This work is largely the author’s Habilitationsschrift presented at Erlangen. There are three major parts: the first describes ancient and modern forms of scientific reason, the development of which he calls a first and a second Enlightenment; the second explores more deeply certain elements in modern science such as the laws of motion, experimentation, forms of calculation, gravity and force; the third studies rational methodology, including issues of epistemology and artificial languages. The author accepts Kant’s and Nietzsche’s criticism of (...) earlier forms of metaphysics and sees signs of a coming third Enlightenment which will involve criticism of historical and linguistic reason. In parts one and two, considerable space is given to historical and social circumstances as well as to scientific development. Galileo, Newton, Descartes, Leibniz and Kant are among the major figures treated, but many detailed issues are also examined, such as scientific concerns in the late middle ages and renaissance. A forty page bibliography indicates the extent of the author’s range.—R. S. (shrink)

In der Monadologie und in den Meditationes schreibt Leibniz, Descartes' ontologischer Gottesbeweis sei unvollständig. In diesem Aufsatz untersuche ich Leibniz' Bemühen um die Vervollständigung des Beweises. Sein Argument für die Prämisse „Der Gottesbegriff ist ein möglicher Begriff“ ist unverträglich mit einem anderen Stück seiner Metaphysik, und zwar mit seiner Annahme einer Art von Disparata. Leibniz behauptet, der Gottesbegriff sei ein möglicher, d. h. kein inkompatibler Begriff. Er vertritt die These, Gott bestehe aus einfachen Eigenschaften und diese könnten nicht inkompatibel (...) sein, weil einfache Eigenschaften nicht zerlegbar seien. Ich vertrete jedoch die These, daß Leibniz Unverträglichkeiten zwischen einfachen Eigenschaften zuläßt. Diese Art von Unverträglichkeit wird dann betrachtet in Beziehungen zu den Wegen, auf denen wir nach Leibniz Gottes Eigenschaften erkennen können. Es wird gezeigt, daß sein Bemühen, im ontologischen Gottesbeweis nachzuweisen, daß der GottesbegrifF ein möglicher Begriff sei, vergeblich ist. (shrink)

The author argues that Newton’s distinction between absolute and relative motion, i.e. the refusal to define motion in relation to sensible things, in “Scholium on time, space, place and motion” from _Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy_, stems in great part from his critical stance towards Descartes’s philosophy of nature. This is apparent from the comparison of “Scholium”, in which Descartes is not mentioned at all, with Newton’s criticism of him in his manuscript _De gravitatione_. The positive results (...) of Newton’s encounter with Descartes’s theory of motion is almost completely identical to those of the “Scholium”: the definition of motion must concern the whole body and not just its surface; instead of “mutual translation”, it must include the force that is the cause of the physical motion; the motion of the bodies is uniform and straightforward, which can only be achieved within absolute space. As far as the theory of motion is concerned, Newton’s philosophical challenge was always Descartes. (shrink)

Kant devotes to the problem of Cartesian skepticism a constant attention throughout his philosophical career. His first attempt to refute the skeptic goes back to the 1755 Nova Delucidatio, while other arguments, both in the pre-critical and in the critical period, follow one another in a rather erratic effort to remove the “scandal” of philosophy, that is, our inability to prove the existence of the external world beyond doubt. This on-going struggle against the skeptic does not end with the 1787 (...) Second Edition of the Critique of Pure Reason wherein Kant presents his famous Refutation of Idealism. In a series of Reflexionen dating from the late 1780s to the early 1790 and named by Adickes “Reflexionen zum Idealismus,” Kant comes back to the problem that had captured his attention since 1755. (shrink)

The selections contained in these volumes from the papers and letters of Leibniz are intended to serve the student in two ways: first, by providing a more adequate and balanced conception of the full range and penetration of Leibniz's creative intellectual powers; second, by inviting a fresher approach to his intellectual growth and a clearer perception of the internal strains in his thinking, through a chronological arrangement. Much confusion has arisen in the past through a neglect of the develop (...) ment of Leibniz's ideas, and Couturat's impressive plea, in his edition of the Opuscu/es et fragments (p. xii), for such an arrangement is valid even for incomplete editions. The beginning student will do well, however, to read the maturer writings of Parts II, III, and IV first, leaving Part I, from a period too largely neglected by Leibniz criticism, for a later study of the still obscure sources and motives of his thought. The Introduction aims primarily to provide cultural orientation and an exposition of the structure and the underlying assumptions of the philosophical system rather than a critical evaluation. I hope that together with the notes and the Index, it will provide those aids to the understanding which the originality of Leibniz's scientific, ethical, and metaphysical efforts deserve. (shrink)

René Descartes's Regulae ad directionem ingenii ('Rules for the Direction of the Understanding') is his earliest surviving philosophical treatise, and in many respects his most puzzling text. It is a profoundly original work with few intellectual precursors, and offers the fullest account anywhere in Descartes's work of his theory of method. Yet Descartes left it unfinished, and unpublished, at his death in 1650. The versions currently known to modern readers are all posthumous: a manuscript copied for Leibniz (...) in the late seventeenth century, a Dutch translation of 1684, and the version printed in 1701 in Amsterdam. As a result, the details and date of its composition, its fragmentary, unfinished state, and its philosophical content have long puzzled scholars. The discovery by Richard Serjeantson in 2011 of a previously unknown, early manuscript draft of the Regulae in Cambridge University Library was a hugely significant event in Cartesian scholarship. This edition presents the Cambridge manuscript of the Regulae alongside the 1701 Amsterdam version of the text to allow comparison between the early manuscript draft and the version best-known to modern readers, together with a full English translations of both texts. It is also the first critical edition of the Regulae to take into account the full range of textual witnesses to the text, both manuscript and printed. The new Cambridge manuscript sheds important light on the composition, date, and philosophical content of the Regulae, and will provoke scholars to rethink key questions about Descartes's early philosophical development. (shrink)

