The article examines reports of natural disasters in the 18th century Austrian newspaper "Wienerisches Diarium" to gain insights into how people captured the extraordinary sensory experiences of such events in written form. By analysing a digitised corpus of over 300 newspaper issues, the study identifies 302 text passages referring to natural disasters, among them 285 news reports, and explores textual traces of (multi)sensuality present within this material. The close reading and semantic annotation of the textual findings reveals that comparisons (...) to familiar sensations are commonly used to convey the sensory experiences of natural disasters, allowing readers to (better) relate to and understand the extreme events. At the same time, touch and vision constitute the most frequently mentioned senses, while smell and taste only play a minor role in early modern disaster depiction. In addition, the study finds that earthquakes and volcanic eruptions are more likely to include multisensory descriptions compared to other types of disasters. These and further findings shed light on when and how (multi)sensory impressions of disasters were conveyed in written form within early modern news. (shrink)

18th-century British aesthetics addressed itself to a variety of questions: What is taste? What is beauty? Is there is a standard of taste and of beauty? What is the relation between the beauty of nature and that of artistic representation? What is the relation between one fine art and another? How ought the fine arts be ranked one against another? What is the nature of the sublime and ought it be ranked with the beautiful? What is the nature of (...) genius and what is its relation to taste? -/- Although none of these questions was peripheral to 18th-century British aesthetics, not all were equally central. The question on which the others tended to turn was the question concerning the nature of taste. But this question was not simply how best generally to define taste. Everyone seems to have been in at least rough agreement with Joseph Addison’s early definition of taste as “that faculty of soul, which discerns the beauties of an author with pleasure, and the imperfections with dislike” (Addison and Steele 1879, no. 409). But agreeing with Addison meant agreeing only to use “taste” to refer to that faculty and to acknowledge that such discerning has something of the phenomenology of sensation. The central question was how to think of taste so defined. Is taste a higher, cognitive faculty, akin perhaps to reason, with objects of a primarily intellectual nature? Or is it a lower, bodily faculty, more akin to the five bodily senses, and with objects of a primarily material nature? The major theories that arose in response to this question can be grouped into three main lineages: (a) internal-sense theories, of which the theories of Shaftesbury (1711), Hutcheson (1725), Hume (1739–40, 1751, and 1757) and Reid (1785) are representative; (b) imagination theories, of which theories of Addison (1712) and Burke (1757/59) are representative; and (c) association theories, of which the theories of Gerard (1757) and Alison (1790) are representative. (shrink)

“To arrange in or analyse into classes according to shared qualities or characteristics; to make a formal or systematic classification” (OED). For many, classification provokes images of dull cataloging and arcane knowledge. However, in the eighteenth century it was neither dull nor arcane and had momentous import for natural philosophers and everyday individuals alike. Susannah Gibson has captured this expertly in her new book, and the subtitle accents the stakes: How Eighteenth-Century Science Disrupted the Natural Order. Although originating out of (...) a doctoral dissertation, this is not a dense monograph. Instead, Gibson targets a wider academic audience using compelling vignettes in digestible chapters with compact endnotes and helpful suggestions for further reading. On the whole, the book is a success, though more illuminating in some places than others. (shrink)

Although Broad published many books in his lifetime, this volume is unique in presenting some of his most interesting unpublished writings. Divided into five clear sections, the following figures and topics are covered: Autobiography, Hegel and the nature of philosophy, Francis Bacon, Hume's philosophy of the self and belief, F. H. Bradley, The historical development of scientific thought from Pythagoras to Newton, Causation, Change and continuity, Quantitative methods, Poltergeists, Paranormal phenomena. -/- Each section is introduced and placed in context by (...) the editor, Joel Walmsley. The volume also includes an engaging and informative foreword by Simon Blackburn. It will be of great value to those studying and researching the history of twentieth-century philosophy, metaphysics, and the recent history and philosophy of science, as well as anyone interested in Broad's philosophical thought and his place in the history of philosophy. (shrink)

Neo-Kantianism was an important movement in German philosophy of the late 19th century: Frederick Beiser traces its development back to the late 18th century, and explains its rise as a response to three major developments in German culture: the collapse of speculative idealism; the materialism controversy; and the identity crisis of philosophy.

Face à l'histoire de Jésus, l'époque moderne se place sous la question de sa possibilité même. Au sortir de la Renaissance, marquée par un intérêt nouveau sur le texte saisi dans son ensemble, l'Écriture, dans sa suite narrative, reprenait sens sans se ployer devant la théologie. S'imposait alors le décalage entre le texte biblique reconnu dans ses multiples manuscrits, et l'affirmation des Églises. Ainsi, dès le XVIII° siècle, la distance ne pourra que se creuser entre les Églises qui désignent le (...) Christ qu'elle honorent et l'histoire que les rationnels entendent construire , ce qui n'ira pourtant pas sans délires d'imagination, surtout au XIX° siècle. Paradoxalement, la lecture suivie de la Bible en langue vulgaire, largement promue par les Réformateurs et finale­ment acceptée chez les catholiques après les hésitations du Concile de Trente, devenait parfois gênante sinon dangereuse, ce qui ne pouvait qu'être confirmé par les différentes tentatives, parfois contradictoires, pour saisir le jésus de l'histoire jusqu'à nier son existence.In face of the history of Jesus, modern times raises the question of its very possibility. At the end of the Renaissance, which was marked by a new interest in the text taken in its entirely, Scripture, in its narrative succession, again found meaning without giving way before theology. Then, the lag between the biblical text accepted in its multiple manuscripts and the affirmation of the Churches became evident. Thus, from the 18th century, the distance increased between the Churches that designated the Christ that they honored and the history that the rationalists meant to construct «the Jesus of history »). This did not happen, however without frenzies of imagination, especially in the 19th century. Paradoxically, the continuous reading of the Bible in the vernacular largely promoted by the reformers and finally accepted by Catholics after hesitations by the Council of Trent, sometimes became embarrassing if not dangerous. This was confirmed by different attemps, sometimes contradictory, to understand the Jesus of history to the point of denying his existence. (shrink)

