anyone doubts that deconstruction can be a powerful analytic method, try this. (shrink)

This collection of essays, written by leading experts, showcases historiographical problems, fresh interpretations, and new debates in medieval and Renaissance history and political thought. Recent scholarship on medieval and Renaissance political thought is witness to tectonic movements. These involve quiet, yet considerable, re-evaluations of key thinkers such as Thomas Aquinas and Machiavelli, as well as the string of lesser known "political thinkers" who wrote in western Europe between Late Antiquity and the Reformation. Taking stock of thirty years of developments, this (...) volume demonstrates the contemporary vibrancy of the history of medieval and Renaissance political thought. By both celebrating and challenging the perspectives of a generation of scholars, notably Cary J. Nederman, it offers refreshing new assessments. The book re-introduces the history of western political thought in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance to the wider disciplines of History and Political Science. Recent historiographical debates have revolutionized discussion of whether or not there was an "Aristotelian revolution" in the thirteenth century. Thinkers such as Machiavelli and Marsilius of Padua are read in new ways; less well-known texts, such as the Irish On the Twelve Abuses of the Age, offer new perspectives. Further, the collection argues that medieval political ideas contain important lessons for the study of concepts of contemporary interest such as toleration. The volume is an ideal resource for both students and scholars interested in medieval and Renaissance history as well as the history of political thought. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Ideas 64.2 (2003) 149-157 [Access article in PDF] Introduction:The Uses of Historical Evidence in Early Modern Europe Jacob Soll A leading figure at Cambridge University after World War II, Herbert Butterfield seems an unlikely forerunner of the kind of cultural history that is practiced today. Yet Butterfield was a pioneer. He saw the origins of modern historical consciousness in the scholarly practices of (...) the Renaissance. These practices, he maintained, were a significant part of the slow shift to rationalist thinking that occurred between the fifteenth and eighteenth centuries. In his remarkable work, The Statecraft of Machiavelli (1940), Butterfield sought to show that Machiavelli's inductive use of historical examples was part of a larger empirical movement that slowly replaced religious and classical authority with the new authority of observation and deduction. Like Ernst Cassirer, he saw Machiavelli as an historical counterpart to Bacon, Descartes, Vesalius, and even Copernicus: The significance of the "experimental method" itself was not fully realized or clearly established until after the emergence in the seventeenth century of new scientific apparatus—the telescope, the microscope, and more accurate measuring-instruments for example; and even Bacon and Descartes, whose names have closely been associated with the scientific revolution, can hardly be said to have realized the implications of the new method. There is a transition then, but it is slower than many people have imagined and someone has rightly said that the middle ages do not come to an end until the seventeenth century. Machiavelli, as we shall see, has a place in the transition, for in the political and human sciences as well as the natural sciences a change did occur. Machiavelli is interesting not because he is a modern man [End Page 149] born out of due time, but because he illustrates one of the mediations by which the transition was accomplished. 1Butterfield turned to Emile Durkheim's sociological study of Renaissance education to understand the relationship between traditions of learning and the cosmological shift of the seventeenth century. 2 Durkheim had used Rabelais's portrait of Pantagruel's education to illustrate how the study of ancient language and the rise of historical erudition were not only instruments of aesthetic culture, but also constituted "a mine of positivist knowledge." Citing Erasmus, Durkheim himself maintained that linguistic philology was a preparation for higher disciplines—graviores disciplinæ. 3 The English historian agreed with the French sociologist: traditions of humanist learning were essential elements of a larger ethos of natural and practical studies that differentiated post-humanist Europe from the Middle Ages.Although his later work concentrated on questions of historiography, Butterfield never studied the full effect of historical practices on the learned culture of early modern Europe. 4 These papers seek to pick up where Butterfield left off, to understand the effect that humanist historical consciousness had on educated Europe at large. They will show that questions of historical accuracy and verification were the common link among diverse disciplines between 1400 and 1800. Rather than looking for theories of history and historical method solely in the works of historians, they will examine how non-historians discussed history in terms of their own fields of study. They will show how thinkers in the domains of architecture, art, astrology, education, law, medicine, natural philosophy, politics, and theology saw the importance of historical understanding and how they used it to shape their own particular forms of knowledge. By sketching an overview of the different applications of historical knowledge, we will begin to have a clearer view of the process by which humanism historicized the world of knowledge.Learned culture at the beginning of the seventeenth century is commonly associated with the rise of scientific authority. Church dogma and the Aristotelian logical tradition no longer sufficed to explain natural phenomena and to [End Page 150] quell the curiosity of the learned. 5 As Galileo so recklessly exclaimed, look into the telescope and witness with your own eyes that Aristotle was wrong about the moon. 6 For Galileo's colleague, the great Paduan Aristotelian... (shrink)