This paper focuses on Leibniz’s engagement with Thomas Hobbes’s political anthropology in the Mainz-period writings, and demonstrates that Leibniz tried to construct an alternative to the English philosopher by conceiving of a physically- and ontologically-grounded psychology of actions. I provide textual evidence of this attempt, and account for Leibniz’s rejection of Hobbes’s political theory and anthropological assumptions. In doing so, I refer to diverse aspects of Leibniz’s work, thereby highlighting his aspiration to congruity and consistency between different areas of investigation. (...) Furthermore, Leibniz’s political writings and letters will reveal another—sometimes neglected—aspect of the issue: his concern to defend and legitimize the existence of pluralist and collective constitutional political systems like the Holy Roman Empire by providing the theoretical ground of their ability to last. (shrink)

In this unpublished Latin fragment (which dates from May 1702) G. W. Leibniz criticizes the Cartesian conception of body and force and develops his own notion of matter, extension and his theory of forces. He argues against Descartes and Cartesians that 1) the essence of corporal bodies cannot be reduced to extension alone but the latter arise from the primitive force itself, 2) consequently Cartesian quantity of motion falls short to account the motive force of a moving body since (...) the true nature of physical bodies which can only be understood through a careful analysis of dynamical forces. -/- Mayıs 1702’de kaleme aldığı ve ölümünden sonra yayımlanan bu Latince fragmanda G. W. Leibniz, Kartezyen felsefenin cisim ve kuvvet anlayışını eleştirir ve kendi madde, uzam ve kuvvetler teorisini geliştirir. Leibniz, Descartes ve Kartezyenlere karşı 1) cisimlerin özünün yalnızca uzama indirgenemeyeceğini, bunun ilksel kuvvetin kendisinden kaynaklandığını, 2) sonuç olarak da Kartezyen hareket miktarının hareket eden bir cismin kuvvetini açıklamakta yetersiz kaldığını, çünkü fiziksel cisimlerin gerçek doğasının ancak dinamik kuvvetlerin dikkatli bir analiziyle anlaşılabileceğini ileri sürer. (shrink)

One of the greatest of modern philosophers, on a par with his contemporary John Locke, Leibniz was born in Leipzig in 1646, died in Hanover in 1716. He was a leading figure in European intellectual circles, and the founder of the Academy of Berlin. His strange, complex metaphysical system established him as the third of the great 'Rationalists', after Descartes and Spinoza. Along with the 'New System', his most famous philosophical works are the Discourse of Metaphysics and Monadology. He (...) also made important contributions to logic, mathematics, theology, jurisprudence, and history.Gathered here for the first time are all the key texts in a crucial debate in modern philosophy, centred on Leibniz's famous 1695 essay, the `New System of the Nature of Substances and their Communication'. In this classic essay Leibniz introduced to a broad European readership the strikingly original metaphysical ideas he had come to a decade earlier. His 'system' became increasingly famous and drew him into discussion and development of these ideas, both in public and in private, with a variety of thinkers: Simon Foucher; Henri Basbage de Beauval; Francois Lamy; Isaac Jacquelot; the Englishwoman Damaris Masham; Pierre Desmaizeaux; René Joseph de Tournemine; and most notably the great French philosopher and scholar Pierre Bayle. (shrink)

This intelligent and often subtle introduction to rationalist metaphysics focuses on the development of the concept of substance in Descartes, Spinoza, and Leibniz. After briefly reviewing the Aristotelian background in the introduction, Woolhouse spends the first three chapters presenting the broad outlines of each thinker’s account of substance. These are followed by three chapters devoted more specifically to the metaphysics of extended substance and to foundational issues in early modern physics. Next come two chapters on thinking substance and its (...) relation to extended substance, and finally a chapter on the relation between created and uncreated substance, which Woolhouse describes as "an organizing centre of the whole book". (shrink)