What should we make of claims by members of other groups to have moralities different from our own? Human Rights in Chinese Thought gives an extended answer to this question in the first study of its kind. It integrates a full account of the development of Chinese rights discourse - reaching back to important, though neglected, origins of that discourse in 17th and 18th century Confucianism - with philosophical consideration of how various communities should respond to contemporary Chinese claims (...) about the uniqueness of their human rights concepts. The book elaborates a plausible kind of moral pluralism and demonstrates that Chinese ideas of human rights do indeed have distinctive characteristics, but it nonetheless argues for the importance and promise of cross-cultural moral engagement. (shrink)

In this article, the author lists three problems that make any serious discussion about the ethics of leadership a very difficult undertaking. He then proposes a new, postindustrial paradigm of leadership. Using that understanding of leadership, two different sets of ethical analyses of leadership are possible: (I) those concerned with the process of leadership and (2) those concerned with the content of leadership (the changes proposed by the leaders and collaborators). In the end, the author suggests that the industrial paradigm (...) of ethics (the 18th century liberal philosophy) is inadequate to deal with the ethical decision making that leaders and collaborators must do in the 21 st century. Thus, a postindustrial paradigm of ethics must be developed to enable leaders and collaborators to make the tough ethical choices that will be demanded in the new millennium. (shrink)

This chapter argues that the conditions under the umbrella “personality disorders” actually constitute two very different kinds of theoretical entities. In particular, several core personality disorders are actually moral, and not medical, conditions. Thus, the categories that are held to represent them are really moral, and not medical, theoretical kinds. The chapter works back from the possibility of treatment to the nature of the kinds that are allegedly treated, revisiting 18th-century ideas of moral treatment along the way. The discussion (...) closes with a reflection on how the ambiguous medical status of personality disorders and their treatment today is reminiscent of the ideological tug of war that pits alienist “mad doctors” like Pinel against their lay counterparts such as Tuke as they battled over who should be in charge of treating the mad. (shrink)

One of the paradoxes of the physical sciences is that as our knowledge has progressed, more and more diverse physical phenomena can be explained in terms of fewer underlying laws, or principles. In Hidden Unity, eminent physicist John Taylor puts many of these findings into historical perspective and documents how progress is made when unexpected, hidden unities are uncovered between apparently unrelated physical phenomena. Taylor cites examples from the ancient Greeks to the present day, such as the unity of celestial (...) and terrestrial dynamics (17th century), the unity of heat within the rest of dynamics (18th century), the unity of electricity, magnetism, and light (19th century), the unity of space and time and the unification of nuclear forces with electromagnetism (20th century). Without relying on mathematical detail, Taylor's emphasis is on fundamental physics, like particle physics and cosmology. Balancing what is understood with the unestablished theories and still unanswered questions, Taylor takes readers on a fascinating ongoing journey. John C. Taylor is Professor Emeritus of Mathematical Physics at the University of Cambridge. A student of Nobel laureate Abdus Salam, Taylor's research career has spanned the era of developments in elementary particle physics since the 1950s. He taught theoretical physics at Imperial College, London, and at the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge, and he has lectured worldwide. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society and a Fellow of the Institute of Physics. (shrink)

This chapter argues that the conditions under the umbrella “personality disorders” actually constitute two very different kinds of theoretical entities. In particular, several core personality disorders are actually moral, and not medical, conditions. Thus, the categories that are held to represent them are really moral, and not medical, theoretical kinds. The chapter works back from the possibility of treatment to the nature of the kinds that are allegedly treated, revisiting 18th-century ideas of moral treatment along the way. The discussion (...) closes with a reflection on how the ambiguous medical status of personality disorders and their treatment today is reminiscent of the ideological tug of war that pits alienist “mad doctors” like Pinel against their lay counterparts such as Tuke as they battled over who should be in charge of treating the mad. (shrink)

The religious controversies of the 17th century are of central importance to any attempt to appraise the role of Christianity in the genesis of "modern secular society." In the 18th century there was a clear understanding that modern philosophy was hostile to religion, as the French Revolution proclaimed. The reappraisal of this relation began in Hegel's Phänomenologie, and became explicit with Max Weber: secularism is the consequence of Christianity. The adjudication of this issue demands an evaluation of the interpretations (...) of the Bible and of Christian morality made by such men as Hobbes, Spinoza, and Bayle. According to the Enlightenment, they speak as believers only in order to interpret Christianity in such a way as to make it tolerate the new philosophy. Rex would correct this view of Bayle's intention; he would show that Protestantism, and in Bayle's case, Calvinism, is the source or a source of the belief in the sovereignty of reason. One may doubt whether Rex has proved that the Enlightenment misunderstood Bayle's intentions. Nevertheless, this study, the first part of which is devoted to the Pensées diverses sur la comète, the second to the Commentaire philosophique, is a very helpful guide to an extensive literature. And in his very attempt to prove his thesis Rex frequently brings to light aspects of Bayle's rhetoric that must be noticed in order to understand his writings.—H. C. (shrink)

