Dans le cadre de nos recherches sur la correspondance de Descartes, nous avons découvert une lettre inédite du philosophe. La lettre, qui se trouve à la Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin, Preußischer Kulturbesitz, est addressee à Joachim de Wicquefort, datée de Leyde, le 2 octobre 1640. Dans sa lettre Descartes réclame, par l' intermédiaire de Wicquefort, la traduction latine de ses Meteores, qui avait été remis au professeur de philosophie d'Amsterdam, Caspar Barlaeus. Elle précède de trois jours la lettre, déjà connue, à (...) Wicquefort sur le même sujet. L'importance de notre lettre est qu'elle confirme certaines hypothèses concernant l'édition latine du Discours, et le projet abandonné de la publication des objections faites au Discours et aux Essais et des réponses du philosophe. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Descartes’s Lettre Apologétique aux Magistrats d’Utrecht:New Facts and MaterialsErik-Jan BosThe lettre apologétique aux magistrats d’utrecht was Descartes’s final effort to obtain satisfaction from the Municipality or ‘Vroedschap’ of Utrecht. In 1643 the Vroedschap had condemned Descartes’s Epistola ad Dinetum and Epistola ad Voetium in defence of Descartes’s opponent Gisbertus Voetius (1589–1676), professor of Theology at the University of Utrecht.1 In the Lettre apologétique Descartes requests the Utrecht Vroedschap to (...) revoke their condemnation, to clear his name and to reconsider Voetius’s position.The Lettre apologétique receives little attention in modern editions of Descartes’s works. Adam and Tannery give both the French and the Latin version of the Lettre apologétique, but with scanty annotation and an unsatisfactory introduction (AT VIIIB).2 The only other edition of the Lettre apologétique is provided by Verbeek, in La Querelle d’Utrecht (1988), but it does not go beyond Adam and Tannery’s edition.3In 1992, however, Verbeek noted that the Lettre apologétique could not possibly date from 1645, which was the hypothesis of Adam and Tannery and still is the [End Page 415] prevailing view.4 This raises once again the question of the real date of the Lettre apologétique as well as of the history of the text. In this essay I propose a new date and a new account of the history of the text. I also draw attention to the Dutch version of the Lettre apologétique, which Descartes sent to the Utrecht Vroedschap in 1648, but first I will give a short survey of Descartes’s dispute with Voetius.1. THE UTRECHT QUARRELIf we are to believe Descartes in his Lettre apologétique, it was Voetius who started the quarrel in 1639 by accusing him of atheism in several disputations, an accusation to which Voetius stuck throughout the affair.5 Descartes admits he is not mentioned in the writings of the Utrecht theologian, but “[Voetius] counted among the characteristics of atheism everything he knew to be commonly attributed to me” (AT VIIIB 205). A few years later, in 1641, Voetius called the adherents of the New Philosophy atheists outright. In a reaction to Descartes’s champion in Utrecht, the professor of medicine Henricus Regius (1598–1679), who claimed Aristotelian philosophy to be of no use for explaining natural phenomena, Voetius warned that the rejection of traditional philosophy would lead to scepticism and eventually to disbelief. With Descartes’s help Regius furnished a reply, in which he insinuated that it was, instead, the obscurities in Neo-Scholastic thought which led to the denial of God.6 This answer elicited protest from the University Senate. On the Senate’s request the Utrecht Vroedschap confiscated Regius’s book and forbade the teaching of any ideas deviating from Aristotle. Regius having been silenced, Descartes proceeded in a personal capacity. He vehemently attacked Voetius, first in the Epistola adDinetum, then in an elaborate work, the Epistola ad Voetium. The latter was meant as a response to a book opposing Descartes published by the professor of philosophy in Groningen, Martin Schoock (1614–1669), a friend of Voetius.7 The Vroedschap then condemned the works and Descartes became [End Page 416] subject to criminal charges. Thanks to his influential friends, Descartes was never put on trial, yet he felt that his reputation had been badly damaged. Several times he demanded satisfaction from the Utrecht Vroedschap, but to no avail.Until recently, the texts published in the polemic between Descartes and Voetius were considered to be of no more than anecdotal value in Descartes’s biography. It is only for the past decade that their philosophical relevance has been recognized. From what seemed to be unpromising material, various scholars have presented new perspectives on both Voetius and Descartes.8 They have shown that the objections raised by Voetius and Schoock against Cartesian philosophy prove to be more fundamental and to the point than formerly believed. Although Descartes never made a serious attempt on his own to meet Voetius on philosophical grounds, his writings are interesting because he brings forward theoretical positions which before he had... (shrink)

I publish here two letters by the French philosopher and mathematician René Descartes. The first and most important letter, dating from May 1641 and addressed to Mersenne, is almost entirely devoted to the printing of the Meditations in Paris. The second letter, dated June 1646, is Descartes' letter of thanks to Pasor, rector of the University of Groningen, after receiving satisfaction for the complaints he had filed against Schoock. The text of both letters was unknown.