As is well known, Leibniz criticises Descartes for not having shown that God (considered as ens perfectissimum ) is possible, and tries to fill this gap by proving God’s possibility on the basis of absolutely positive and simple perfections. For many readers, however, these perfections have appeared problematic or unintelligible. In my paper, I primarily want to show, that they can be made comprehensible by working out their foundations in Plato’s theory of ideas. On this basis, I want to (...) explain, how this allows to understand the compossibility of perfections, essences or ideas (in the Leibnizian regio idearum ) and how such an understanding fits into his version of the ontological proof. For this purpose, the first part of my paper follows two closely related lines of investigation. On the one hand, I focus on Leibniz’s theory of ideas and try to explain in which way he combines his criticism of Descartes’s proof with a criticism of the Cartesian understanding of clear and distinct ideas. On the other hand, I discuss his transformation of Platonic ideas into essences leading from actually existing entities to real possibilities. In order to provide a foundation for this, I start with a glance at Descartes’s ontological proof and at his replies to Caterus and Mersenne concentrating on the problem of God’s possibility. The second part of my paper will work out Leibniz’s own version of the ontological proof and its Platonic background. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Hellenistic and Early Modern PhilosophyChristopher S. CelenzaJon Miller and Brad Inwood, editors. Hellenistic and Early Modern Philosophy. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003. Pp. xii + 330. Cloth, $60.00.There are at least two ways of writing the history of philosophy: the first and most common among those self-identified as "philosophers" treats philosophers of the past as if they were in live dialogue with the present. Only the text (...) is dissected, studied, and analyzed as the interpreter attempts to reconstruct, examine, and occasionally challenge the arguments under consideration. Practitioners of this first way assume that systematic and seemingly internally coherent styles of thought are most worthy of the name "philosophy." These thinkers believe that the term "philosophy," as Richard Rorty pointed out long ago, has an "honorific" sense: philosophy as such stands above other forms of thought, it is regulative in scope, and it serves as something that examines the conclusions of other, necessarily less rigorous fields. The second way is more explicitly contextualist, seeking to understand what a past thinker may have meant in his own time, what outside factors may have shaped his arguments, and how his thought may be part of broader historical currents that are none the less worthy of being remembered and studied now. Practitioners of this way are more likely to believe that ambiguities or seeming deficiencies of clarity that we find in the work of a past thinker are unlikely to be resolved by hypothetical, propositional reconstruction; rather the ambiguities are apparent to us because we are differently situated, so that the study of history is a more powerful tool in helping us satisfactorily access the work of a past thinker than rationalistic reconstruction. (Full disclosure: I am an advocate of the second way.) This volume presents studies that fall into both of the two camps, as Jerome Schneewind points out in his cogent introduction.The volume has a manifest unity: almost all of the articles are concerned in some way with different Hellenistic schools of thought and the way early modern thinkers used, re-imagined, and interpreted them. The studies are often meticulous and all are stimulating. Anthony Long offers a wonderfully synthetic presentation of ancient Stoicism as a coherent system, after which he examines the way Spinoza, Justus Lipsius, and the eighteenth-century Anglican bishop Joseph Butler measure up; unsurprisingly, they don't measure up that well. Margaret Osler seeks to illuminate the way Gassendi appropriated certain aspects of Epicureanism. Philip Mitsis argues that modern scholarship on Locke has not taken Locke's interest in Cicero's De officiis as a tool for teaching morality seriously. Donald Rutherford studies Leibniz's critique of Stoicism, which "centers," he writes, on their "failure to offer an adequate explanation of the nature of moral progress and of the dependence of human happiness on the hope for such progress" (62-63). Catherine Wilson presents a study of the corpuscular aspect of Epicurean natural philosophy among Leibniz and his contemporaries. Jon Miller eloquently and thoughtfully discusses the way Grotius and Spinoza worked with the natural law theory of the Stoics. Among a number of excellent articles, perhaps the most interesting is Stephen Menn's. Menn makes a compelling case that Descartes's intellectual autobiography in the Discourses may be seen as part of a tradition. In it, the writer presents himself as reaching a moment of dissatisfaction with the intellectual customs with which he has come into contact and as needing to strike off into new directions, unencumbered by the vestiges of those customs. While others, most notably Dan Garber, have shown that, as Menn puts it, "none of Descartes's contemporaries seem to have thought in 1637 that they were witnessing a revolution" (142), Menn's study is striking because it shows the depth of the tradition within which Descartes was working. Next, Gail Fine finds that the Cyrenaics, as presented by Sextus Empiricus, seem to have [End Page 207] endorsed "the view that there are truths, beliefs, and knowledge about the subjective" (214). Steven Nadler seeks to show that there is no mysticism in Spinoza's thought, even though it was not uncommon in Spinoza's own day to... (shrink)

Leibniz tries to prove God’s possibility on the basis of absolutely positive and simple perfections. I primarily want to show, how these controversial perfections can be made comprehensible by working out their foundations in Plato’s theory of ideas. After having concentrated on the Cartesian proof and Leibniz’s criticism in the first part of my paper, I now focus on his own version of the proof and its Platonic background. First, I discuss the structure, the advantages and disadvantages of the (...) famous argument in “Quod ens perfectissimum existit” [1676]. Then I investigate his reasons for assuming absolutely positive and simple perfections by tracing them back to Platonic ideas, including the paradigmatic role of the kosmos noȇtos for the compossibility of essences in the regio idearum. I also consider in which sense Plato’s theory of ideas already preforms the structure of ontological proofs, and how it tells against the assumption of a strictly univocal meaning of existence. (shrink)

The first aim of this paper is to try and determine what St. Anselm meant in his original argument in the Proslogion. This needs to be done because not only are the writers who expound his demonstration divided in their interpretations of it, and these interpretations quite different, but, very strangely, one does not find that they mention that there is any ambiguity and that other writers construe Anselm's words differently from themselves. Since there are in fact two arguments in (...) the classical formulation of his proof, I want to try and disentangle them, decide which of them Anselm intendedand what is its connection with the demonstration in the third chapter of the Proslogion, and thus to offer an opinion on what exactly the ontological argument of St. Anselm is. Then on the basis of the clarification, I hope to show what it was that Gaunilo and St. Thomas attacked, to touch briefly on the relation of the 17th century ontological argument to Anselm's, and in general to indicate the curious round-aboutness of the historical criticism of Anselm. Anselm argued and Gaunilo and Thomas refuted something, though not, I think, precisely what Anselm meant, or, at any rate, not all that he meant. Actually it was Descartes that Thomas refuted by refuting half of Anselm. Kant refuted the other half of Anselm in an irrelevant criticism of Descartes. So that it could properly be said that Anselm's proof has been broken by philosophers who were either only partly aware of what he was maintaining, or who never had him in mind at all. Finally, because the important thing about the ontological argument, in my opinion, is not whether it is a demonstration of God's existence, but whether its refutation is a demonstration of the impossibility of God's existence, and because this question seems to arise most sharply in connexion with Anselm's position, I want to say something about that. (shrink)