The archipelago context of Maluku represents the living dynamics of Christian communities in that area, which becomes an ecclesiological foundation of the Gereja Protestan Maluku. Christianity, the embryo of the GPM, is the fruit of the evangelical works by European missionaries, particularly Dutch missions from the 18th century onwards. The Dutch-type Christianity had been adapted into models so that the form of institution and Protestant teachings in Maluku moved dynamically following socio-political and cultural changes along with the colonial and (...) the post-colonial history of Indonesian and Malukan society. It attempts to describe the manifestation of the Calvinism-model of Christianity that is continuously being contextualised through absorbing various elements of worldview, tradition, and the religiosity of the archipelago society. Cultural hermeneutics is used to interpret the socio-cultural phenomena in which the church lives in and to construct its theological understanding about Christian identity. The ecclesiological construction of GPM, in turn, is structured by plural social orders. The reality also influences the perspective about GPM from many different worldviews of the Malukan archipelago society. The contextual ecclesiological perspective, therefore, is constructed based on intermingled understandings that theology of the church can only be built by considering multifold dimensions of a particular society. The result of this research pertains to the constructive understanding of a specific ecclesial context of the GPM in their struggles for theologising their existence as God’s people and, at the same time, as an integral part of certain society in Maluku and Indonesia.Contribution: As the living contextual church that struggles for proclaiming God’s love, the GPM has a theological responsibility to conduct its church mission based on its ecclesiological understanding and practices contextually. The article contributes to the enrichment of the theological discourse on the crucial roles of a church in Maluku, in the eastern part of Indonesia. (shrink)

The effect of nutrition on fertility and its contribution thereby to population dynamics are assessed in three social groups (elite, tradesmen and subsistence) in a marginal, pre-industrial population in northern England. This community was particularly susceptible to fluctuations in the price of grains, which formed their basic foodstuff. The subsistence class, who formed the largest part of the population, had low levels of fertility and small family sizes, but women from all social groups had a characteristic and marked subfecundity in (...) the early part of their reproductive lives. The health and nutrition of the mother during pregnancy was the most important factor in determining fertility and neonatal mortality. Inadequate nutrition had many subtle effects on reproduction which interacted to produce a complex web of events. A population boom occurred during the second half of the 18th century; fertility did not change but there was a marked improvement in infant mortality and it is suggested that the steadily improving nutritional standards of the population, particularly during crucial periods in pregnancy (i.e. the last trimester), probably made the biggest contribution to the improvement in infant mortality and so was probably the major factor in triggering the boom. (shrink)

Structural realism as developed by John Worrall and others can claim philosophical roots as far back as the late 19th century, though the discussion at that time does not unambiguously favor the contemporary form, or even its realism. After a critical examination of some aspects of the historical background some severe critical challenges to both Worrall's and Ladyman's versions are highlighted, and an alternative empiricist structuralism proposed. Support for this empiricist version is provided in part by the different way in (...) which we can do justice to Worrall's original demands and in part by the viewpoint it provides (in contrast to e.g. Michael Friedman's) on the stability maintained through scientific theory change. Planck against the heretics 1.1 Poincaré on the meaning of Maxwell's equations 1.2 Two responses: reification and structuralism On the road to structuralism 2.1 The microscope 2.2 Mathematization of the world picture 2.3 The 18th–20th century The new structural realism 3.1 From scientific realism to structuralism 3.2 The Ladyman variant: objectivity and invariance 3.3 How is structural realism supported? An empiricist structuralism 4.1 Royal succession in science 4.2 Defence of the empiricist version 4.3 Structure: an empiricist view. (shrink)

Recent historical work on changing perceptions of the human body has been influenced by Michel Foucault’s contention that the self of western individualism was created by new regimes of disciplining the body. A different approach is taken here, one that focuses on how individual bodies came to be viewed as separate and inviolable, that is, as autonomous. The separateness and inviolability of bodies can be traced in the histories of bodily practices as different as portraiture and legal torture. After 1750, (...) regular public exhibitions, themselves a new feature of the social landscape, showed increasing numbers of portraits in London and Paris. The proliferation of individual likenesses encouraged the view that each person was an individual, that is, single, separate, distinctive and original. At the same time, the tide turned against judicially sanctioned torture and cruel punishment. Long-held notions of sacrificial punishment and truth through pain withered under the pressure of new experiences of the body that in turn facilitated the emergence of new conceptions of rights of individuals. (shrink)

Philosophy was at the core of the eighteenth century movement known as the Scottish Enlightenment. The movement included major figures, such as Francis Hutcheson, David Hume, Adam Smith, Thomas Reid and Adam Ferguson, and also many others who produced notable works, such as Gershom Carmichael, George Turnbull, George Campbell, James Beattie, Alexander Gerard, Henry Home (Lord Kames) and Dugald Stewart. I discuss some of the leading ideas of these thinkers, though paying less attention than I otherwise would to Hume, Smith (...) and Reid, who have separate Encyclopedia entries. Amongst the topics covered in this entry are aesthetics (particularly Hutcheson's), Moral philosophy (particularly Hutcheson's and Smith's), Turnbull's providential naturalism, Kames's doctrines on divine goodness and human freedom, Campbell's criticism of the Humean account of miracles, the philosophy of rhetoric, Ferguson's criticism of the idea of a state of nature, and finally the concept of conjectural history, a concept especially associated with Dugald Stewart. (shrink)

In the modern debate in metaethics and moral psychology, moral rationalism is often presented as a view that cannot account for the intimate relation between moral behaviour on one hand and feelings, emotions, or desires on the other. Although there is no lack of references to the classic rationalists of the 18th century in the relevant discussions, the works of these writers are rarely ever examined detail. Yet, as the debate in Kant scholarship between “intellectualists” and “affectivists” impressively shows, (...) a more thorough analysis of what the classic rationalists actually have to say about moral motivation is suited to cast serious doubts on the idea that moral rationalism must crucially neglect the affective–conative side of human psychology. The aim of this paper is to analyse the conceptions of moral motivation that were embraced by Kant's rationalist predecessors—Clarke, Wolff, Burnet, Balguy, and Price—which have not attracted a similar amount of attention by specialists so far. The claim I will defend is that none of those early rationalists actually embraces the motivational thesis that is often taken to be characteristic of moral rationalism, a thesis I shall refer to as strong rationalism about (moral) motivation. (shrink)