Essay over de relatie van de Franse wijsgeer Descartes (1596-1650) met de universiteit van Utrecht.

Reshaping the neo-Aristotelian doctrines about the human soul was Descartes’s most spectacular enterprise, which gave birth to some of the sharpest debates in the Republic of Letters. Neverthe- less, it was certainly Descartes’s intention, as already expressed in the Discours de la méthode, to show that his new metaphysics could be supplemented with experimental research in the field of medicine and the conservation of life. It is no surprise then that several natural philosophers and doctors, such as Henricus Regius from (...) Utrecht, who had studied in Padua with William Harvey, rallied in support, in order to gain a more substantial theoretical basis for their research. Taking as his ground some general metaphysical assumptions, such as the existence of God, the immortality of the soul, and perhaps the separability of the pure understanding, Regius intended to secure a new philosophy of man, which was able to reflect his medical interests and complement his account of human nature. This is the story that is now gaining currency, and it is surely accurate, at least in part. Desmond Clarke has recently defended the same view1, based on the remarkable studies of the Utrecht scholars Theo Verbeek and Erik-Jan Bos. Here I would like to challenge some aspects of this view and ask how Regius, who was perceived as the philosopher most closely associated with Descartes, became a betrayer of his mentor. (shrink)

In the 1960s, influential thinkers defined design as a rational problem-solving approach to deal with the challenges of sustainable human development. In 2009, a design consultant and a business academic selected some of these ideas and successfully branded them with the term “design thinking.” As a result, design thinking has developed into a stream of innovation management research discussing how to innovate faster and better in competitive markets. This article aims to foster a reconsideration of the purposes of design thinking (...) moving forward, in view of the sustainable development challenges intertwined with accelerating innovation in a perpetual economic growth paradigm. To this end, we use a problematization method to challenge innovation management research on design thinking. As part of this method, we first systematically collect and critically analyze the articles in this research stream. We uncover a prominent focus on economic impact, while social and environmental impacts remain largely neglected. To overcome this critical limitation, we integrate design thinking with responsible innovation theorizing. We develop a framework for responsible design thinking, explaining how to apply this approach beyond a private interest and competitive advantage logic, to address sustainable development challenges, such as climate change, resource depletion, poverty, and injustice. The framework contributes to strengthening the practical relevance of design thinking and its theoretical foundations. To catalyze this effort, we propose an agenda for future research. (shrink)

Une lettre de Descartes à Mersenne du 27 mai 1641 vient d’être découverte dans une bibliothèque de Haverford College, près de Philadelphie. Ayant appartenu aux collections de l’Institut de France, ce document fut volé avec 71 autres de Descartes par le comte Libri, un mathématicien italien qui travaillait comme secrétaire du comité des manuscrits et catalogues pour les bibliothèques nationales françaises dans les années 1840. L’asile politique que lui accorda le Royaume-Uni après sa fuite en 1848 – en dépit de (...) sa condamnation par contumace à 10 ans de prison – permit au comte d evemdre son bien mal acquis, ainsi que de nombreux autres documents provenant du même fonds. Après les deux ventes aux enchères qui eurent lieu à Londres en 1861, on perdit la trace de la lettre en question – seules 45 lettres sur les 72 ont de fait été récupérées par l’Institut – jusqu’à sa dedécouverte grâce à Google.books par Erik-Jan Bos, un chercheur hollandais du Zeno Institute à Utrecht. (shrink)

Edition of the the Dutch manuscript Descartes submitted to the Municipality of Utrecht, accompanying the same text but in French: Lettre apologétique aux Magistrats d'Utrecht. The manuscript, dated and signed by Descartes, shows numerous corrections in the Dutch translation by Descartes himself. Introduction and annotation by Erik-Jan Bos.