The essays in this collection have been written for Gerd Buchdahl, by colleagues, students and friends, and are self-standing pieces of original research which have as their main concern the metaphysics and philosophy of science of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. They focus on issues about the development of philosophical and scientific thought which are raised by or in the work of such as Bernoulli, Descartes, Galileo, Kant, Leibniz, Maclaurin, Priestly, Schelling, Vico. Apart from the initial bio-bibliographical piece and (...) those by Robert Butts and Michael Power, they do not discuss Buchdahl or his ideas in any systematic, lengthy, or detailed way. But they are collected under a title which alludes to the book, Metaphysics and the Philosophy of Science: The Classical Origins, Descartes to Kant (1969), which is central in the corpus of his work, and deal with the period and some of the topics with which that book deals. (shrink)

Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (1646-1716) was one of the seventeenth century's most important thinkers. A philosopher, mathematician and scientist, his work is comparable in scope and importance only to that of Newton and Descartes. His work dominated German philosophy until Kant, and was revived in the early part of this century when his important work on logic was re-discovered. This four volume set contains 97 of the most important essays ever written about Leibniz's work. The selection has been made (...) to bring out the scope of Leibniz's work in all the areas he wrote upon, as well as its importance to contemporary philosophy and the history of philosophy. It will be an essential reference work for anyone concerned with seventeenth century philosophy and science, as well as to all Leibniz specialists. (shrink)

Understanding Deleuze, Understanding Modernism explores the multi-faceted and formative impact of Gilles Deleuze on the development and our understanding of modernist thought in its philosophical, literary, and more broadly cultural manifestations. Gilles Deleuze himself rethought philosophical history with a series of books and essays on individual philosophers such as Kant, Spinoza, Leibniz, Nietzsche, and Bergson and authors such as Proust, Kafka, Beckett and Woolf, on the one hand, and Bacon, Messiaen, and Pollock, among others, in other arts. This volume acknowledges (...) Deleuze's profound impact on a century of art and thought and the origin of that impact in his own understanding of modernism. Understanding Deleuze, Understanding Modernism begins by "conceptualizing" Deleuze by offering close readings of some of his most important works. The contributors offer new readings that illuminate the context of Deleuze's work, either by reading one of Deleuze's texts against or in the context of his entire body of work or by challenging Deleuze's readings of other philosophers. A central section on Deleuze and his aesthetics maps the relationships between Deleuze's thought and modernist literature. The volume's final section features an extended glossary of Deleuze's key terms, with each definition having its own expert contributor. (shrink)

This book introduces the central issues of metaphysics and epistemology, from skepticism, justification, and perception to universals, personal identity, and free will. Though topically organized, the book integrates positions and examples from the history of philosophy. Plato, Descartes, and Leibniz are discussed alongside Quine, Kripke, and Haslanger. Peripheral ideas and related historical asides are offered in boxes interspersed within the text, providing further depth without disrupting the author’s lucid explanations of central themes and arguments. Original illustrations by Gillian Wilson (...) are included throughout, giving interesting and clear visual representations of many of the book’s examples and thought experiments. (shrink)

EVER SINCE Plato declared imagining to be mere pseudo- or shadow-knowing—a form of eikasia, the lowest species of mental activity—Western philosophers have striven to put imagination in its place: a strictly subordinate place. With the exception of isolated figures such as Vico, Collingwood, and Bachelard, philosophers have denounced imagining for its digressiveness and excoriated it for its evasiveness, though sometimes surreptitiously admiring it for these very qualities. At the same time, and as part of the same deprecatory tactic, invidious comparisons (...) have been instituted between imagining and supposedly superior psychical activities. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, for example, the paradigm was pure thinking, over against which imagining appeared as deceitful and mendacious—as "the mistress of falsehood and error" in Pascal’s classic complaint. Even Kant, for all of his attention to imagination as a source of synthesis, considered the image to be "a mere set of particular qualities, determined by no assignable rule"—in contrast with the determinacy and rule-bound character of pure concepts. Kant, as much as Descartes or Pascal, Malebranche or Mersenne, Spinoza or Leibniz, would agree with Heidegger’s stern verdict that philosophical thinking is "charmless and image-poor.". (shrink)