Tasan Chong Yagyong (1762-1836) is one of the most creative thinkers Korea has ever produced, one of the country's first Christians, and a leading scholar in Confucian philosophy. Born in a staunchly Neo-Confucian society, in his early twenties he encountered writings by Catholic missionaries in China and was fascinated. However, when he later learned that the Catholic Church condemned the Confucian practice of placing a spirit tablet on a family altar to honor past generations, he left the small (...) Catholic community he had helped found and ostensibly returned to the Neo-Confucian fold. Nevertheless, the Christian ideas he studied in his youth influenced his thinking for the rest of his life, stimulating him to look at Neo-Confucianism with a critical eye and suggest new solutions to problems Confucian scholars had been addressing for centuries. A Korean Confucian's Advice on How to Be Moral is an annotated translation of Tasan's commentaries on the Confucian classic Zhongyong (usually translated as The Doctrine of the Mean) in which he applies both Confucianism and Christianity to the question of how to best develop a moral character. Written as a dialogue with King Chongjo, (r. 1776-1800) these texts reveal how Tasan interpreted his Confucian tradition, particularly its understanding of how human beings could cultivate morality, while the king's questions illustrate the mainstream Neo-Confucianism Tasan was reacting against. Tasan challenged the non-theistic standard, insisting that living a moral life is not easy and that we need to be motivated to exert the effort necessary to overcome our selfish tendencies. He had abandoned his faith by the time he wrote these commentaries but, influenced by Catholic works and determined to find a more effective way to live a moral life than non-theistic Neo-Confucianism provided, Tasan constructed a Confucian philosophy of moral improvement centered on belief in God. This translation, helpfully annotated for context and analysis, is an exploration of early Korean engagement with the West and a powerful guide to all those interested in Confucianism, Christianity, and morality. (shrink)

Fichte was at the height of his philosophical activity and influence during the last decade of the eighteenth century in Jena. It was during this period that he developed his idea of a Wissenschaftslehre or a “science of knowledge.” A Wissenschaftslehre is an ongoing investigation by subjects of their subjectivity which may be captured only imperfectly in medias res in the form of a written document, but which is crucially not identical with any written philosophical text. So Fichte distinguishes (...) between Wissenschaftslehre and its presentations. In the Jena period Fichte completed two such presentations. The first, the Grundlage der gesammten Wis-senschaftslehre [WL], contains the famous analysis of the preconditions for consciousness in terms of the posits of I and not-I and their reciprocal limitation. Fichte became dissatisfied with his treatment of the central problems in the 1794 version and began working on a second version in 1796. Only two introductions and the first chapter of this new presentation appeared in print. Due to his dawning belief that philosophy was appropriately done solely in oral or dialogic form and the psychic toll of the “atheism controversy” that led to his dismissal from Jena in 1799, by the early 1800's Fichte abandoned plans to publish the entire second presentation. Lectures on the entire second presentation given in 1796-9, the Wissenschaftslehre nova methodo [WLnm], are preserved, however, in two sets of student notes. The importance of the discovery of these notes is difficult to overestimate. WLnm develops new and more convincing positions on such fundamental issues as the nature of subjectivity, the unity of reason, and the relation between self-consciousness and intersubjectivity that greatly enhance Fichte's historical status and his relevance to contemporary debates on a variety of philosophical concerns. (shrink)

Ludwig Wittgenstein’s _Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus_ is among the most ambitious and influential philosophical works of the early twentieth century, and in recent years it has again occupied a central position in discussions of Wittgenstein’s philosophy. Written in an austere and meticulous style, the _Tractatus_ addresses questions in the philosophy of language, logic, and metaphysics, and, according to its author, provides a solution to all the problems of philosophy. This Broadview Edition contains the original English translation by (...) C.K. Ogden and Frank P. Ramsey, annotated and revised by the editor for improved accuracy and clarity. Appendices include important material by Gottlob Frege and Bertrand Russell, as well as excerpts from Wittgenstein’s other writings. (shrink)

The Seventh Sense is the definitive study of the aesthetic theory of the great eighteenth-century philosopher Francis Hutcheson, arguably the founder of the modern discipline of aesthetics, and one of the most important figures of the Scottish Enlightenment. This new edition brings Peter Kivy's seminal work back into print, substantially expanded by the addition of seven essays, which deal primarily with Hutcheson's relation to other thinkers, and his influence on eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century aesthetics.Part I of The Seventh Sense (...) presents a detailed analysis of Hutcheson's aesthetic theory. Part II traces the considerable influence of Hutcheson's theory up to the early years of the nineteenth century. Part III is a new and substantial addition to the original work, collecting Peter Kivy's essays on this topic since the first edition appeared, which deal primarily with Hutcheson, David Hume, and Thomas Reid. Philosophers of art, historians of philosophy, and historians working on eighteenth-century European art and culture will find this new edition an invaluable resource. (shrink)

