Outlining the major ideas and achievements of the great French thinker Reneescartes, this is an introductory guide to a man whose ground-breakingheories have been rocking the status quo for over three centuries.;From hisirth into the brave new scientific world of Copernicus and Galileo to hisemise and the unusual fate of his body, this book first presents a soundntroduction to the context of Descartes's life and thought. Harry M. Brackenhen draws on the words of Descartes himself to introduce the philosopher'sontroversial (...) theories on the dualism of mind and body and the supremacy ofhe rational ideal, before providing a sharp analysis of the continuing rolef Rene Descartes in our own philosophical and moral landscape. (shrink)

This volume in the “Past Masters” series is a short introduction to Berkeley’s philosophy. Urmson begins with an account of the “corpuscularian philosophy,” which is followed by a discussion of Berkeley’s attack on matter. Urmson takes Locke’s philosophy to be corpuscularian. The foundation of his interpretation is that Berkeley is attacking Newton and Locke. Berkeley is, moreover, said to be an “extreme empiricist”. He also reads Berkeley as an implicit proponent of grounding language on ostensively defined terms. So it comes (...) as no surprise that Urmson provides us with a phenomenalist interpretation of Berkeley, and of course phenomenalism is a philosophical position whose flaws have long been clear to Urmson. (shrink)

Harry M. Bracken - The Other Bishop Berkeley: An Exercise in Reenchantment - Journal of the History of Philosophy 46:1 Journal of the History of Philosophy 46.1 177 Muse Search Journals This Journal Contents Reviewed by Harry M. Bracken Arizona State University Costica Bradatan. The Other Bishop Berkeley: An Exercise in Reenchantment. New York: Fordham University Press, 2007. pp. x + 227. Cloth, $55.00. This new book on Berkeley attempts to add a new perspective on Berkeley's (...) continuing importance. In this review, I will comment only on the author's main intention "to do justice to the historical truth, as far as this is possible, by pointing to.. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Philosophy 41.4 (2003) 561-562 [Access article in PDF] Gianni Paganini, Miguel Benítez, and James Dybikowski, editors. Scepticisme, Clandestinité et Libre Pensée. Paris: Honoré Champion, 2002. Pp. 382. Cloth, €60.00. This book consists of papers from two Tables rondes held in Dublin in 1999 on the occasion of the Tenth International Congress on the Enlightenment. The contributors are: Paganini, Benítez, Dybikowski, Alan Charles Kors, Winfried (...) Schröder, José R. Maia Neto, Adam Sutcliffe, Justin Champion, Antony McKenna, Lorenzo Bianchi, Christine Berkvens-Stevelinck, Pierre Lurbe, Stephen David Snobelen, Nigel Aston, and Stuart Brown. There is remarkably little overlap among the papers and Paganini has clearly insisted on very [End Page 561] high standards. Because of space limitations, I shall focus on several of the general themes which run through the book rather than on individual contributions.Despite the phenomenal success Richard Popkin and collaborators like the late Charles B. Schmitt, Giorgio Tonelli, and Ezequiel de Olaso have had in documenting the amazing impact of skepticism in the Renaissance and in the years up to the Enlightenment, this volume demonstrates that skepticism, that many-faceted force, continued throughout the eighteenth-century Enlightenment. After Bayle, and the application of his special forms of skepticism to theological topics—forms which were often employed, contrary to Bayle's probable intentions, in defense of atheism—skepticism went "underground." A large variety of literature was circulated in manuscript form, the clandestine literature of the period. The lesson which this conference celebrates is that skepticism did not cease being a major cultural force. Thus there is, thanks to the philosophical dimension of the clandestine literature in the eighteenth century, a transition from Christian rationalism to an anti-Christian rationalism.Major figures of the Enlightenment were, of course, well-acquainted with skepticism, e.g., Berkeley, Voltaire, Hume, Crousaz, Condillac, Reid, and Kant. Not surprisingly, the major topics discussed in these papers center around skepticism, fideism and atheism, proofs for the existence of God, and the status of the "preambles" to the faith. These all receive careful attention. The tension between the arguments for Christian Pyrrhonism versus anti-Christian rationalism runs through many of these papers. And of course Bayle's points of view on both sides of the Christian debate appear in much of the clandestine literature. The matter of the immortality of the soul is carefully discussed. What is the status of this doctrine? Is it a question of Church dogma or is it another belief to be discarded in the light of reason?The connection perceived to hold between atheism and political legitimacy are explored in several papers. In the seventeenth century, Locke would exclude atheists from the body politic, in part because they were unable to truthfully swear an oath. Atheists were perceived as a danger for many eighteenth-century figures and the political need to suppress atheism was widely understood and accepted by those in the various religious establishments. Bayle's two-century-old attempt to break the putative logical tie between morality and religion failed in his own day, and despite the efforts of the authors of clandestine philosophical literature, the intimate link Bayle tried to break seems to be stronger than ever in much of the world today. It is interesting that the United States is virtually the only industrial and democratic society in which atheists are virtually precluded from being political candidates in federal, and probably most local, elections. Among other things, the papers in this volume help one to understand just how difficult breaking free from theological constraints in the interest of political freedom has proved to be. Harry McFarland Bracken Arizona State University, Tempe... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Richard H. Popkin 1923-2005Harry M. Bracken and Richard A. WatsonRichard H. Popkin, founding editor of the journal of the History of Philosophy, died on April 14, 2005. He was 81 years old and had continued his research and writing to the last moment before he entered the hospital on march 21st with extreme respiratory difficulties.Popkin's The History of Scepticism from Erasmus to Descartes (1960) revolutionized the study and (...) understanding of early modern philosophy. Popkin entered the minds and world of thinkers from Erasmus to Descartes in a way few other scholars had done, and he showed how the development of philosophy and science was far from an easy series of steps from success to success. Instead, philosophers and scientists pursued a dozen lines from the scepticism of Sextus Empiricus through religious belief, atheism, numerology, astrology, alchemy, eschatology, magic, and millenarianism—a maelstrom of ideas out of which emerged the major figures and ideas of Modern philosophy and science. Dick once explained that actually he lived in the 17th century, and certainly he knew as many of those thinkers and their thoughts as did many people who actually lived at that time. Of course Popkin did not originate the notion of exploring the history of philosophy in the context of its times, but he made that approach central today. It led him not only through the Early Modern period, but also from medieval jewish philosophy to a critical analysis of the Kennedy assassination.Popkin received his PhD at Columbia University, and in his career he taught at the universities of Connecticut, Iowa, California (San Diego and Los Angeles), Washington University in St. Louis, and Harvey Mudd College. He served as the first editor of the Journal of the History of Philosophy, and as president of JHP, Inc. For many years, and was active in its operation for over four decades, having attended the annual meeting of the Board of Directors a little over a month before he died. After retirement, he lived in close association with the Clark Library in Los Angeles. He was well known to scholars and librarians throughout the world. Whatever library he visited, he was likely to find some obscure or hidden document that would either clear up some mystery, or give rise to a new problem. His memory was extraordinary. During his final years when he was virtually blind, he would sift through his mind, send assistants off to look for something that had to be in this or that library and write papers in his head for later dictation. Besides his memory, indispensable throughout his lifetime he had Julie, his co-worker and wife of 60 years, without whom, the Popkin we knew could not have existed.These few paragraphs are meant to be neither an obituary nor an adequate memorial. We were Dick's first two PhDs, and we were barely five years his junior. He treated us from the beginning as colleagues and he became a lifelong friend. He changed our lives, as he did the lives of many other aspiring scholars. We miss him.Copyright © 2005 Journal of the History of Philosophy, Inc.... (shrink)