This book, as its title indicates, is put forth as a criticism of our age. The author, who is especially known for his work in the tradition of Husserl and Heidegger, and who has written a book on Aristotle, has often mentioned elements of his own philosophical position in his many essays and books; this volume presents the complete view, of which the others gave only hints. Boehm defines "our age" as determined by science, a science which stems from (...) the Greek understanding of knowledge and contains theological elements from antiquity and the middle ages. Knowledge is taken to be an attempt to overcome the limits of the human condition, and Boehm says that this attempt in turn is based on a desire to escape dying. He examines Hesiod, the Bible, and Lao-Tse to find extra-philosophical statements of the interpretation of death as something that somehow might not be. After these analyses of classical and non-philosophical versions of this theme, Boehm has a chapter to show how the issue is developed in various modern ways: Pascal evades the issue of death by escaping into divertissement, and modern political and economic life becomes a process or a game of its own, cut loose from the ends it was contrived to serve; Fichte and Marx are used here, and so are the satires of Parkinson and Boorstin’s analysis of "image" as replacing real need. Boehm emphasizes the reversal of means and ends in contemporary life and sees it as the consequence of the ancient attempt to replace the human condition by knowledge; an inhuman existence results from the desire to avoid being human. In a final chapter, Boehm studies Descartes, Spinoza, Locke, Kant, and others as thinkers who further develop the theme of man as "subject," in the sense of a being that subjects itself to necessity as its only way of surviving; this conception of subjectivity is a condition for the modern subjugation of human needs to the control of the "laws" of economics, production, science, bureaucracy, and the other manifestations of sheer rationality. Human needs are reduced to the needs of rationalistic order and thinking. In conclusion, Boehm observes that philosophy can only criticize the image of the age and its foundations; the return to being human must be accomplished by other means. Boehm’s book is very interesting and puts flesh and blood on many themes we have heard from Heidegger in more abstract form. The main weakness in the book is a failure to analyse virtue, phronesis, and action, which must be seen as a counterpoise even for the understanding of Aristotle’s notion of theory. His criticisms of rationalism, and of gnostic versions of religion which attempt to solve human problems purely by knowledge or by thinking, are accurate, although it is questionable whether he gives a satisfactory picture of Christianity and Judaism in the few passages he cites and interprets; for example, once again the dimension of performance in these religions is not included. Some of his historical remarks, like his interpretation of the events of the thirteenth century, are bold, and one is inclined to read them along with his own remarks on the writing of history. The short description of a conversation with a man of science is pointed and well done. The book is lively and vivid, especially in narrating the reversals of ends and means in our present world.—R.S. (shrink)

This chapter seeks to highlight some of the main threads that Leibniz used in developing his views on infinity in his early years in Paris. In particular, I will be focusing on Leibniz’s encounters with Descartes, Galileo, and Spinoza. Through these encounters, some of the most significant features of Leibniz’s view of infinity will begin to emerge. Leibniz’s response to Descartes reveals his positive attitude to infinity. He rejects Descartes’s view that, since we are finite, we cannot (...) comprehend the infinite and therefore should refrain from studying it. Likewise, Leibniz rejects Descartes’s view that the term ‘infinite’ should be reserved to God alone, as well as Descartes’s distinction between the infinite and the indefinite. Leibniz’s encounter with Galileo brings out his rejection of infinite number in response to Galileo’s paradox. This, in turn, leads him to face another formidable challenge, viz., to defend the claim that an infinite being is possible, while an infinite number is not. Leibniz’s encounter with Spinoza, I suggest, highlights the way he is approaching this problem by distinguishing between quantitative and non- quantitative senses of infinity. The strategy of employing different senses of infinity in different contexts will remain central in Leibniz’s approach to infinity for the rest of his career. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:167. ON McRAE' S HUME Professor McRae's interesting paper may be rather naturally divided into two parts. In the first part he explains what he takes Hume's account of time to be; in the second he advances the bold thesis that Hume's account of time, or perhaps of duration, provides a basis or foundation for his more widely discussed remarks on identity, substance, the self, the necessary connections. In (...) what follows I first reconstruct Professor McRae' s paper, and then I raise some problems, perhaps puzzles, about Hume's view on duration, time and fictions. According to McRae, some philosophers (Descartes, Spinoza, Leibniz) distinguish between time and duration, both of which are taken to be perfectly legitimate notions. Hume, by contrast, takes time and duration to be the same, viz., a succession of moments. What philosophers and the vulgar call 'duration' is something quite different, namely a single unbroken stretch of time which is not composed of successive parts. Of duration taken in this latter way, McRae says, Hume has four things to say, all of them negative: (1) we have no idea of duration; (2) no object has duration; (3) there is no such thing as duration; and (4) duration is a fiction. Properly understood as a succession of moments, however, time certainly exists and is thus not a fiction. Moreover, we have the or at least an idea of time, despite the fact that it is obtained without derivation from a precedent impression. And, while no object can be said to have time, Hume will nonetheless allow that objects exist at certain times and perhaps across a time span. In the second part of his paper, Professor McRae distinguishes two types of Humean fictions. The first arises when one idea is confused with another and mis-applied to some object. The second arises when the imagination creates an "idea" in the attempt to resolve a 168. contradiction which comes up when the first fiction is applied to an object. What I have called McRae' s "bold thesis" in the second part of his paper can now be stated. Duration, or the putative idea thereof, is a fiction of the first type, one that is attributed to what Hume calls "steadfast objects." However, such an object can be considered in two ways. One might consider the object at two stages of this duration and, McRae says, "...this will give us the idea of number" (p. 126); or, one might consider in turn a series of objects, each of them supposedly "steadfast," all along supposing that though time is changing, the objects are not, and "...in this way- we get the idea of unity" (Ibid.). But no object is both a unity and a multiplicity. So, to reconcile these conflicting considerations, the "idea" or fiction of identity is invented. As McRae says: "The idea of identity is a pure product of the imagination invented to mediate between unity and number" (Ibid. ). This invented "idea" is then mis-applied (a fiction of type one) to interrupted appearances of an object. To reconcile the supposed identity of an object with successive appearances of it, the fiction of substance is invented. Quoting both McRae and Hume, In order to reconcile the contradiction between identity and diversity, the imagination is apt to feign something unknown and invisible, which it supposes to continue the same under all these variations ; 2 and this unintelligible something it calls a substance... (p. 128). Related needs to resolve contradictions, on McRae' s account, lead to the fictions of the self (p. 128) and of necessary connections (p. 130), though the latter fiction is of type one. Hence, McRae' s "bold thesis" amounts to this: Duration is a fiction. In the attempt to apply this fiction, one is led to, logically led to, most, if not all, of the other famous Humean fictions. And, if we allow that there are mental acts, for Hume, as well as impressions and ideas, "...then a fictitious duration will be attributed to 169. objects and by a progressive compounding of fictitious mental actions will give the world the ontological structure which it has for the vulgar belief we all share. It... (shrink)

