ABSTRACTA primary theme in Leo Strauss’s early work is how medieval Jewish and Islamic political philosophy, while influenced by Plato, differs from him in crucial ways. This theme is central to Strauss’s 1935 book Philosophy and Law. Philosophy and Law concerns the medieval ‘philosophic foundation of the law,’ which provides a rational justification of revelation. For Strauss, the foundation provides this justification by virtue of some difference it has from Plato. In this paper, I offer a new interpretation of Strauss’s (...) view of this difference. I suggest that, for Strauss, whereas Plato conceived of the legislator and his legislation, the foundation conceives of the sovereign and his sovereign laws. On this basis, I also suggest a solution to a perennial mystery of Philosophy and Law: Strauss claims that the medieval foundation reveals ‘ultra-modern thoughts,’ yet does not explicitly state the identity of these thoughts. I suggest that their author is Carl Schmitt. (shrink)

Title pagae -- Copyright -- Contents -- Series Editor's Preface -- Acknowledgements -- Introduction: Modern Thought in Pain -- 1 After Pains -- 2 Distress I -- 3 Distress II -- 4 Pain of Debt, or, What We Owe to Retroactivity -- 5 Survival of Cruelty -- 6 Grief-substitutes, or, Why Melanie Klein Is So Funny -- Index.

Offered to discussion theme has to fundamental question of philosophical conscience self-definition, question about reliable beginning of thought. General starting point is acknowledging that modern European metaphysics assumes fundamentalism as a principle of thought. Considering this thinking strategy theses are put forward: 1) fundamentalism is impossible; 2) fundamentalism was not universal modern European strategy of thinking; 3) theoretical clarity and systematicity of thinking are to be opposed to fundamentalism; 4) fundamentalism and systematicity os thinking – are (...) mutually exclusive. Because only religious fate by definition corresponds with being, then modern European philosophy solves purely religious question using fundamentalism. But for philosophers as a topos of correspondence of being and thinking is knowledge. But till knowledge is reliable beginning of thought, and science is positivistic, untill then philosophy ought to be in permanent crisis. Hence philosophy, by opening new possibilities of being, more and more relies on new metaphysical topos – existential experience. The aim of neo-scepticism is to metaphysically defend existential experience. (shrink)

Faith and Modern Thought is a jargon-busting and engaging introduction providing an imaginative and creative way into the great minds that have forged the modern world, especially Kant and Hegel and the revolutionary philosophies of existentialism and Marxism they inspired. Tim Hull provides the wider intellectual picture, the fuller philosophical story in which modern theology was forged. After an engaging introduction to the European Enlightenment and the cultural crisis it triggered, the stage is set to understand (...) the essence of modern theology. From that essential background the radical faith of many of the most influential of modern theologians and philosophers of religion is explored, exposing a deep-rooted indebtedness to the Enlightenment tradition"-- Back cover. (shrink)

The book is written with grace and wit; again and again, Neiman writes the kind of sentences we dream of uttering in the perfect conversation: where every mot is bon. This is exemplary philosophy.

This little book which is a sequel to "Cartesianism" is not written for professional philosophers. Its less ambitious purpose is to initiate undergraduate students of Catholic Universities and Colleges, who are engaged in the study of scholastic philosophy, into a knowledge of the fundamental principles of those numerous systems that have contributed to the chaos of modern thought from the time of Descartes to the present day.

Logical reflection in early modern philosophy (EMP) is marked by the instability of the period, although it is more lasting (the Port-Royal Logic was nevertheless used as a handbook in philosophy courses until the end of the nineteenth century). It started in the sixteenth century and ended in the nineteenth century, a period of 300 years during which there were deep transformations in the conceptions of authority and scientific method. For the history of twentieth-century philosophy, it was the period (...) of “classical logic,” which lasted from the Renaissance to the linguistic turn conducted by Gottlob Frege. The period was used to be thought of as centuries of little or no original contribution to logic, in which conceptions of logic were tainted by rhetoric, epistemology, and psychologism in the worst sense (Kneale and Kneale 1962; Michael 1997). From the last decades of the twentieth century, however, scholars began to regard this period more accurately with respect to reflection and changes in logic and semantics. It has recently become a promising field for historical and conceptual research; today we can say that the legacy of early modern logical reformism has a philosophical, logical, and semantic value in itself. (shrink)