Noam Chomsky's Beckman Lectures, delivered at Berkeley in 1967, have been published as Language and Mind. The text makes a good introduction for the philosopher to Chomsky's linguistic theories and their impact on philosophy and psychology. He begins: “In these lectures, I would like to focus attention on the question, What contribution can the study of language make to our understanding of human nature”?

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:HUME ON THE 'DISTINCTION OF REASON1* In a 1959 paper, Richard H. Popkin1 propounded what was then taken to be a most extraordinary thesis: Hume may never have read Berkeley. Popkin's paper marks the end of one of the stranger stories in the history of philosophy, the relationship of the British Empiricists — Locke, Berkeley, Hume — to one another. The thesis was hardly news either to Berkeley or (...) Hume scholars because for several decades in careful studies of the historical contexts and sources they had relied less and less on any theory about significant common themes. In this paper I rehearse the arguments against the "partnership" doctrine and then turn to some ways in which Berkeley and Hume differ over abstractionism and the 'distinction of reason'. Finally, I discuss George Davie's suggestion that this 'distinction' may belong to a very different side of Hume's thought. The linking of Locke with Berkeley is not a feature of early commentary on Berkeley. Berkeley was seen by his contemporaries as a product of Pierre Bayle's scepticism or of Malebranche's immaterialism.2 The work of A.A. Luce, and to a lesser extent, of T. E. Jessop, seeks to restore Berkeley to a place in those traditions and to reduce his indebtedness to Locke. The work of Hume scholars from Kemp Smith to Ardal, Davie, Norton, and Popkin all places Hume outside the direct Berkeley line. So far as the traditional epistemological picture was concerned, there was not enough internal evidence to support a Hume-Berkeley connection. The argument took a different turn when a new Hume letter came to light. Hume's letter to Michael Ramsay from Orleans is dated August 31, 1737. I desire of you, if you have Leizure, to read over La Recherche de la Vérité of Pere Malebranche, the Principles of 90 Human Knowledge by Dr Berkeley, some of the more metaphysical Articles of Bailes Dictionary; such as those /...of/ Zeno, & Spinoza. Des-Cartes Meditations wou'd also be useful....5 In 1973, Michael Morrisroe, Jr., surveyed the contributions of Wiener, Popkin, Mossner, Hall, Flew, and Conroy to the debate. Morrisroe takes the several Hume references to Berkeley as internal evidence that Hume read Berkeley. He then prints a new Hume letter to Michael Ramsay, dated "Rheims. Sepfc. 29 1734. N. S." A ten sentence letter, the eighth reads: "It is my Pleasure to read over again today Locke's Essays and the Principles of Human Knowledge by Dr. Berkeley which are printed in their original state and in French copy." Morrisroe explains in a footnote that he was granted permission to make a typescript of the letter, that it was sold at auction, and that its "present location... is unknown." In addition, he thanks six graduate students: "without their attention to bibliogaphical detail this letter might not have been made ready for publication until much later." But the bibliographical detail does not include telling us whether he saw the original or how the Hume authorship was established; nor does it include speculation on what Hume means in that eighth sentence. Did Hume find one book containing Locke and Berkeley in French and in English which he then read in one day? A bilingual Locke plus a bilingual Berkeley? Or can he mean an edition of Locke's Essay in French and an edition of Berkeley's Principles in English? That seems to be the least likely interpretation, unless the reference to Berkeley is a mere parenthetical afterthought, and Hume had his hands on Locke in English and French plus an English edition of Berkeley. Whatever this letter means, we know that Locke's Essay was available in Pierre Coste's translation. Berkeley is another story. The "Principles appeared in 1710. A revised edition, together with the Three Dialogues (also revised) was published in 1734. The first French edition appears to have been in 1889. The Three Dialogues first appeared in 1713 and the first French translation in 1750. The New Theory of Vision, first published in 1709, appeared together with the first edition of Alciphron in 1732. French translations appeared together in 1734. In any case, it can be granted, if only on... (shrink)