Negotiation is not only used to settle differences of interest but also to settle differences of opinion. Discussants who are unable to resolve their difference about the objective worth of a policy or action proposal may be willing to abandon their attempts to convince the other and search instead for a compromise that would, for each of them, though only a second choice yet be preferable to a lasting conflict. Our questions are: First, when is it sensible to enter into (...) negotiations and when would this be unwarranted or even fallacious? Second, what is the nature of a compromise? What does it mean to settle instead of resolve a difference of opinion, and what might be the dialectical consequences of mistaking a compromise for a substantial resolution? Our main aim is to contribute to the theory of argumentation within the context of negotiation and compromise formation and to show how arguing disputants can shift to negotiation in a dialectically virtuous way. (shrink)

Since constitutional arrangements are what make politics work, they are a central concern of political theory._This book, now completely updated, is the first comprehensive exploration of the political theory of constitutions. Jan-Erik Lane begins by examining the origins and history of constitutionalism and answers key questions such as: What is a constitution? Why are there constitutions? From where does constitutionalism originate? How is the constitutional state related to democracy and justice? Constitutions play a major role in domestic and international (...) politics in the early 21st century and an updated version of this classic textbook will introduce students to a number of different areas -- theoretical, empirical, and moral -- which will aid their understanding of this important topic. (shrink)

According to a standard representationalist view cognitive capacities depend on internal content-carrying states. Recent alternatives to this view have been met with the reaction that they have, at best, limited scope, because a large range of cognitive phenomena—those involving absent and abstract features—require representational explanations. Here we challenge the idea that the consideration of cognition regarding the absent and the abstract can move the debate about representationalism along. Whether or not cognition involving the absent and the abstract requires the positing (...) of representations depends upon whether more basic forms of cognition require the positing of representations. (shrink)

In this encyclopedia entry I canvass the current interpretations of John Locke's concept of Real Essence and the role it plays in his philosophy.

While the tradition of Locke scholarship holds that both Locke and Boyle are species anti-realists, there is evidence that this interpretation is false. Specifically, there has been some recent work on Boyle showing that he is, unlike Locke, a species realist. In this paper I argue that once we see Boyle as a realist about natural species, it is plausible to read some of Locke’s most formidable anti-realist arguments as directed specifically at Boyle’s account of natural species. This is a (...) break from the tradition because no one in the literature has yet suggested that some of Locke’s arguments in Book III of the Essay include a criticism of Boyle’s doctrine of species. Moreover, identifying Boyle as Locke’s intended target illuminates some of the more vexing passages in the Essay concerning real essences. (shrink)

The current consensus in Locke scholarship is that Robert Boyle anticipated Locke's thesis that classification into species is the arbitrary work of the understanding. In fact, according to Michael Ayers, inter alia, not only did Boyle and Locke both think that classification is the workmanship of the understanding but that this thesis follows directly from the mechanical hypothesis itself. In this paper I argue that this reading of Boyle is mistaken: Locke's thesis on classification was not anticipated by Boyle. I (...) will do this by showing that Boyle's account of classification is not Locke's, but is a more realist view of natural species employing a mechanically respectable account of natural forms. (shrink)

Criticism may degenerate into quibbling or nitpicking. How can discussants keep quibblers under control? In the paper we investigate cases in which a battle about words replaces a discussion of the matters that are actually at issue as well as cases in which a battle about minor objections replaces a discussion of the major issues. We survey some lines of discussion dealing with these situations in profiles of dialogue.

In this paper I criticize arguments by Pauline Phemister and Matthew Stuart that John Locke's position in his An Essay Concerning Human Understanding allows for natural kinds based on similarities among real essences. On my reading of Locke, not only are similarities among real essences irrelevant to species, but natural kind theories based on them are unintelligible.

This paper attempts to systematically characterize critical reactions in argumentative discourse, such as objections, critical questions, rebuttals, refutations, counterarguments, and fallacy charges, in order to contribute to the dialogical approach to argumentation. We shall make use of four parameters to characterize distinct types of critical reaction. First, a critical reaction has a focus, for example on the standpoint, or on another part of an argument. Second, critical reactions appeal to some kind of norm, argumentative or other. Third, they each have (...) a particular illocutionary force, which may include that of giving strategic advice to the other. Fourth, a critical reaction occurs at a particular level of dialogue (the ground level or some meta-level). The concepts here developed shall be applied to discussions of critical reactions by Aristotle and by some contemporary authors. (shrink)

What if in discussion the critic refuses to recognize an emotionally expressed argument of her interlocutor as an argument, accusing him of having presented no argument at all. In this paper, we shall deal with this reproach, which taken literally amounts to a charge of having committed a fallacy of non-argumentation. As such it is a very strong, if not the ultimate, criticism, which even carries the risk of abandonment of the discussion and can, therefore, not be made without burdening (...) oneself with correspondingly strong obligations. We want to specify the fallacies of non-argumentation and their dialectic, i.e., the proper way to criticize them, the appropriate ways for the arguer to react to such criticism, and the appropriate ways for the critic to follow up on these reactions. Among the types of fallacy of non-argumentation, the emphasis will be on the appeal to popular sentiments. Our aim is to reach, for cases of non-argumentation, a survey of dialectical possibilities. By making the disputants themselves responsible for the place of emotion in their dialogues, we hope to contribute to a further development of the theory of dialectical obligations. (shrink)