The story of the greatest of all philosophical friendships—and how it influenced modern thought David Hume is widely regarded as the most important philosopher ever to write in English, but during his lifetime he was attacked as “the Great Infidel” for his skeptical religious views and deemed unfit to teach the young. In contrast, Adam Smith was a revered professor of moral philosophy, and is now often hailed as the founding father of capitalism. Remarkably, the two were best (...) friends for most of their adult lives, sharing what Dennis Rasmussen calls the greatest of all philosophical friendships. The Infidel and the Professor is the first book to tell the fascinating story of the friendship of these towering Enlightenment thinkers—and how it influenced their world-changing ideas. The book follows Hume and Smith’s relationship from their first meeting in 1749 until Hume’s death in 1776. It describes how they commented on each other’s writings, supported each other’s careers and literary ambitions, and advised each other on personal matters, most notably after Hume’s quarrel with Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Members of a vibrant intellectual scene in Enlightenment Scotland, Hume and Smith made many of the same friends, joined the same clubs, and were interested in many of the same subjects well beyond philosophy and economics—from psychology and history to politics and Britain’s conflict with the American colonies. The book reveals that Smith’s private religious views were considerably closer to Hume’s public ones than is usually believed. It also shows that Hume contributed more to economics—and Smith contributed more to philosophy—than is generally recognized. Vividly written, The Infidel and the Professor is a compelling account of a great friendship that had great consequences for modern thought. (shrink)

First published in English in 1935, this is a vital and stimulating critical appraisal of contemporary thought in the post-World War One era. Written by a selection of leading Marxist thinkers including Nikolai Bukharin, who would later become one of the most famous victims of Stalin's show trials, this work offers a Marxist critique of contemporary thought relating to philosophy, science and history. The authors all lean towards the view that the general tendency of modern thought (...) is to abandon the historical method and to deny progress, with the conclusion that Marxism was the only historical and progressive outlook in science, philosophy and history in the period following the First World War and the Communist revolution in Russia. A fascinating document of great historical and political interest which offers an invaluable insight into contemporary thought in the Soviet Union of the 1930s. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Evil in Modern Thought: An Alternative History of PhilosophyPaul S. MiklowitzSusan Neiman. Evil in Modern Thought: An Alternative History of Philosophy. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2002. Pp. xii + 358. Cloth, $29.95.Contemporary philosophy in America tends to regard epistemological questions as the most fundamental of the discipline, but Susan Neiman's Evil in Modern Thought sets itself against this assumption in an attempt (...) to sketch "an alternative history of philosophy." "It's possible to begin to worry about the difference between appearance and reality because... a dream is so vivid that you want to grasp one of its objects for a moment or two of sleepy half-consciousness," Neiman writes, but then "you wake up in your bed, slap your face if you have to... " (5). The problem of evil, in stark contrast to such skeptical speculations, is far more urgent and trenchant; it is "the place where philosophy begins, and threatens to stop" (ibid.). Moreover, the problem of evil, far from being merely a theological quandary, actually forms a link between metaphysics and epistemology by starkly posing questions about the intelligibility of the world: Why are things like that? wants the answer Because it's best that way. For the early modern period, these questions centered on the "theodicy" debates focused by the catastrophic Lisbon earthquake of 1755, while for us the holocaust threatens to explode all our hopes and expectations for the possibility of a world that is as it should be. Thus, Lisbon and Auschwitz frame for Neiman the historical topoi that ground discussion of the relation between natural and moral evils, the evolving philosophical understanding of which defines "who we have become in the three centuries that separate us from the early Enlightenment" (10).The problem of theodicy is introduced through the figure of Alfonso X, king of Castille in 1252, and "the first Enlightenment hero" (14), according to Neiman. Having studied astronomy under the guidance of learned Jews from Toledo, Alfonso scandalously remarked "If I had been of God's counsel at the Creation, many things would have been ordered better" (15). Serving as a paradigm of blasphemy for half a millennium, Alfonso's boast also expresses the inevitable dismay that must accompany the delighted wonder at natural order exploited by the argument from design: while Creation is surely miraculous in its manifestation of seemingly intelligent structure, it is just as surely astonishing that so much of that structure seems so wantonly destructive. Can this really be the best of all possible worlds if innocent lives are cut short by cruel diseases or natural disasters while vicious villains prosper into comfortable old age?! Alfonso's remark serves Neiman as a leitmotif around which she orders central figures in the canon of western philosophy into two camps: those who struggled to reconcile natural evil with God's goodness or with reason (Leibniz, Pope, Rousseau, Kant, Hegel and Marx), and those who skeptically condemned reason by appealing to "brute appearances" (Bayle, Voltaire, Hume, Sade and Schopenhauer). Because the very categories of natural and moral evil tend to break down as a result of the development of psychology as a "science of nature" (to the extent that human motives are regarded as natural processes subject to empirical explanation, they cease to manifest a unique ontology), Nietzsche and Freud fall outside the philosophical canon thus construed—although Neiman's discussion of these two thinkers is perhaps the most compelling of the book.No new interpretive ground is broken in the resulting exegesis of western philosophical history, but Neiman's treatment of each of these figures is intelligent and skillful. In discussing Kant, for example, a deep paradox at the center of his moral thought is brilliantly harnessed to the book's argument. Whereas theodicies from Leibniz onward had focused on attempts to show that Providence ultimately guaranteed a connection between virtue and happiness despite obvious evidence to the contrary, Kant took exactly the opposite tack. As Neiman puts it, "Solving the problem of evil is not only impossible but immoral. For knowing the connections between moral and natural evils would undermine the possibility of morality" (69). If we could be sure that good deeds... (shrink)