In Descartes, the concept of a ‘universal science’ differs from that of a ‘mathesis universalis’, in that the latter is simply a general theory of quantities and proportions. Mathesis universalis is closely linked with mathematical analysis; the theorem to be proved is taken as given, and the analyst seeks to discover that from which the theorem follows. Though the analytic method is followed in the Meditations, Descartes is not concerned with a mathematisation of method; mathematics merely provides him (...) with examples. Leibniz, on the other hand, stressed the importance of a calculus as a way of representing and adding to what is known, and tried to construct a ‘universal calculus’ as part of his proposed universal symbolism, his ‘characteristica universalis’. The characteristica universalis was never completed—it proved impossible, for example, to list its basic terms, the ‘alphabet of human thoughts’—but parts of it did come to fruition, in the shape of Leibniz's infinitesimal calculus and his various logical calculi. By his construction of these calculi, Leibniz proved that it is possible to operate with concepts in a purely formal way. (shrink)

The purpose of this paper is twofold. First, it aims at introducing the ontological argument through the analysis of five historical developments: Anselm’s argument found in the second chapter of his Proslogion, Gaunilo’s criticism of it, Descartes’ version of the ontological argument found in his Meditations on First Philosophy, Leibniz’s contribution to the debate on the ontological argument and his demonstration of the possibility of God, and Kant’s famous criticisms against the (cartesian) ontological argument. Second, it intends to (...) critically examine the enterprise of formally analyzing philosophical arguments and, as such, contribute in a small degree to the debate on the role of formalization in philosophy. My focus will be mainly on the drawbacks and limitations of such enterprise; as a guideline, I shall refer to a Carnapian, or Carnapian-like theory of argument analysis. (shrink)

A lucid, scholarly, and largely historical study which seeks to show that Descartes' metaphysical system collapsed because it could not give an intelligible explanation of how substances interact or of how ideas represent their objects. It was Simon Foucher who first pounced on the internal conflict among Cartesian principles: the radical dualism between mind and matter could not be reconciled with the epistemological likeness principles according to which causes resemble their effects, ideas resemble their objects, as well as the (...) principle that direct acquaintance is necessary for knowledge. Watson carefully studies the various vain attempts of Cartesians such as Desgabes to escape this difficulty, as well as Foucher's correspondence with Leibniz and his criticisms of Malebranche. Watson shows that the arguments originated by Foucher led by way of Bayle's Dictionnaire to those of Locke, Berkeley, and Hume. There is an extensive bibliography and an appendix containing a schematic outline of the principles of late seventeenth century Cartesianism and of Foucher's criticisms.—S. A. S. (shrink)

In Western thinking, the tradition of the argument for the existence of God beganwith Plato and Aristotle. It was carried forward in medieval scholasticism,eminently in Aquinas‟s so-called quinque viae, and reached its peak in modernphilosophy. To date approximately 1850 different proofs for the existence of Godare known. The most frequently represented and well-known types of proofs arethe ontological, cosmological, teleological and the moral or deontological type,referring respectively to the arguments of Anselm, Aquinas , and Kant. In this paper I will (...) discuss the development of modernphilosophical proofs, from Descartes‟s and Spinoza‟s ontological arguments,through, Leibniz‟s cosmological argument to Swinburne‟s revision of Leibniz. (shrink)

This paper analyses the abstractionist account of quantity championed by Leibniz, especially in the 1680s. Leibniz introduced the notion of quantity in an indirect way, via an abstraction principle. In the first part of the paper, I identify the context in which this approach arose in light of Leibniz's criticism of his earlier dream of an ‘alphabet of human thought’. Recognising the impossibility of such a project led him to realise that, when dealing with terms referring to abstract (...) objects, we should always consider them within the true sentences in which they occur. In the second part, I describe this approach in detail. This allows us to look at some key concepts of Leibniz's theory of quantity. In particular, I raise the problem of the relationship between the two sides of the abstraction principle: how should we think of the relation between the claim that a and b are equal, and the claim that the quantity of a is identical to the quantity of b? I argue that we can find a positive answer to this problem in Leibniz. (shrink)

This is a very useful collection of important, standard, primary sources. Two-thirds of volume one is taken up with Plato and Aristotle with the rest of the volume evenly divided among the Presocratics, Hellenistic philosophers and Medieval philosophers. Four of the Platonic dialogues are complete. Second edition changes in the first volume include: changes in translators and new entries. In both volumes Kaufmann's prefaces are very brief and mainly biographical. He consistently ties in information about each thinker's contemporaries. The second (...) volume has readings from Bacon, Descartes, Hobbes, Spinoza, Locke, Leibniz, Berkeley, Hume, and Kant. Almost half the second volume is taken up with Hume and Kant. The second edition changes in volume II are: expansion of Spinoza's Ethics, Locke's Essay, Berkeley's Principles; and additions of Descartes' correspondence with Princess Elizabeth, and a short Leibniz essay translated especially for this volume by M. Furth. The selections are adequately long and representational. The volumes contain double columns, no index, no bibliographies, no "Study Guides," just solid and important reading.--S. O. H. (shrink)