The term "Mughal" comes from a mispronunciation of the word "Mongol," but the Mughals of India were mostly ethnic Turks not Mongolians. However, Barbur (1483-1530), the first Mughal emperor, could trace his blood line back to Chinggis Khan. The Muslims of Central Asia had good reason to hate the Mongols because they destroyed the Abbasid Caliphate when they sacked Baghdad in 1258. During the 300 years after the death of Chinggis, the Mongol Empire had split into four parts: the Golden (...) Horde of Russia (1242-1359), the Ilkhanate of Iran and Iraq (1256-1353), the Chinese Yuan Dynasty (1271-1368) ruled by Kublai Khan, and finally the Mughal Empire of India.. (shrink)

This article discusses the common ground between William James and the tradition of philosophical anthropology. Recent commentators on this overlap have characterised philosophical anthropology as combining science (in particular biology and medicine) and Kantian teleology, for instance in Kant’s seminal definition of anthropology as being concerned with what the human being makes of itself, as distinct from what attributes it is given by nature. This article registers the tension between Kantian thinking, which reckons to ground experience in a priori categories, (...) and William James’s psychology, which begins and ends with experience. It explores overlap between James’s approach and the characteristic holism of 18th-century philosophical anthropology, which centres on the idea of understanding and analysing the human as a whole, and presents the main anthropological elements of James’s position, namely his antipathy to separation, his concerns about the binomial terms of traditional philosophy, his preference for experience over substances, his sense that this holist doctrine of experience shows a way out of sterile impasses, a preference for description over causation, and scepticism. It then goes on to register the common ground with key ideas in the work of anthropologists from around 1800, along with some references to anthropologists who come in James’s wake, in particular Max Scheler and Arnold Gehlen, in order to reconceptualise the connection between James’s ideas and the tradition of anthropological thinking in German letters since the late 18th-century, beyond its characterisation as a combination of scientific positivism and teleology. (shrink)

The 18th century in Europe is the ideal period to study the interaction of traditional beliefs and new ideas stemming from scientific observation and philosophical rationalization. The purpose of this paper is to examine the role played by Charles de Brosses and Antonio Niccolini in the process of transmission of knowledge coming through influential members of a European aristocracy that remained attached to traditional values. In fact, the rediscovery of the Classical heritage and its dissemination in print, albeit an (...) expensive enterprise, was not deemed by men such as Niccolini and de Brosses as incompatible with their traditional religious beliefs. The unpublished correspondence between these two men provides the evidence for this claim. The two men exchanged information about the continental nature of Australasia, about the latest mathematical discoveries, about the origin of languages and on oriental religions. At the same time, their religious and political convictions remained firmly based on the received notions about religion and society. (shrink)

The study focuses on the debates on self-love in early 18th - century British moral philosophy. It examines the intricate relations of these debates with questions concerning human nature and morality in five central authors : Anthony Ashley Cooper the 3rd Earl of Shaftesbury, Bernard Mandeville, Francis Hutcheson, Joseph Butler and Archibald Campbell. One of the central claims of this study is that a distinction between five different concepts of self-love is necessary to achieve a clear understanding of the (...) debates on self-love. Thus, egoistic self-love, self-love as love of praise, self-love as self-esteem, self-love as excessive pride and self-love as self-respect are distinguished. The role of these different concepts is analysed in the mentioned authors ’ theories of human nature and morality, and the relations between the concepts of self-love and other essential concepts of moral philosophy such as benevolence, pity and virtue are examined. This study highlights the importance of the widely discussed claim that self-love is the only motive for human agents and shows that the moral rehabilitation of self-love becomes an important issue for the period. Commentators generally agree on the importance of the notion of self-love for the period’s moral philosophy, yet little attention has been paid to the different concepts of self-love. Present-day philosophy’s tendency to equate self-love with egoism is too simplistic, and the insufficient recognition of the vagueness of the notion of self-love is shown to be an impediment to an appropriate reconstruction of important arguments in the debates on self-love. The framework suggested in this study thus enables a better comprehension of the different accounts of self-love in the selected authors ’ moral psychologies, and of their views of the moral value of self-love. This facilitates the shedding of light on central aspects of moral philosophy at the beginning of the 18th century. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:IntroductionSchelling and the EnvironmentChelsea C. Harry (bio)Scientists overwhelmingly agree that climate change is anthropogenic, caused by our greenhouse gas emissions.1 Given the evidence that exists, we should be able to convince ourselves to change the everyday behaviors resulting in these emissions. If we hope to save ourselves, other animals, plants, and the environment from a devastating future, then why would we continue to use fossil fuels?The answer here is (...) not an easy one. And yet, the ancient Greek philosopher, Aristotle, provides us with a possible cause. In his most famous work on ethics,2 Aristotle argued that being weak-willed, suffering from what he called, “akrasia,” is the reason we do things that we know we shouldn’t do. It is a condition that results when desire wins over reason. For example, I eat a chocolate bar when I know I should eat a salad because my desire for chocolate wins over what I have reasoned to be best for my health. Simply put, reason might be what distinguishes us from other animals and plants, but it is not always our most powerful faculty. It stands both to experience and to reason, then, that rational decision might not be what is going to get us out of this climate crisis. Then, what is?In this special issue, we hear from five contemporary scholars of the 18th–19th century German philosopher, F.W.J. Schelling, an oft-called “protean thinker” whose prolific, sometimes creative, and diverse works spanned over seventy years. A onetime roommate of Hegel and Hölderlin, Schelling’s works are lesser-known outside specialist circles, and yet one finds that his prescient insights continue to have much to offer. This is especially true vis-à-vis the climate crisis, as Schelling was the first post-Kantian philosopher to take nature seriously. He eschewed the modern, Kantian, and post-Kantian trend to focus on [End Page 1] ipseity, the self, and on what we as humans can rationally know. Instead, he returned to metaphysics and argued for a wholistic conception and experience of life—all life. For Schelling, humans are rational as an expression of nature, rather than as an exception to nature. As John Sallis put it so well as he argued for the Platonic influence in Schelling: “For what Schelling rewrites within the text of modern philosophy is a discourse on nature.”3 Sallis then reminds us that in Schelling’s 1809 text, Philosophical Investigations of the Essence of Human Freedom (“Die Freiheitschrift”), he openly criticizes post-Cartesian philosophy generally for its exclusion of nature; “All modern European philosophy since it began with Descartes has this common defect, that nature does not exist for it and that it lacks a living ground.”4 Schelling’s intention was to resolve the defect, and because of his efforts in this regard, his work has something to say to us about our relationship to the environment.The idea to think about what Schelling can offer us in our current climate crisis is hardly new. In 2014, the North American Schelling Society (NASS), hosted by Bruce Matthews and Bard College, thematized its third international conference on “Schelling in the Anthropocene,” asking scholars to think beyond modern philosophy’s legacy of the human/nature divide and to discuss Schelling’s contribution to the anthropogenic environmental crisis we currently face. Since then, published work on this topic includes: Bruce Matthews’s, “Schelling in the Anthropocene,”5 Christopher Lauer’s, “Confronting the Anthropocene,” 6 and Vincent Lee’s, “Schelling and the Sixth Extinction.”7 Other journals have published special issues on related topics, including McGrath et al. Schelling After Theory special issue of Symposium: Canadian Journal of Continental Philosophy, McGrath et al. The Many Faces of F.W.J. Schelling special issue of Analecta Hermeneutica, Tritten et al. Nature, Speculation, and the Return to Schelling special issue of Angelaki: Journal of the Theoretical Humanities, and Bahoh, et al. Philosophies of Nature special issue of Comparative and Continental Philosophy. While this is by no means an exhaustive list, other contemporary thinkers who have been part of this conversation include: Kyla Bruff, Charlotte Alderwick, Manfred Frank, Markus Gabriel, Iain Grant,8 Lore... (shrink)