These penetrating metaphysical and spiritual teachings cross the divides of culture and time, providing unexpectedly modern insight.

"This book is a collection of superbly crafted essays on some fundamental texts of modern and contemporary philosophy. All were first published elsewhere in French. The translation here is accurate and graceful. Typically the author comments on works in which one philosopher engages in dialogue with another: Hegel with Hobbes, Hegel and Heidegger with Kant, Heidegger with Husserl, Merleau-Ponty with Husserl.... All of these essays repay a second or third reading, but the pieces on 'Hegel and Hobbes' and 'Heidegger (...) and Husserl's Logical Investigations' seem to have an exceptionally evocative character." --Review of Metaphysics. (shrink)

This book is an outgrowth of a series of articles originally published in The Progress Magazine under a pseudonym, in which I sought to account for the prevailing mental unrest regarding subjects of religious and philosophical import. These articles attracted much attention from careful students of the times, and there have been many requests for the republication thereof in book form under my own name. Accordingly, the publishers of the articles requested me to revise the several papers, and to add (...) thereto such further matter as I might think proper. I have gone over the original articles, taking away a little here and adding much there. Several entirely new subjects have been considered and inserted in their proper places in the text. At least one third of the present book is entirely new, having been added to the revised form of the original articles. I have purposely quoted freely from good authorities, that the reader may have the benefit of the thought of a number of competent persons upon the various phases of the subject, in addition to what I have personally thought and written. I have sought merely to tell my story in a plain, simple manner, without any attempt at fine writing, literary excellence, or display of technical philosophical knowledge. My desire has been to place in the hands of the everyday busy man and woman a book from the pages of which they may gain a general knowledge of the causes of the modern mental unrest-an idea of what is going into this great melting pot of thought; what is happening there; and what is likely to be poured forth from it. To many, the numerous new "isms," "ologies" and cults, are entirely new- something sprung full grown from the brains of their founders. The absence of an elementary acquaintance with the history of philosophy, on the part of the average man and woman, has given to many new prophets and founders of cults an unmerited and unwarranted importance and authority. I trust that this book will enable some of those who have been perplexed and worried over these new (?) "isms," and teachings, to learn the true sources of those startling conglomerations of metaphysics, philosophy and theology, and thus once more to regain their mental bearings. It is also my hope that some who have a tendency toward philosophical study may be inspired by this book to go to the proper sources of such knowledge-to the masters of this branch of thought-instead of sitting at the feet of the, too often, freakish, irresponsible, and bizarre founders and teachers of the pseudo schools and cults, who have been revamping the old teachings, dressing them in fantastic garb, and offering them (usually at a high rate of compensation) to those who have felt the hunger for wisdom and the thirst for information, but who lacked the knowledge of the places where these things could be had at first hand, pure and free from the adulterations of these self constituted middle men in the great market of Philosophy. (shrink)

This is reflected, but not always made transparent, Stephen Gardner asserts, in the myths of freedom that govern modern culture and the basic framework of ...

ABSTRACTThis article challenges the historiographical narrative that modernity saw a transition from shame to guilt. I argue not only that these two concepts overlapped, but that, if anything, a shift occurred in the opposite direction: from guilt to shame. I identify two concepts of shame: guilt-shame, focused on sinfulness and caused by mere introspection, and reputation-shame, focused on social norms and caused by the gaze of others. Looking primarily at English texts, straying often into the European republic of letters, I (...) argue that in the seventeenth century, as Biblicist fervour gave way to natural religion and a naturalistic turn in moral philosophy, and as burgeoning public spheres needed governing, reputation-shame experienced a new lease of life. This argument, in turn, questions the characterisation of the modern self as private, insulated and autonomous, gesturing instead at open, social minds that were nonetheless deeply, passionately, interiorised. In picking apart these interwoven strands in the history of the concept of shame, I hope to make the methodological point that one cannot be essentialist about concepts. There is no concept of shame that can be analysed abstracted from time and space, only particular uses of the concept in particular utterances. (shrink)

Hesperides Press are republishing these classic works in affordable, high quality, modern editions, using the original text and artwork.