This long, diffuse, and intermittently quite interesting work is an attempt to explain and justify the process by which the concept of truth has been transformed in modern and contemporary philosophy from a doctrine of adequation via one of the true vision of things to that of the activity of the free subject. The main figures in this process are Descartes, Leibniz, Kant, and Hegel, although considerable space is devoted to Fichte, Schelling, Nietzsche, Husserl, Heidegger, Wittgenstein, and even K. (...) O. Apel and Hans Wagner. Despite the discussion of Wittgenstein and an odd comment or so about Frege, modern philosophy means primarily modern German philosophy; there is, however, some peripheral treatment of contemporary analytical thought. One may perhaps point to three main aspects of the author’s program. The first is his acceptance of the currently fashionable view that semantics is the orientating branch of philosophy. This thesis follows from the author’s acceptance of the historical rejection of Cartesian and Leibnizian intuition in favor of Kantian and Hegelian emphasis upon rationality as categoricity or conceptualism. The second aspect is Simon’s regular attempt to assimilate semantics into the doctrine of reflection. Hence the emphasis upon concepts shifts from that of objects to a second-order reflection upon the nature of conceptual thinking. The third aspect is in many ways the most comprehensive; at least Simon’s book culminates in its articulation. This is the attempt to assimilate the doctrine of reflection into a conception of freedom as a doctrine of both Recht and communication. I found especially valuable the emphasis upon the contribution of the subject to "objective" conceptions of meaning and truth. There are very good pages on the modern doctrine of intuition and the changing role assigned to imagination. The regular emphasis placed by Simon on negation as determination, and hence upon negation of negation as a crucial element even within non-dialectical logic, is also valuable. I was less persuaded by the treatment of intersubjectivity as an expression of a hermeneutics of communication within the context of a doctrine of individual rights. This Fichtean revision of Habermas and Apel may be the latest chapter in German academic philosophy of the traditional stream, but it does not follow even on Simon’s quasi-Hegelian principles that the text is sound. The deepest problem facing the author is to prevent the concept of truth from dissolving altogether into subjective reflection upon the limitations of objective definitions of truth. Stated somewhat differently, the author fails to persuade this reader that truth is actually the consensus of the community. Whatever the "positivist" deficiencies of Descartes and Leibniz, they do provide us with a concept of truth that is not easily mistaken for ideology.—S.R. (shrink)

This is the first volume compiling English translations of Leibniz's journal articles on natural philosophy, presenting a selection of 26 articles, only three of which have appeared before in English translation. It also includes in full Leibniz's public controversies with De Catelan, Papin, and Hartsoeker. The articles include work in optics, on the fracture strength of materials, and on motion in a resisting medium, and Leibniz's pioneering applications of his calculus to these issues by construing them as (...) mini-max and inverse tangent problems. Other topics covered by the articles include: criticisms of the Cartesian estimate of motive force and Leibniz's proposal of a different way of estimating force to replace it; a proposed theory of celestial motions and gravitation, and derivation of the inverse square law; challenge problems concerning the isochronous curve and the catenary; a sample of work on gaming theory; and Leibniz's critique of atomism. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Toward a Non-Cartesian Psychotherapeutic Framework: Radical Pragmatism as an AlternativeLouis S. Berger (bio)AbstractPostmodern criticism has identified important impoverishments that necessarily follow from the use of Cartesian frameworks. This criticism is reviewed and its implications for psychotherapy are explored in a psychoanalytic context. The ubiquitous presence of Cartesianism (equivalently, representationism) in psychoanalytic frameworks—even in some that are considered postmodern—is demonstrated and criticized. The postmodern convergence on praxis as (...) a desirable alternative to Cartesianism is reported, and its relevance for psychoanalysis is considered. The severe conceptual difficulties entailed in formulating such an alternative are discussed, as are those difficulties that would be encountered were psychoanalysis to attempt the shift from explanatory mental science to praxis. The principal psychoanalytic problematics explored are: the paradoxical relationships between theory and therapeutic technique; the therapeutic action; and validation of clinical practices. Initial, nontraditional suggestions for addressing these problems are offered.Keywordspsychoanalysis, therapeutic action, representation, state space, praxis, hermeneutics, Descartes, Heidegger, Wittgenstein“But the inability to bring one’s subject under conceptual control, fixing it propositionally, is not the end of thinking; on the contrary, it were better to say that the breakdown of concepts and the failure of words is an opening that takes us out of the realm where representation and calculation are all that matter to thinking.... [T]his is what happens in the Socratic dialogue where the negativity in which one ends up at a loss for words is at the same time that which sets thinking free.”Bruns 1989, 9“To evolve theory as though our methods and processes of study were essentially the same, or could be the same, as those of other sciences, or could be disregarded when it comes to theory, implies a view of reality that is no longer tenable, least of all in that ambiguous area which we call psychic reality. Nevertheless, all of us are still more or less captives of an erroneous understanding of objectivity and objective reality....”Loewald 1970, 45 [End Page 169]CartesianismCartesianism still underlies and dominates much of today’s thought. It is the label for a network of interrelated ideas and themes:the ontological duality of mind and body; the subjective individualism implicit in the ultimate appeal to direct personal verification; the method of universal doubt which was supposed to lead us to indubitable truths; the doctrine that language and signs are an external disguise for thought; the doctrine that vagueness is unreal and that the philosophic endeavor is one of knowing clearly and distinctly a completely determinate reality; and most fundamentally, the doctrine that we can break out of the miasma of our language or system of signs and have direct intuitive knowledge of objects. (Bernstein 1971, 5–6)[The Cartesian assumptions] constitute a picture of science and the world somewhat as follows: there is an external world which can in principle be exhaustively described in scientific language. The scientist, as both observer and language-user, can capture the external facts of the world in propositions that are true if they correspond to the facts and false if they do not. Science is ideally a linguistic system in which true propositions are in one-to-one relation to facts, including facts that are not directly observed because they involve hidden entities or properties, or past events or far distant events. These hidden events are described in theories, and theories can be inferred from observation, that is, the hidden explanatory mechanism of the world can be discovered from what is open to observation. Man as scientist is regarded as standing apart from the world and able to experiment and theorize about it objectively and dispassionately.(Hesse 1980, vii)Hesse goes on to say that “almost every assumption underlying this account has been subjected to damaging criticism,” a view echoed by others: “Most contemporary philosophers have been in revolt against the Cartesian framework” (Bernstein 1971, 5); “A rejection of the Cartesian view is a central theme for both of the giants of twentieth-century philosophy, Heidegger and Wittgenstein” (Sass 1992, 444n 77); and “The notion of alternative conceptual frameworks has been a commonplace of our culture since Hegel” (Rorty 1982, 3).These criticisms arise... (shrink)