Leibniz’s work on language left a lasting impression on 18th-century philosophical thinking about language. His two major works that discussed natural language were both published in the 18th century and in these works Leibniz focused on the sound symbolism, phonology, and etymology of language, topics that played a major role for 18th-century philosophers of language. These topics belonged to what Leibniz considered the material aspects of language and were tied to the expressive powers of language. Herder acknowledged (...) Leibniz’s influence and developed these ideas in his account of language as a forceful expression of human feeling. However, Herder ignored the formal components of language. The philosopher who developed the synthesis of the material and the formal features of language was Wilhelm von Humboldt, who drew from 18th-century thinkers that saw natural language as a unity of force and form, for example Sulzer and Harris. Humboldt was especially influenced by his tutor, Johann Jakob Engel, whose lectures drew on Leibniz as well as works in the Leibniz-Wolff tradition. (shrink)

An error that medicine has long shared is to attribute to a desire or an effect of the mother’s imagination during gestation, the deformities, growths or spots that a child bears at birth. The imagination would be capable of imprinting external modifications on a matter and would have an impact on the perceptions and sensory development of the fetus. Returning briefly to the genealogy and posterity of the topos, this article focuses on the successes and refutations of the Malebranchist paradigm (...) in the 18th century, through a corpus of medical popularization texts where the debates oppose the supporters of the imagination for whom emotion alters the organs of the fetus and the detractors of this thesis who only see it as prejudice. Mechanistic systems had in common that they avoided the soul to explain life. Although each era has its hermeneutic system of representations, and that medicine—closely dependent on the philosophical and moral conceptions of its time—is also a cultural production, it is nevertheless not uninteresting to question on the fortune of a motive and the scientific topicality of the question. What does the baby perceive in utero? Does he feel his mother’s pain? If so, what is the biological impact? To what extent can the maternal imagination and experience mark the child’s body? Informed by functional imaging technologies, recent research returns to the symbiotic link of mother-fetus interactions. Convergences appear between this 18th century and our 21st century. In no case did we want to contrast today’s scientists who are firmly in touch with reality and their predecessors who are prey to imagination. Science, whatever the era, always feeds on imagination. (shrink)

Despite Robert Boyle’s enthusiasm as a leading chemist in the early years of the Royal Society, his experiments on animals raised acute moral and theological issues in regard to animal suffering. Many years after Boyle’s experiments in the scientific field of pneumatics, Joseph Wright of Derby painted a complex representation of Boyle’s early experiment called An Experiment on a Bird in an Air Pump. I use an art historical methodology to resituate Wright’s imagined painting of group performance as a microcosm (...) of 18th-century morality against the backdrop of Boyle’s profound eschatological beliefs and earlier discourse on animal ethics. (shrink)