Karl Popper discovered the link between the open society and scientific dis- covery with the help of his analysis of growth of scientific theories (Popper, 1945, 1959). Only in an open society can hypotheses or models be falsified. His principle of falsification applies not only to scientific argument but also to social science beliefs and political propaganda. Thus, democracy nourishes an open society seeking the truth. Actually, democracy is the sole political re- gime that promotes the truth in an open (...) society. The rationale for democracy is to be found in game theory, in particular the principal agent framework in the economics of information. (shrink)

Susanna Goodin, in her article “Locke and Leibniz and the Debate over Species” , argues that Leibniz’s criticisms of Locke’s species conventionalism are inadequate as a refutation of Locke’s arguments, and if Leibniz were to buttress his criticisms by appeal to his own metaphysical commitments, he could do so only at the expense of so radically altering the nature of the debate that Locke’s original concerns would not even arise. I argue, however, that Leibniz has an argument within the Nouveaux (...) Essais which provides him with a mechanistically respectable counterproposal to Locke’s conventionalism and which demonstrates the explanatory superiority of natural kind realism. (shrink)

Robert Boyle (1627-91) was at the centre of the scientific revolution of the seventeenth cventury. While most of us were first introduced to Boyle as an historical figure in chemistry, he was first and foremost a philosopher committed to experimentalism in natural philosophy. He was a forward thinker, anticipating the direction of human philosophical and scientific endeavours. He was thinking about issues that are currently hot topics in philosophy and social policy, e.g. the importance of science in benefitting humanity, the (...) need to make the recipes for medicines publicly available, the connections between science and ethics, the tensions between science and religion, just to name a few. Moreover, Boyle was providing important philosophical guidance on each of these topics. He is not merely a relic of the past whose only claims to fame are his ideal gas law and an improved vacuum pump; he is a leader in experimental philosophy whose interests span nearly the whole range of philosophical topics, including morality, philosophy of religion, natural kinds, causation, epistemology, and the philosophy of science. Boyle was not only the most prolific English author in the scientific revolution of the seventeenth century, he was arguably the most influential natural philosopher of the period. His impact on chemistry and experimental science is important and well documented, but other aspects of Boyle’s philosophical thought are less widely known, and yet clearly influenced the natural philosophy, natural theology and philosophy (broadly speaking) of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. To conclude, as many scholars do, that he was an important influence in the formation of the experimentalist and empiricist traditions and a vital source for understanding subsequent philosophical developments, would be true but it would also be selling him short. -/- There are two main aims of this volume. First, to give students and researchers of Boyle ready access to the wide array of philosophical topics that Boyle addressed and thereby present a more complete and systematic picture of both Robert Boyle and his philosophical contributions. Second, to present in one place the best current research on the philosophy of Robert Boyle that takes into account the last thirty years of scholarship and points us toward the next thirty years. These two aims also inform the choices of chapter topics. (shrink)

The focus of this dissertation is the debate over classification and species realism/anti-realism in the new science of mechanism. I argue that Michael Ayers's Interpretation of Robert Boyle as a Lockean on species is incorrect. Boyle is more realist than Locke, indeed, Boyle's theory of classification was more similar to Leibniz's than to Locke's. This realist account of Boyle helps to diagnose an important connection between Leibniz and Boyle, and show Locke as a much more novel philosopher of science. ;I (...) then argue that this account of Boyle's realism reveals a new argument strain in Leibniz that allows him a better reply against Locke's species anti-realism. I thus argue against Susana Goodin's view that Leibniz's reply to Locke's anti-realist arguments in the New Essays are stronger than they appear to be. According to Goodin, Leibniz cannot refute Locke without either changing the subject or appealing to his own deep metaphysics. I argue that Leibniz can reply in a dialectically adequate, non-question begging way to Locke's argument without appealing to anything deeper than the science of mechanism. ;Finally, I show that, contra Ayers, one of Locke's motivations for his anti-realism stems from his theological heterodoxy, not from the corpuscularian hypothesis. This theological strain appears most strikingly within the context of the debate over the status of persons and the human species. In the Essay, Locke denies each of Leibniz's orthodox theses regarding the human species. Locke's denials of the orthodox theses appear to be motivated by his heterodox theological commitments. (shrink)

Starting from Justus Lipsius's _Monita et exempla politica _, this book offers a collection of essays dealing with the disputed Macchiavellian, Tacitean or Neostoic character of Lipsius's political thought, and its impact on the dynamics of political discourse in Early Modern Europe.

