Treatise on Ethics (1684)

Treatise on Ethics (1684) PDF

Author: Nicolas Malebranche

Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media

Published: 2012-12-06

Total Pages: 319

ISBN-13: 9401124809

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explanation might be understood in relationship to our mental, moral, and spiritual life, leapt to his attention and was to occupy it from that day until his death. II. MALEBRANCHE'S THEORY OF BEING His fIrst work, The Search After Truth, appeared from 1674-76, some fourteen to sixteen years after his dramatic encounter with Descartes' work; to this day it is the only work unfailingly associated with his name, though it was the first of nine studies and several volumes of responses in which he went on to explore and develop his thought. Malebranche criticizes the prevailing theories of sense perception, imagination, memory and cognition, and fIrst proposes his own theory of how we acquire and evaluate ideas - from mathematical to physical, and moral to self-reflective. Underlying this theory is his rejection of Scholastic Aristotelian metaphysics, in which particular beings are said to have powers or forms that act on our minds to inform us. Malebranche - here in company with other critics . of that metaphysics from Montaigne to Bacon and Hobbes - argues that the prevailing view of beings endowed with powers by which they act unilaterally, as "causes" in the full sense of that word, makes no sense and cannot be confirmed by experience. For Malebranche, on the other hand, power can be predicated univocally only of God. Created beings have only that limited power given by God under the conditions of creation.

Treatise on the Human Mind (1666)

Treatise on the Human Mind (1666) PDF

Author: Louis de la Forge

Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media

Published: 2013-03-09

Total Pages: 264

ISBN-13: 9401735905

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Descartes' philosophy represented one of the most explicit statements of mind-body dualism in the history of philosophy. Its most familiar expression is found in the Meditations (1641) and in Part I of The Principles 0/ Philosophy (1644). However neither of these books provided a detailed discussion of dualism. The Meditations was primarily concerned with finding a foundation for reliable human knowledge, while the Principles attempted to provide an alternative metaphysical framework, in contrast with scholastic philosophy, within which natural philosophy or a scien tific explanation of natural phenomena could be developed. Thus neither book ex plicitly presents a Cartesian theory of the mind nor does either give a detailed account of how, if dualism were accepted, mind and body would interact. The task of articulating such a theory was left to two further works, only one of which was completed by Descartes, viz. the Treatise on Man (published posthumously in 1664). The Treatise began with the following sentence, describing the hypothetical human beings who were to be explained in that work: 'These human beings will be com posed, as we are, of a soul and a body; and, first of all, I must describe the body for you separately; then, also separately, the soul; and fmally I must show you how these two natures would have to be joined and united to constitute human beings resembling us.

The New (So-Called) Magdeburg Experiments of Otto Von Guericke

The New (So-Called) Magdeburg Experiments of Otto Von Guericke PDF

Author: Otto von Guericke

Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media

Published: 2012-12-06

Total Pages: 418

ISBN-13: 9401120102

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Otto von Guericke has been called a neglected genius, overlooked by most modern scholars, scientists, and laymen. He wrote his Experimenta Nova in the seventeenth century in Latin, a dead language for the most part inaccessible to contemporary scientists. Thus isolated by the remoteness of his time and his means of communication, von Guericke has for many years been denied the recognition he deserves in the English speaking world. Indeed, the century in which he lived witnessed the invention of six important and valuable scientific instruments -- the microscope, the telescope, the pendulum clock, the barometer, the thermometer, and the air pump. Von Guericke was associated with the development of the last three of these; he also experimented with a rudimentary electric machine. Thus his Experimenta Nova was an important work, heralding the emerging empiricism of seventeenth century science, and merits this first English translation of von Guericke's magnus opus.