Using Smith’s own references to thinkers he identifies as significant pioneers, the chapter presents a synoptic and necessarily gross-grained selective survey. It pays particular attention to the thought of Descartes, Bacon, Hobbes, Locke, Pufendorf and also to Shaftesbury, Mandeville, and Hutcheson. Newton, because he is the chief subject of another chapter, is not here considered but Harrington, though not mentioned by Smith in this context, is included. While Smith can be seen to take something from all these thinkers, without (...) exception this is done critically. This duality recurs as the survey proceeds. (shrink)

This is a new release of the original 1929 edition.

Contents Acknowledgements vii Illustrations ix Preface xi Further Bibliography of A.C. Crombie xiii 1 Designed in the Mind: Western visions of Science, Nature and Humankind 1 2 The Western Experience of Scientific Objectivity 13 3 Historical Perceptions of Medieval Science 31 4 Robert Grosseteste 39 5 Roger Bacon [with J.D. North] 51 6 Infinite Power and the Laws of Nature: A Medieval Speculation 67 7 Experimental Science and the Rational Artist in Early Modern Europe 89 8 Mathematics and Platonism (...) in the Sixteenth-Century Italian Universities and in Jesuit Educational Policy 115 9 Sources of Galileo Galilei’s Early Natural Philosophy 149 10 The Jesuits and Galileo’s Ideas of Science and of Nature [with A. Carugo] 165 11 Galileo and the Art of Rhetoric [with A. Carugo] 231 12 Galileo Galilei: A Philosophical Symbol 257 13 Alexandre Koyré and Great Britain: Galileo and Mersenne 263 14 Marin Mersenne and the Origins of Language 275 15 Le Corps à la Renaissance: Theories of Perceiver and Perceived in Hearing 291 16 Expectation, Modelling and Assent in the History of Optics: i, Alhazen and the Medieval Tradition; ii, Kepler and Descartes 301 17 Contingent Expectation and Uncertain Choice: Historical Contexts of Arguments from Probabilities 357 18 P.-L. Moreau de Maupertuis, F.R.S. : Précurseur du Transformisme 407 19 The Public and Private Faces of Charles Darwin 429 20 The Language of Science 439 21 Some Historical Questions about Disease 443 22 Historians and the Scientific Revolution 451 23 The Origins of Western Science 465 Appendix to Chapter 10: 479 Sources and Dates of Galileos Writings [with A. Carugo] Pietro Redondi, Galileo eretico [with A. Carugo] Mario Biagioli, Galileo, Courtier Corrections to Science, Optics and Music in Medieval and Early Modern Thought 495 Index 497. (shrink)

First Published in 1972. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Recent research has challenged our view of the Abrahamic religious traditions as unilaterally intolerant and incapable of recognizing otherness in all its diversity and richness; but a diachronic and comparative study of how these traditions deal with otherness is yet to appear. This volume aims to contribute to such a study by presenting different treatments of otherness in medieval and early modern thought. Part I: Altruism deals with attitudes and behaviors that benefit others, regardless of its motives. We (...) deal with the social rights and emotions as well as the moral obligations that the very existence of other human beings, whatever their characteristics, creates for a community. Part II: Religious recognition and toleration considers identity, toleration and mutual recognition created by the existence of religious or ethnic otherness in a given social, religious or political community. Part III: Evil deals with religious otherness that is considered evil and rejected such as heretics and malevolent, demonic entities. The volume will ultimately inform the reader on the nature of religious toleration (including beliefs and doctrines, even emotions) as well as of the self-definition of religious communities when encountering and defining otherness in different ways. (shrink)

This collection presents the first sustained examination of the nature and status of the idea of principles in early modern thought. Principles are almost ubiquitous in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries: the term appears in famous book titles, such as Newton’s _Principia_; the notion plays a central role in the thought of many leading philosophers, such as Leibniz’s Principle of Sufficient Reason; and many of the great discoveries of the period, such as the Law of Gravitational Attraction, (...) were described as principles. Ranging from mathematics and law to chemistry, from natural and moral philosophy to natural theology, and covering some of the leading thinkers of the period, this volume presents ten compelling new essays that illustrate the centrality and importance of the idea of principles in early modern thought. It contains chapters by leading scholars in the field, including the Leibniz scholar Daniel Garber and the historian of chemistry William R. Newman, as well as exciting, emerging scholars, such as the Newton scholar Kirsten Walsh and a leading expert on experimental philosophy, Alberto Vanzo. _The Idea of Principles in Early Modern Thought_ charts the terrain of one of the period’s central concepts for the first time, and opens up new lines for further research. (shrink)