Abstract Nietzsche defends an ideal of freedom as the achievement of a ?higher human being?, whose value judgments are a product of a rigorous scrutiny of inherited values and an expression of how the answers to ultimate questions of value are ?settled in him?. I argue that Nietzsche's view is a recognizable descendent of ideas advanced by the ancient Stoics and Spinoza, for whom there is no contradiction between the realization of freedom and the affirmation of fate, and who restrict (...) this freedom to rare individuals, who escape the bondage of conventional mores and passive emotional states. Although Nietzsche rejects key assumptions made by both the Stoics and Spinoza, his outlook is an extension of their efforts to elaborate the notion of freedom as an ideal. (shrink)
Spinoza presents the “dictates of reason” as the foundation of “the right way of living”. An influential reading of his position assimilates it to that of Hobbes. The dictates of reason are normative principles that prescribe necessary means to a necessary end: self-preservation. Against this reading I argue that, for Spinoza, the term “dictates of reason” does not refer to a set of prescriptive principles but simply the necessary consequences, or effects, of the mind's determination by adequate ideas. I draw (...) on this conclusion in highlighting an abiding tension in Spinoza's notion of the preservation of one's being, which reinforces his divergence from Hobbes. (shrink)
Leibniz's well-known thesis that the actual world is just one among many possible worlds relies on the claim that some possibles are incompossible , meaning that they cannot belong to the same world. Notwithstanding its central role in Leibniz's philosophy, commentators have disagreed about how to understand the compossibility relation. We examine several influential interpretations and demonstrate their shortcomings. We then sketch a new reading, the cosmological interpretation, and argue that it accommodates two key conditions that any successful interpretation must (...) satisfy. (shrink)
This is the most up-to-date and comprehensive interpretation of the philosophy of Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (1646-1716). Amongst its other virtues, it makes considerable use of unpublished manuscript sources. The book seeks to demonstrate the systematic unity of Leibniz's thought, in which theodicy, ethics, metaphysics and natural philosophy cohere. The key, underlying idea of the system is the conception of nature as an order designed by God to maximise the opportunities for the exercise of reason. From this idea emerges the view (...) that this world is the best of all possible worlds, and an ethical ideal in which the well-being of human beings is promoted through the gradual extension of intellectual enlightenment. (shrink)
The revival of Leibniz studies in the past twenty-five years has cast important new light on both the context and content of Leibniz's philosophical thought. Where earlier English-language scholarship understood Leibniz's philosophy as issuing from his preoccupations with logic and language, recent work has recommended an account on which theological, ethical, and metaphysical themes figure centrally in Leibniz's thought throughout his career. The significance of these themes to the development of Leibniz's philosophy is the subject of increasing attention by philosophers (...) and historians. This collection of new essays by a distinguished group of scholars offers an up-to-date overview of the current state of Leibniz research. In focusing on nature and freedom, the volume revisits two key topics in Leibniz's thought, on which he engaged both contemporary and historical arguments. Important contributions to Leibniz scholarship in their own right, these articles collectively provide readers a framework in which to better situate Leibniz's distinctive philosophy of nature and the congenial home for a morally significant freedom that he took it to provide. (shrink)
The Cambridge Companion to Early Modern Philosophy is a comprehensive introduction to the central topics and changing shape of philosophical inquiry in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. It explores one of the most innovative periods in the history of Western philosophy, extending from Montaigne, Bacon and Descartes through Hume and Kant. During this period, philosophers initiated and responded to major intellectual developments in natural science, religion, and politics, transforming in the process concepts and doctrines inherited from ancient and medieval philosophy. (...) In this Companion, leading specialists examine early modern treatments of the methodological and conceptual foundations of natural science, metaphysics, philosophy of mind, logic and language, moral and political philosophy, and theology. A final chapter looks forward to the philosophy of the Enlightenment. This will be an invaluable guide for all who are interested in the philosophical thought of the early modern period. (shrink)