In this paper I argue that John Locke is not ontologically committed to corpuscularian real essences. I do this by laying out his antirealist argument against corpuscular real essences within the Essay and then defend it. I then identify a version of real essences to which he is ontologically committed. Recognition of the antirealist argument in the Essay should significantly alter our interpretation of the Essay.

Some critical reactions hardly give clues to the arguer as to how to respond to them convincingly. Other critical reactions convey some or even all of the considerations that make the critic critical of the arguer’s position and direct the arguer to defuse or to at least contend with them. First, an explication of the notion of a critical reaction will be provided, zooming in on the degree of “directiveness” that a critical reaction displays. Second, it will be examined whether (...) there are normative requirements that enhance the directiveness of criticism. Does the opponent have in circumstances a dialectical obligation to provide clarifications, explanations, or even arguments? In this paper, it is hypothesized that the competitiveness inherent in critical discussion must be mitigated by making the opponent responsible for providing her counterconsiderations, if available, thus assisting the proponent in developing an argumentative strategy that defuses them. (shrink)

The general view is that metaphysical explanation is asymmetric. For instance, if resemblance facts can be explained by facts about their relata, then, by the asymmetry of explanation, these latter facts cannot in turn be explained by the former. The question however is: is there any reason to hold on to the asymmetry? If so, what does it consist in? In the paper we approach these questions by comparing them to analogous questions that have been investigated for scientific explanations. Three (...) main asymmetry criteria have been proposed for the latter: (i) causation, (ii) unification, and (iii) explanatory dependence. We argue that the last criterion, but not the former two, can be of help to metaphysical explanation: metaphysical explanations are asymmetric if the explanatory dependence criterion (in modified format) holds of them. (shrink)

The purpose of this paper is to show the pervasive, though often implicit, role of arguments in negotiation dialogue. This holds even for negotiations that start from a difference of interest such as mere bargaining through offers and counteroffers. But it certainly holds for negotiations that try to settle a difference of opinion on policy issues. It will be demonstrated how a series of offers and counteroffers in a negotiation dialogue contains a reconstructible series of implicit persuasion dialogues. The paper (...) is a sequel to van Laar and Krabbe, in which we showed that for some differences of opinion it may be reasonable to shift from persuasion dialogue, aimed at a resolution of the difference on the merits, to negotiation dialogue, aimed at compromise, whereas in the present paper we show that such a shift need not amount to the abandonment of argumentation. Our main aim in this paper as well as in the previous one is to contribute to the theory of argumentation within the context of negotiation and compromise formation. (shrink)

Boyle argues that because matter naturally possesses size, shape and mobility, it can be organized into structures that have qualities that exceed what the particles themselves have. These structures can become an essence or ‘corpuscular form’ that accounts both for the properties of the body and its membership in a natural kind. Similarly, increasingly more complex structures can result in the production of organisms that are also members of natural kinds. In this way, Robert Boyle is arguing for a version (...) of natural kind realism that is based on the structure of the underlying matter and discovered empirically via the resulting properties. (shrink)

Martin Heidegger was convinced that we can learn something about the way we inhabit the world by turning attention to our fundamental moods. It was one important theme of his fundamental ontology in the 1920s. There is, according to Heidegger, an intricate connection between awakening our moods and developing a reflexive stance. He provides us with a rich phenomenological description of different forms of boredom. In this article I approach Heidegger’s conception of boredom from an educational point of view. I (...) am suggesting a reading where the experience of boredom has transformative potentialities that also can illuminate our cultural situation as a whole. By turning away from boredom there is always a possibility of turning away from ourselves. (shrink)

We shall investigate the similarities and dissimilarities between old and new dialectic. For the ‘old dialectic’, we base our survey mainly on Aristotle’s Topics and Sophistical Refutations, whereas for the ‘new dialectic’, we turn to contemporary views on dialogical interaction, such as can, for the greater part, be found in Walton’s The New Dialectic. Three issues are taken up: types of dialogue, fallacies, and strategies. Though one should not belittle the differences in scope and outlook that obtain between the old (...) and the new dialectic, the paper will show that in many respects the old dialectic foreshadows the new dialectic. (shrink)

What drives a politician? The standard answer in political philosophy is Hobbes’ power, strongly supported by Max Weber. However, the emergence of the Putin regime in Russia forces us to theorize the role of economic motivation as looting. We find it in all dictatorships, e.g., Burma. The giant financial economy enhances the private prospects of looting, especially in closed societies.