Leibniz and the Kabbalah

Leibniz and the Kabbalah PDF

Author: A.P. Coudert

Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media

Published: 2013-03-14

Total Pages: 239

ISBN-13: 940172069X

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The general view of scholars is that the Kabbalah had no meaningful influence on Leibniz's thought. } But on the basis of new evidence I am convinced that the question must be reopened. The Kabbalah did influence Leibniz, and a recognition of this will lead to both a better understanding of the supposed "quirkiness,,2 of Leibniz's philosophy and an appreciation ofthe Kabbalah as an integral but hitherto ignored factor in the emergence of the modem secular and scientifically oriented world. During the past twenty years there has been increasing willingness to recognize the important ways in which mystical and occult thinking contributed to the development of science and the emergence 3 of toleration. However, the Kabbalah, particularly the Lurianic Kabbalah with its monistic vitalism and optimistic philosophy of perfectionism and universal salvation, has not yet been integrated into the new historiography, although it richly deserves to be. On the basis of manuscripts in libraries at Hanover and Wolfenbiittel, it is clear that Leibniz's relationship with Francis Mercury van Helmont (1614- 1698) and Christian Knorr von Rosenroth (1636-1689), the two leading Christian Kabbalists of the period, was much closer than previously imagined and that his direct knowledge of their writings, especially the collection of 4 kabbalistic texts they published in the Kabbala Denudata, was far more detailed than most scholars have realized. During 1688 Leibniz spent more than a month at Sulzbach with von Rosenroth.

Virtue Reformed

Virtue Reformed PDF

Author: Stephen Wilson

Publisher: BRILL

Published: 2005-10-01

Total Pages: 432

ISBN-13: 9047416252

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Drawing on Protestant scholasticism, Puritan “precisionism,” and virtue ethics, Virtue Reformed offers a comprehensive rereading of the ethical position of American philosopher-theologian Jonathan Edwards and his fascinating struggle to be both forwarder of the Reformation and participant in the Enlightenment.

Leibniz's Key Philosophical Writings

Leibniz's Key Philosophical Writings PDF

Author: Paul Lodge

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2020-10-15

Total Pages: 304

ISBN-13: 0192583581

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Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (1646-1716) is one of the most important and influential philosophers of the modern period. He offered a wealth of original ideas in metaphysics, epistemology, ethics, and philosophical theology, among them his signature doctrines on substance and monads, pre-established harmony, and optimism. This volume contains introductory chapters on eleven of Leibniz's key philosophical writings, from youthful works ("Confessio philosophi", "De summa rerum"), seminal middle-period writings ("Discourse on Metaphysics", "New System"), to masterpieces of his maturity ("Monadology", "Discourse on the Natural Theology of the Chinese"). It also covers his two main philosophical books (New Essays on Human Understanding and Theodicy), and three of his most important philosophical correspondences with Antoine Arnauld, Burcher De Volder, and Samuel Clarke. Written by internationally-renowned experts on Leibniz, the chapters offer clear, accessible accounts of the ideas and arguments of these key writings, along with valuable information about their composition and context. By focusing on the primary texts, they enable readers to attain a solid understanding of what each text says and why, and give them the confidence to read the texts themselves. Offering a detailed and chronological view of Leibniz's philosophy and its development through some of his most important writings, this volume is an invaluable guide for those encountering Leibniz for the first time.

Philosophic Pride

Philosophic Pride PDF

Author: Christopher Brooke

Publisher: Princeton University Press

Published: 2022-11-29

Total Pages: 304

ISBN-13: 0691242151

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Philosophic Pride is the first full-scale look at the essential place of Stoicism in the foundations of modern political thought. Spanning the period from Justus Lipsius's Politics in 1589 to Jean-Jacques Rousseau's Emile in 1762, and concentrating on arguments originating from England, France, and the Netherlands, the book considers how political writers of the period engaged with the ideas of the Roman and Greek Stoics that they found in works by Cicero, Seneca, Epictetus, and Marcus Aurelius. Christopher Brooke examines key texts in their historical context, paying special attention to the history of classical scholarship and the historiography of philosophy. Brooke delves into the persisting tension between Stoicism and the tradition of Augustinian anti-Stoic criticism, which held Stoicism to be a philosophy for the proud who denied their fallen condition. Concentrating on arguments in moral psychology surrounding the foundations of human sociability and self-love, Philosophic Pride details how the engagement with Roman Stoicism shaped early modern political philosophy and offers significant new interpretations of Lipsius and Rousseau together with fresh perspectives on the political thought of Hugo Grotius and Thomas Hobbes. Philosophic Pride shows how the legacy of the Stoics played a vital role in European intellectual life in the early modern era.

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