The Age of Enlightenment was characterized by passionate scientific discussions, which involved not only scientists, but also representatives of various social circles. Sciences such as physics and astronomy are becoming a hobby and entertainment, scientific experiments are being conducted at home, friends and acquaintances are invited to conduct them, and amateur scientific courses are being organized. The article highlights how these processes were reflected in the painting of the XVIII century. Science is considered not only as a widespread subject in (...) works of fine art, but also as a force capable of influencing artistic theory and practice. The author also studied the coexistence of scientific, religious and "mythological" thinking, since in this era all these forms remained relevant. A wide range of visual material is used, allowing us to see fascination and even admiration for science as a pan-European trend, to which Russia was also attached. The research methodology involves a combination of a sociological approach, as well as a variety of methods used in art criticism. The need to work with the original tests of the 18th century implied the use of source analysis. Researchers, especially foreign ones, have shown interest in the topic of interaction between art and science, but a full-scale study on this topic has not yet been carried out. Although this article does not pretend to be complete, it nevertheless touches on very significant and little-studied topics. The author managed to show the variety of aspects of reflecting the scientific sphere of the Enlightenment in the mirror of painting. It demonstrates how interest in science placed the painter in the context of constant searches and led to unexpected discoveries and results. For the first time, attention is drawn to the fact that many masters of that time were involved in the dialogue between art and science, much more numerous than it seems at first glance, and understanding scientific issues became a sign of the artist's integration into the European cultural environment, a symptom of his successful socialization. (shrink)

In the study the author focuses on various aspects of bookselling in the late 18th century. The author seeks to describe the book market environment and the booksellers’ community in Bratislava at that time. She therefore documents communication channels between booksellers in Bratislava and their colleagues in Germany (mainly in Leipzig, Halle, and Berlin).

Aesthetics of Music: Musicological Approaches is an anthology of fourteen essays, each addressing a single key concept or pair of terms in the aesthetics of music, collectively serving as an authoritative work on musical aesthetics that remains as close to 'the music' as possible. Each essay includes musical examples from works in the 18th, 19th, and into the 20th century. Topics have been selected from amongst widely recognised central issues in musical aesthetics, as well as those that have been (...) somewhat neglected, to create a collection that covers a distinctive range of ideas. All essays cover historical origins, sources, and developments of the chosen idea, survey important musicological approaches, and offer new critical angles or musical case studies in interpretation. (shrink)

The idea that science teaching in schools should prepare the ground for society's future technical and scientific progress has played an important role in shaping modern education. This idea, however, was not always present. In this article, I examine how this idea first emerged in educational thought. Early in the 17th century, Francis Bacon asserted that the study of nature should serve to improve living conditions for all members of society. Although influential, Bacon's idea was not easily assimilated by educational (...) thinkers who remained committed to the traditional aims of teaching about nature. Yet in the second half of the 18th century a change has occurred; educational thinkers started to embrace Baconian ideas and therefore argued that science teaching should be oriented towards generating future scientific progress. Analysing the work of 18th century French and British educational thinkers, this article links the emergence of this new view to developments in the understanding of natural philosophy and to a rising interest in it. It is argued, however, that in themselves, these developments could not adequately explain why Baconian ideas started to influence educational theory in the time in which they did. It is maintained that the incorporation of Baconian ideas into educational thought resulted from a fundamental theoretical shift in the understanding of the role of education itself. (shrink)

Excerpt from Die Religion des Philosophen und Sein Glaubensbekenntniß Non 3been nnb 91nn'nonn'en %ee bein Elta tenfenten biefev (c)cbeift einen am; unter jenen ge!ei;eten ifllännern angemiefen babe, Die an Der £eebedtnng bed nbiiofonbifd;en Gieifie$ (ein bielßebentenbeß (R)ing in Der aufgelicirten 28elt, bie man mit guten (c)tnnbe eine (R)eiflmndt new nen fönnte wo einem halb ein (R)eifi bee älto£. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction (...) of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works. (shrink)

One may discuss the role played by mechanical science in the history of scientific ideas, particularly in physics, focusing on the significance of the relationship between physics and mathematics in describing mathematical laws in the context of a scientific theory. In the second Newtonian law of motion, space and time are crucial physical magnitudes in mechanics, but they are also mathematical magnitudes as involved in derivative operations. Above all, if we fail to acknowledge their mathematical meaning, we fail to comprehend (...) the whole Newtonian mechanical apparatus. For instance, let us think about velocity and acceleration. In this case, the approach to conceive and define foundational mechanical objects and their mathematical interpretations changes. Generally speaking, one could prioritize mathematical solutions for Lagrange’s equations, rather than the crucial role played by collisions and geometric motion in Lazare Carnot’s operative mechanics, or Faraday’s experimental science with respect to Ampère’s mechanical approach in the electric current domain, or physico-mathematical choices in Maxwell’s electromagnetic theory. In this paper, we will focus on the historical emergence of mechanical science from a physico-mathematical standpoint and emphasize significant similarities and/or differences in mathematical approaches by some key authors of the 18th century. Attention is paid to the role of mathematical interpretation for physical objects. (shrink)

The German theory of education refers mainly to what is called Bildung. The historical sense of Bildung is not cultivaion , but cultivation for inwardness. This concept has two sources, the neo-platonic inner soul on one hand, pietistic piety on the other hand. The article shows that these sources had been part of European discussions before the development of national cultures after 1750. So the German concept of Bildung, famous for the German Sonderweg in culture and politics, had been composed (...) out of non-German sources. The nationalizaiton of inwardness began at the end of the 18th century and was established in 19th century German Higher Education. (shrink)

Description of the project implementation “Manuscript Heritage of the Kyiv-Mohyla Academy: Monuments of the Educational Process of the 17th–18th Centuries”.