Interest in _dream_ and _madness_, conceived as the loss of a world shared with others, and the individual’s entry into a private world governed by a personal logic unrelated to the waking state and to common feeling, recurs in at least three of Kant’s works: _Essay on the Diseases of the Head,_ (1764), _Dreams of a Spirit-Seer_ (1766), and _Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View_ (1798). Hegel too, from an early age, showed a strong fascination and a (...) precocious interest in psychopathological matters (states of altered consciousness, prophetic dreams, somnambulism, catalepsy, witchcraft etc.) to which he devoted intriguing reflections in various works from different periods: from the Berne Ms _Philosophy of Subjective Spirit_ (1794/95) to the _Phenomenology _(1807), from the _Philosophical __Propaedeutics_ (1808ff.) to the _Encyclopedia of the Philosophical Sciences_ (1830 3 ). Starting from the remarks of the two philosophers, this paper aims to underline the conceptual links between their thought and that of some renowned psychologists and psychiatrists of the 1800s-1900s (Pinel, Janet, Adler, James, Binswanger, Freud et al.). On the other hand, the paper also seeks to show – within the framework of an idea of _reason_ dating back to Heraclitus (about 544/483 B.C.) – some murky motifs, not always adequately emphasized in the past, found in the figurative and literary works of the late 1700s (e.g. Fuseli’s_ The Nightmare_, Coleridge’s _The Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner_, and, in particular, plate Nr. 43 of the _Caprichos _by Goya, _El sueño de la razón produce monstruos_), where there emerges a «dark side» of psychic activity emblematically described as the cryptic relationship between _dream_ and_ madness._. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Versuch über die TranszendentalphilosophieYitzhak Y. MelamedSalomon Maimon. Versuch über die Transzendentalphilosophie. Edited by Florian Ehrensperger. Hamburg: Meiner, 2004. Pp. lii + 324. € 19,80."I had now resolved to study Kant's Critique of Pure Reason, of which I had often heard but which I had never seen. The method, in which I studied this work, was quite peculiar. On the first perusal I obtained a vague idea of (...) each section. This I endeavored afterwards to make distinct by my own reflection, and thus to penetrate into the author's meaning. Such is properly the process which is called thinking oneself into a system [sich in ein System hineindenken]. But as I had already mastered in this way the systems of Spinoza, Hume and Leibniz, I was naturally led to think of a coalition-system [Koalitionssystem]. This in fact I found, and put it gradually in writing in the form of explanatory observations on the Critique of Pure Reason, just as this system unfolded itself to my mind. Such was the origin of my Transcendental Philosophy." The peculiar method of "thinking oneself into a system" might remind the reader of the works of the great French historian of philosophy, Martial Gueroult. However, these lines are taken from the autobiography of Salomon Maimon (1753–1800), one of the most brilliant as well as eccentric figures of modern philosophy (Solomon Maimon – An Autobiography, trans. J. Clark Murray (Urbana, 2001 [1792–93]), 279–80). The reader who still wonders about the similarity between Gueroult's and Maimon's methods is invited to consult the former's mostly neglected dissertation (1929).Maimon's life story is as fascinating as it is hard to believe. Having grown up in traditional Jewish surroundings in Lithuania, Maimon developed a deep interest in medieval Jewish philosophy in his early teens. Presumably, the uncompromising and iconoclastic spirit of this corpus struck a deep chord in his psyche and launched a life-long obsessive search after the truth. Upon hearing about the supposed appearance of "Lady Truth" in the emerging Hassidic movement, Maimon rushed to the house of the leader of the movement, but was disappointed to find out that the Lady had just left the place (or at least so the rumor said). Then, came the idea that perhaps Berlin, the city of the Aufklärer, was the new place of residence of the Lady (alas, had he only known...), and in 1777 Maimon packed a small bag of food and some manuscripts, said goodbye to his wife and young children and departed for Berlin. Then, began an odyssey of ten or twelve years in which he succeeded, among other things, in being kicked out from the shelter of Jewish community in Berlin due to his suspected heresy, learning and pursuing the delicate art of beggary, returning to Berlin and becoming a protégé of Mendelssohn, getting into a quarrel with Mendelssohn (on account of Maimon's unhidden Spinozism, and his frequent visits to certain not-so-respected houses), leaving Berlin to go to Amsterdam (for it was said that Lady T. was fond of a certain local Benedict), being stoned in the open street by the children of the Jewish community in Amsterdam, attending a Gymnasium at Altona at the age of thirty, and finally landing back in Berlin shortly after Mendelssohn's death. Then, the Lady was glimpsed again between the lines of Kant's Critique of Pure Reason. Well, the story just begins, and the reader should consult other books—such as the aforementioned Autobiography—if she wishes to find out the end of this obsessive affair.Published in 1790, Maimon's Essay on Transcendental Philosophy was originally conceived as a commentary on Kant's first critique. The main part of the book consists of ten chapters [End Page 366] in which Maimon presents his criticism of Kant, and suggests several crucial improvements of Kant's system. To this Maimon added a (rather lengthy) "Brief Survey of the Book," a commentary on Baumgarten's Metaphysica (entitled: "My Ontology"), and an appendix "On Symbolic Cognition and Philosophical Language." Presumably, Maimon circulated the book's manuscript and in response to criticisms he added another section... (shrink)