Deism, which is known for denying the belief in prophethood and the hereafter while accepting the existence of a deity who is understood through reason but does not interfere with the universe while, has gained increasing popularity especially in positive scientific circles in Europe with the Enlightenment period. The development of deism in Europe has been significantly influenced by the ideas of philosophers and scientists such as Descartes, Newton, Voltaire, David Hume, and Kant. Although there is no word in (...) Islamic terminology that corresponds with the meaning of deism, terms such as Dahriyya, Barāhima, ilhad and heresy have been used to refer to different types of denial, including deism and atheism. However, it can be said that “Dahriyyah” is closer to atheism in meaning, while “Barāhima” is used in a more specific sense to deny prophethood. The words “ilhad” and heresy are used to express any kind of denial that rejects the principles of Islam. Parallel to deism being a subject of interest in our country and around the world, there has been a significant increase in studies conducted both in favour and against it. In this article, the rational proofs mentioned by Māturīdī regarding the existence of the hereafter, which deism rejects, have been discussed. In particular, the evidence found in the exegesis of relevant verses of the Qur’ān in Kitab al-Ta’wilat have been subject to examination. Māturīdī has emphasized the importance of providing rational proof for those who do not believe in the Qur’ān, stating that they will not accept any evidence derived from it. Māturīdī, who researched the reasons why people deny the afterlife, explained that people’s attempt to understand everything by comparing them to their own abilities is an important reason for the denial of the afterlife. According to him, people deny the afterlife because they believe that the power to resurrect the dead is beyond their own abilities and assume that their power is not enough for such an act. If they had contemplated the creation of the heavens and the earth, they would have realised that Allāh’s power is different from the power of His creatures. Furthermore, Imam Māturīdī pointed out that it would be absurd and pointless for Allāh, the Creator of the universe, to have created it solely for the purpose of its destruction. He emphasised that there must be a purpose for its creation, and that this purpose indicates the existence of the afterlife, where the actions of the created beings will be accounted for. In addition, Māturīdī, who said “If the world was eternal, it would not be possible to repay the deeds done,” emphasised the necessity of distinguishing between virtuous and evil individuals and giving everyone the reward or punishment they deserve. He acknowledged that human beings live in this world as a test, and the true consequences of their actions will be revealed in the hereafter. (shrink)

Modern moral and political philosophy is in debt with natural law theory, both in its ancient and mediaeval elaborations. While the very notion of a natural law has proved highly controversial among 20th Century scholars, the last decades have witnessed a renewed interest in it. Indeed, the threats and challenges as result of multiculturalism, plural societies and global changes have generated a renewed attention to natural law theory. Clearly, it offers solid basis as possible framework to a better understanding of (...) human goods without contradictions and partial bias. The purpose of the present volume is to provide an overview of the history of this concept (Cicero, St. Paul, Aquinas, Melanchthon, Montaigne, Descartes, Leibniz, Hume, Burke, Kant, MacIntyre, etc.) as well as a deep understanding of ongoing research, both in Europe and in America. Furthermore, the specificity of these studies will be of particular value to philosophers, law-philosophers, historians, anthropologists, sociologists and theologians, and those concerned on such issues as the relation between law and moral norm, law and practical reason, and the presence of the idea of natural law in several prominent thinkers. It includes a selected bibliography on natural law. The book also provides an excellent introduction to several of the major topics in natural law theory making it useful both as a reference text and as a sourcebook for academics alike. Natural law is a rich, complex, and highly disputed term. Since its first appearances in the history of Western civilization, it has been used both to point to God as the source of the moral order and to assert that there is an objective order of justice in nature that men and their laws ought to respect. In modern times, natural law theory gave birth to what we usually call "human rights." Unlike the meaning of the term, the importance of an ongoing debate on natural law and on the theories related to it is undisputable. This is why I welcome today this new collection of essays edited by Alejandro Nèstor Garcìa Martìnez, Mario Å ilar and Josè M. Torralba. Natural Law: Historical, Systematic and Juridical Approaches includes a wide variety of studies, covering key authors and issues in natural law theory. Younger students will appreciate the clarity of the chapters, and more trained readers the detailed and accurate bibliographical references that each of them offers. The editors's choice to go from a historical approach to contemporary theories, and then to theoretical and more practical issues is also commendable. Students in philosophy and in legal theory will greatly benefit from this book. Fulvio Di Blasi, author of God and the Natural Law: A Rereading of Thomas Aquinas. (shrink)