Leibniz raises three main objections to the doctrine of occasionalism: (1) it is inconsistent with the supposition of finite substances; (2) it presupposes the occurrence of "perpetual miracles"; (3) it requires that God "disturb" the ordinary laws of nature. At issue in objection (1) is the proper understanding of divine omnipotence, and of the relationship between the power of God and that of created things. I argue that objections (2) and (3), on the other hand, derive from a particular conception (...) of the intelligibility of nature, a conception to which Leibniz is firmly committed and that occasionalists like Malebranche no less firmly reject. (shrink)
Machine generated contents note: List of contributors; Acknowledgements; List of abbreviations; Introduction Yitzhak Y. Melamed and Michael Rosenthal; Spinoza's exchange with Albert Burgh Edwin Curley; The text of Spinoza's Tractatus Theologico-Politicus Piet Steenbakkers; Spinoza on Ibn Ezra's Secret of the Twelve Warren Zev Harvey; Reflections of the medieval Jewish-Christian debate in the Theological-Political Treatise and the Epistles Daniel J. Lasker; The early Dutch and German reaction to the Tractatus Theologico-Politicus: foreshadowing the Enlightenment's more general Spinoza reception? Jonathan Israel; G. W. (...) Leibniz's two readings of the Tractatus Theologico-Politicus Mogens Laerke; The metaphysics of the Theological-Political Treatise Yitzhak Y. Melamed; Spinoza's conception of law: metaphysics and ethics DonaldRutherford; Getting his hands dirty: Spinoza's criticism of the rebel Michael Della Rocca; 'Promising' ideas: Hobbes and contract in Spinoza's political philosophy Don Garrett; Spinoza's curious defense of toleration Justin Steinberg; Miracles, wonder, and the state in Spinoza's Theological-Political Treatise Michael A. Rosenthal; Narrative as the means to freedom: Spinoza on the uses of imagination Susan James; Bibliography. (shrink)
Following with the discovery of the electron by J. J. Thomson at the end of the nineteenth century a steady elucidation of the structure of the atom occurred over the next 40 years culminating in the discovery of nuclear fission in 1938–1939. The significant steps after the electron discovery were: discovery of the nuclear atom by Rutherford (Philos Mag 6th Ser 21:669–688, 1911 ), the transformation of elements by Rutherford (Philos Mag 37:578–587, 1919 ), discovery of artificial radioactivity (...) by Joliot-Curie and Joliot-Curie (Comptes Rendus Acad Sci Paris 198:254–256, 1934 ), and the discovery of the neutron by Chadwick (Nature 129:312, 1932a , Proc R Soc Ser A 136:692–708, 1932b ; Proc R Soc Lond Ser A 136:744–748, 1932c ). The neutron furnished scientists with a particle able to penetrate atomic nuclei without expenditure of large amounts of energy. From 1934 until 1938–1939 investigations of the reaction between a neutron and uranium were carried out by E. Fermi in Rome, O. Hahn, L. Meitner and F. Strassmann in Berlin and I. Curie and P. Savitch in Paris. Results were interpreted as the formation of transuranic elements. After sorting out complex radio-chemistry and radio-physics O. Hahn and F. Strassmann came to the conclusion, beyond their belief, that the uranium nucleus split into smaller fragments, that is nuclear fission. This was soon followed in 1939 by its theoretical interpretation by L. Mietner and O. Frisch. (shrink)
In discussion of Leibniz’s philosophical methodology DonaldRutherford defends the view that Leibniz regarded metaphysics as an a priori demonstrative science. In the course of this discussion Rutherford isolates and tries to deflect a significant challenge for his view, namely the observation that in many of his mature writings on metaphysics Leibniz appears to defend his views by means of a posteriori arguments. I present some prima facie difficulties with Rutherford’s position and then offer an alternative (...) account of how Leibniz thought he needed to establish metaphysical claims. My suggestion is that the challenge that Rutherford poses may be best answered by attending to the fact that Leibniz recognized a kind of metaphysical enquiry, ‘real metaphysics’, that is essentially a posteriori, in virtue of the fact that it is concerned not just with possible kinds of beings, but with the kinds of beings that God actually created. (shrink)