John Locke is famous for, among other things, his attack on innate ideas. At one time it was felt that Locke had attacked a straw man. But John Yolton has shown that many of Locke's contemporaries held strange views about innate ideas. Appealing to innate ideas was apparently a popular method of establishing principles that might otherwise be difficult to defend. Locke's attack is in good measure directed at those who preferred not to provide arguments. However, when one tries to (...) sort out Locke's own arguments and to reconstruct what the more articulate defenders of innate ideas were interpreted to hold, matters become complicated. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:BOOK REVIEWS 99 the movement of the Dutch to France. Only in the second half of the century, as DutchFrench relations deteriorated, and Protestantism was actively persecuted, did Dutch students turn away from France. Professor Dibon reveals the kinds of untapped source materials that exist for tracing these student voyages, for assessing the intellectual conditions in France, and for tracing the course of ideas. Items found ill funeral orations, (...) guide books, letters, unpublished student travel diaries, various Album amicorum that students carried with them, university records, applications of students for funds, etc., provide the basis for Professor Dibon's sketch of where Dutch students went, how they were received in Paris and elsewhere, whom they met, what universities they attended, and how long they spent at various stages of their tours. Professor Dibon clearly shows that there is a rich mine of information to be found through careful, painstaking research in these many manuscripts or rare printed sources. The picture he presents of the travels of Gronovius' brother-in-law, Samuel Ten Nuyl, later professor of history and eloquence at the University of Nijmegen, indicates the valuable materials that can be unearthed from such labors. Ten Nuyl was in and around Paris from 1659-1661. Letters of Introduction from Gronovius, Heinsius, and Van Schooten led to his being accepted in the highest Protestant and Catholic intellectual circles, got him into the Royal Library (t), and into the circles of Pierre-Daniel Huet, Mfinage, DailI~, Guy Patin, Chapelain, and many others. A study of these Dutch voyagers throws much light on the milieu at certain university centers, such as Caen and Orleans, on the possible exchanges and interchanges of ideas, and on the careers of some of the major figures in the Dutch universities. Professor Dibon has performed a most valuable service in this superbly written and documented study in pointing to an area of research that can aid us greatly in understanding the actual intellectual currents and cross-currents of the seventeenth century. His concluding paragraph (pp. 34-35) sums up what we can learn from such data. Ainsi nous pouvons esp6rer voir naitre de la convergence de multiples d6tails recueillis dans les journaux, dans les albums amicorum, les registres universitaires et autres documents d'archives une ~tude d'ensemble du Voyage en France des ~tudiants n6erlandais au XVIIe sidle. Une telle ~tude, fond~e sur une connaissance, qui serait ~t ~largir et h preciser, des milieux universitaires et des cercles ~rudits de la France du XVIIe sidle, nourrie de la substance de rant de correspondances en grande partie in6dites, constituerait h coup stir le chapitre le plus attachant d'une histoire des relations culturelles franco-nberlandaises. Elle ne manquerait pas par surcrolt de faire apparaitre en pleine lumi~re ce fait trop souvent m6connu que les relations culturelles en ce temps restaient, en d~pit des conflits politiques ou des rivalit& ~conomiques, au sein m~me des pol~miques religieuses, des &hanges de personne ~t personne. I1 faut se bien convaincre que c'est dans une tr6s large mesure /~ partir de tels 6changes,--. (shrink)