How does Locke contribute to the development of 18th-century projects for a science of the mind, even though he seems to reject or at least bracket off such an idea himself? Contrary to later understandings of empiricism, Locke goes out of his way to state that his project to investigate and articulate the ‘logic of ideas’ is not a scientific project: “I shall not at present meddle with the Physical consideration of the Mind” (Essay, I.i.2). Locke further specifies that (...) this means his analysis of mental processes will not engage with knowledge of the brain (e.g. in terms of corpuscles and animal spirits), even though he had been the student of Thomas Willis. Now, Kant seemed to make an elementary mistake, given such a clear statement on Locke’s part, when he claimed that Locke’s project was a “physiology of the understanding” (in the Preface to the A edition of the first Critique). One can ask of course what this physiology of the understanding was, and if it existed, in or out of the Lockean intellectual world (as I have sought to investigate in a 2016 paper). This leads me to inquire into the outcome of his empiricism for a scientific treatment of the mind, including in the sense of a ‘naturalization’ of the mind (with implications also for our understanding of empiricism: Anstey’s influential distinction between experimental and speculative philosophy does not seem useful here). Because if Kant made this charge, there were also many 18th-century thinkers who positively treated Locke as their great forerunner in psychology and related fields: Charles Bonnet and Joseph Priestley among them, just as some prominent physicians such as Cabanis claimed to be ‘finishing the job’ that Locke had started in, e.g. their materialist theories of the passions. What one might term ‘the Locke Problem’ here is: how can one reconcile empiricism and claims about cerebral processes, while seeking to remain a Lockean? Differently put, what is the process of naturalization, a naturalization of? (shrink)

The great plague in London in 1665 was the last in a series of epidemics that had begun with the Black Death in the 14th century. Plagues continued elsewhere in Europe into the 18th century, but after 1679 no cases of plague were reported in England at all. The disease seemed to have disappeared. How could that be explained? The purpose of this paper is to discover when contemporaries began to think that plague had gone for good, and why (...) they thought that had happened. The paper falls into two parts. The first concentrates on the decade of the 1720s, when plague was expected to come from Marseilles and never arrived. In the space of a few months there was fierce and concentrated public debate about a new Quarantine Act to be enforced if an epidemic developed, much of it arguing that the Act was unnecessary because plague was plainly not contagious at all. It depended wholly on local environments, and in England they had been improving ever since the Great Fire of London. The second part of the paper takes the story forward into the later 18th century, when there was no longer much dispute that plague was indeed contagious, but it was confidently supposed that England now enjoyed the double protection of further environmental improvement at home combined with effective quarantine of shipping abroad, especially in the Mediterranean. Over the century, contending explanations for plague were debated, interpretations of the past disputed and sometimes falsified, and expectations and ambitions for the future remodelled, because one epidemic threat had disappeared for good. (shrink)

The 18th century witnessed the transformation of aesthetics into an independent philosophical discipline. In this period, two main traditions emerged, based on which we can categorize aesthetic theorists. The first of these is classical or rationalist aesthetics, and the other is empiricist or subjective aesthetics. Because classical/rational aesthetic theories were largely based on Cartesian metaphysics, they also inherited the difficulties faced by Cartesian metaphysics. For Descartes, senseperception is not a reliable mode of cognition and truth only comes out of (...) the ideas of pure understanding. Where Descartes' philosophy came to a dead end was that it could not convincingly explain how the concepts in our minds represent reality that is independent of us. This problem also manifested itself in the rationalist aesthetics. Similarly, the empiricist theory inherited the weaknesses of the empiricist epistemology. The main problem of empiricism was to overcome subjectivism and reach universal principles that make sense of the world surrounding us. To overcome the relativism of the empiricist epistemology, empiricist theoreticians claimed that there is an intuition, a common feeling shared by all human beings. However, this common feeling could not be proven empirically. Diderot created a new aesthetic theory that aimed to reconcile rationalist and empiricist aesthetics by redefining the term perception. This article discusses Diderot's innovative effort to create a new aesthetics free from the limits of rationalism and empiricism. (shrink)

The article is devoted to comparative analysis of metaphysical studying of a Samaritan theologian and exegete al-Ghazzāl ibn ’Abū Surūr (d. after 1755) and a representative of Shiraz Illuminationism school, philosopher, astronomer and mathematician Ghiyāth al-Dīn Manṣūr al-Dashtakī (d. 1541). Based on a scrupulous analysis of the doctrines by al-Ghazzāl and Ghiyāth al-Dīn, the author comes to the conclusion about their genetic link – supposedly, as a result of perception of Illuminationist systems in the Middle East in 17th–18th centuries. (...) It is noticed that a Samaritan exegete, acquainted with Arab-Mus­lim philosophic literature as a prominent specialist, taught about ontologistic primacy of light, metaphysical nothingness of dark, stated about light nature of action and com­plete dependence of matter on the will of the Creator. Separately it discusses the desire of both authors to deconstruct the classic for Arabic philosophy thesaurus. It is expressed in the convergence of the categories ‘movement’ (ḥaraka) and ‘action’ (fi‘l), as well as in the consistent replacement of the concept ‘self’ (ḏāt) with the concept of ‘light’ (nūr). The differences between the concepts of al-Ghazzāl and ad-Dashtakī are also discussed separately: while the first author inscribes the opposition ‘light – dark’ in a creation onto­logical context, the latter professes belief in the ‘total unity’ of the lights, their eternity and uncreation. The research is preceded by a short excursion into the history of Samari­tan theology of the 11th–18th centuries. Moreover, the article provides the description of unpublished documents which served the textological basis for the author’s work – in particular, the manuscript of al-Ghazzal’s interpretation of Genesis and Exodus ‘Dis­persion of the darkness [covering] the secrets of the Giver’ (Kashf / Kāshif al-Ghayāhib ‘alā Asrār al-Wāhib; British Library, Add MS 19657). (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Der Islam Jahrgang: 92 Heft: 2 Seiten: 518-523.

This article critically explores the history and nature of a hermeneutic assumption which frequently guided interpretations of Plotinus from the 18th century onwards, namely that Plotinus advanced a system of philosophy. It is argued that this assumption was introduced relatively late, in the 18th and 19th centuries, and that it was primarily made possible by Brucker’s methodology for the history of philosophy, dating from the 1740s, to which the concept of a ‘system of philosophy’ was essential. It is (...) observed that the concept is absent from Ficino’s commentary from the 15th century, and that it remained absent in interpretations produced between the 15th and 18th centuries. It is also argued that the assumption of a ‘system of philosophy’ in Plotinus is historically incorrect—we do not find this concept in Plotinus’ writings, and his own statements about method point in other directions. Eduard Zeller is typically regarded as the first to give a satisfying account of Plotinus’ philosophy as a whole. In this article, on the other hand, Zeller is seen as having finalised a tradition initiated in the 18th century. Very few Plotinus scholars have examined the interpretative development prior to Zeller. Schiavone and Bonetti , for instance, have given little attention to Brucker’s introduction of the concept of a ‘system of philosophy’. The present analysis, then, has value for an understanding of Plotinus’ Enneads. It also explains why “pre-Bruckerian” interpretations of Plotinus appear alien to the modern reader; the analysis may even serve to make some sense of the hermeneutics employed by Renaissance Platonists and commentators, who are often eclipsed from the tradition of Platonism. (shrink)

In the late 18th century two medical fashions—Mesmerism in France and the Perkins ‘tractor’ in the USA and England—appealed to the principle that a single universal force acts on all of us and is responsible for health and illness. This principle served both fashions well, as it made it all the easier for those who came within their force fields to experience the sort of sensations that other subscribers to the fashion also seemed to feel. The first research on (...) what is now known as the placebo effect was in connection with these two movements. The propensity to feel what we suppose or imagine that others like us feel remains even now one of the channels of the placebo effect. (shrink)

During the mid-18th century, when electricity was coming into its own, natural philosophers began to entertain the possibility that electricity is the mysterious nerve force. Their attention was first drawn to several species of strongly electric fish, namely torpedoes, a type of African catfish, and a South American "eels." This was because their effects felt like those of discharging Leyden jars and could be transmitted along known conductors of electricity. Moreover, their actions could not be adequately explained by popular (...) mechanical theories. Many of the early documents supportive of the hypothesis of animal electricity were associated with the Dutch colonies in South America. This article presents and examines those documents, and shows how Dutch scientists on both sides of the Atlantic conducted experiments and communicated with each other in the 1750s and 1760s. It reveals the important roles played by inquisitive physicians and lovers of nature in South America, and by natural philosophers and collectors of exotic specimens in the Netherlands—learned men who began to make a credible case for animal electricity in some exciting places at a pivotal moment in time. (shrink)

This article aims to present how paper-folding activities were integrated into recreational mathematics during the 17th and the 18th centuries. Recreational mathematics was conceived during these centuries as a way not only to pique one’s curiosity, but also to communicate mathematical knowledge to the literate classes of the population. Starting with Leurechon’s 1624 Récréation mathématique, which did not contain any exercise concerning paper folding, we show how two other traditions—Dürer’s folded nets on the one hand and napkin folding on (...) the other hand—prompted and influenced the integration of folding within subsequent books and manuscripts, especially those of Georg Philipp Harsdörffer and Daniel Schwenter. In Germany, but also to a lesser extent in France, folding was henceforth re-conceptualised within recreational mathematics as a way to transmit geometrical knowledge. Following Harsdörffer, the paper will claim that practising folding activities enabled the acquiring of a geometrical knowledge, which was haptic rather than symbolical or merely visual. This tactility reflects the Baconian conception of science and scientific experiment; and the paper will try to illuminate how folding, by advancing practice and tactility via experiments, was representing these traditions and conceptions. (shrink)

As far as treatments of causation are concerned, the pre-Kantian 18th century German context has long been dismissed as a period of uniform and unrepentant Leibnizian dogmatism. While there is no question that discussions of issues relating to causation in this period inevitably took Leibniz as their point of departure, it is certainly not the case that the resulting positions were in most cases dogmatically, or in some cases even recognizably, Leibnizian. Instead, German theorists explored a range of positions (...) regarding the nature of causal powers, the appropriate systems to explain the observed agreement between the states of substances, and the ground of free actions, or so I will argue in this chapter. Focusing on these three issues, I will here sketch the development of the debates relating to causation and trace the evolution of positions among the philosophers within the so-called Leibnizian-Wolffian philosophy as well as among its many opponents. (shrink)

Although no other topic in political thought has attracted the attention of so many as the subject of democracy, Mr. Heald has thought that a re-evaluation in the light of rapidly changing social conditions is greatly overdue, since many of its underlying assumptions are derived from 18th and early 19th century theory. The result is a book in which the character of the democratic idea, and its relation to ethics are carefully analysed, and the development of democratic theory from (...) the Greeks down to our own time—a textbook rather than an original work. (shrink)

Political oeconomy in the 18th century operated in the absence of the conception of an autonomous social order articulated in the later concepts of `the economy' and `society'. Without a self-sustaining mechanism oriented to stability and endogenous economic growth, national prosperity and social order were assumed to depend upon the detailed interventions in economic life that are characteristic of mercantilism and the police of the poor. Smith's theory that autonomous economic growth underpinned a stable order of social interdependencies based (...) upon the division of labour allowed him to move beyond or modify these assumptions. It freed him from the ideas that constant interference in the relationship between agriculture and manufacturing was necessary in order to guarantee food security and that social order and national prosperity depended upon enforcing constraints upon the interests of wage earners. (shrink)