A definitive study of the great "philosopher of industrial science." Dr. Farrington pinpoints Bacon as the first man to grasp the revolutionary possibilities of man's increasing control over natural forces. The author sees Bacon's plan for the total reform of society by the application of science to production as the central theme of his life.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Francis Bacon: The Theological Foundations of Valerius TerminusBenjamin MilnerFrancis Bacon’s Great Instauration for learning and the sciences, formally launched with the publication of Novum Organum (1620), may fairly be said to have commenced fifteen years earlier with the publication of The Proficience and Advancement of Learning, Divine and Human (1605), which, revised and translated into Latin as De Dignitate et Augmentis Scientiarum (1623), became an integral part (...) of the Instauration. A few years earlier, however, Bacon made an attempt to formulate his philosophy of nature, or science, in a work which he evidently planned to publish but never did—Valerius Terminus: Of the Interpretation of Nature with the Annotations of Hermes Stella (1603?). 1 Fragmentary as it is, this work contains the ingredients of Bacon’s natural philosophy, although they are not in all respects identical with those of the later works which superseded it. The most distinctive feature of Valerius, however, is its disclosure of Bacon’s original interest in setting his program for the advancement of science on a theological footing. 2 What the nature of that foundation is, why Bacon thought it necessary, and why it was abandoned are questions that, as I shall try to show, are principally answered by an analysis of two earlier works, the Meditationes Sacrae (1597), the unpublished Confession of Faith (1602?), and Valerius Terminus itself.Bacon’s first published work actually comprises three different texts: one on rhetoric, Colors of Good and Evil; a collection of Essays; and Meditationes Sacrae. Of these, Meditationes fared most poorly in subsequent years. It was never translated into English by Bacon himself and was soon severed from the [End Page 245] Essays (VII, 229). Rarely commented upon, it has apparently been dismissed as having any significance for our understanding of Bacon’s thought, but a second look will show that this is not the case.There are twelve meditations, each of which has a biblical text, and the homilies that follow reflect biblical teaching. They have quite a range: “the works of God and the works of man,” “the miracles of our savior,” “the exaltation of charity,” “of earthly hope,” “of hypocrites,” “of heresies,” “the church and the scriptures”; but it is clear that two themes—Charity and Heresy—subsume the rest.Charity is not merely a thought or feeling but the actual performance of good works, the demand for which—in the life of the believer—is total: unless your work is God’s work “thou shalt work in pain and distress, and thou shalt look back upon thy work with disgust and reproach” (VII, 243). Three successive meditations deal explicitly with hypocrisy in religion, but Bacon brings each of these under the rubric of good works, deriding those who are ostentatious in the celebration and observation of ritual detail and cultic practice but who ignore the commandment to love their neighbor. The works of Jesus furnish the best model: all his miracles, Bacon keenly observes, “were for the benefit of the human body, his doctrine for the benefit of the human soul” (VII, 244). The religion espoused is one of good works, and Bacon invokes here, as elsewhere, the well-known definition of James (Jas.I.27): “pure religion and undefiled before God and the Father is this, to visit the orphans and widows in their affliction” (VII, 249).“Heresy” is the subject of the second group of meditations, but in these Bacon intends not so much to condemn or to exhort as to lay down theological positions. The text of the first, “Of Atheism,” is taken from Psalms 14.1: “the fool hath said in his heart, There is no God.” But this is not what the fool has thought, Bacon insists, only what he has said. “That is, it is not so much that he feels it inwardly as that he wishes to believe it.” Strive as he may to do so, however, “there remains in him that sparkle of original light (igniculus luminis primi) whereby we acknowledge a divinity, to extinguish which utterly, and pluck the instinct (stimulum) out of his heart, he strives in vain.” It is not “out of his natural sense and judgment” that... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Ideas 64.4 (2003) 619-637 [Access article in PDF] Overcoming Gnosticism:Hans Jonas, Hans Blumenberg, and the Legitimacy of the Natural World Benjamin Lazier University of Chicago In 1984, about a decade before his own murder, the Romanian scholar of religion Ioan Culianu complained of a more widespread, if decidedly less grisly form of assault. 1 The gnostics, he declared in a moment of high (...) jocularity, had "taken hold of the whole world, and we were not aware of it. It is a mixed feeling of anxiety and admiration, since I cannot refrain myself from thinking that these alien body-snatchers have done a remarkable job indeed." 2Though offered in jest, Culianu's designation "alien body-snatchers" quite accurately sums up what has remained since 1934 the leading view of gnosticism as a delimited, identifiable phenomenon. In that year appeared the first monumental volume of Gnosis und spätantiker Geist (Gnosis and the Spirit of Late Antiquity) composed by the young Jewish philosopher Hans Jonas as a dissertation under Martin Heidegger and the theologian Rudolf Bultmann. Over the next sixty years Jonas returned again and again to the movement as he defined it. Above all, gnosticism had as its guiding principle the notion of das Fremde. The term includes in its linguistic domain not only "the alien," by which it is most usually translated, but its cognates as well: the strange, the foreign, the other, the unknown, the uncanny, and the like. This sense of alienation is wildly overdetermined in gnostic theology: man is alienated from himself, from a fully transcendent God, and most powerfully from the material, [End Page 619] sensuous universe in which he lives, created as it was by an evil, malicious demiurge. Such anti-cosmism could license both ascetic retreat from the world as well as an antinomian descent into the worldly abyss, with the intent to defeat it from within. The locution "body-snatcher" now acquires relevance, for gnostic theology made impossible any positive appraisal of the physical body, or of the physical world at all for that matter. As the political philosopher Leo Strauss put it in a letter to Jonas, gnosticism may well have been the most radical rebellion in Western history against the Greek notion of physis.In stylized terms Jonas's philosophical career represents what I would like to call gnosticism's "third overcoming." Such terms signal an allegiance to the work of the German philosopher Hans Blumenberg. But they signal a departure as well. In Legitimität der Neuzeit (Legitimacy of the Modern Age, 1966), Blumenberg undertook what must count among the most ambitious revisions of Western intellectual history ever ventured. Against a rash of attacks on the modern age as an ill-concealed, secularized derivative of an earlier Christian era, he stepped up in its defense. He linked the emergence of the modern age—defined preeminently by man's need for self-assertion, to act in the world—to a "second overcoming" of gnosticism at the end of the Middle Ages. The gnostic spirit he found revived by the nominalism and theological voluntarism of late-medieval scholastic theology, a loose confluence of thought centripetally bound by the black hole of the deus absconditus or hidden god. Whereas gnosticism's first overcoming was Augustine's work and but a partial success, its second, and for Blumenberg "final" overcoming was the work of an ethos of human self-assertion best instantiated by the scientific program of Francis Bacon.To argue for its third overcoming in the late 1920s and '30s is therefore to take leave of Blumenberg's account, if also to extend it. The condition for the possibility of this argument, of course, is that gnosticism had in fact returned. Gnosticism, or at the very least a host of phenomena going by the name and generally understood as such, did indeed return, and with a vengeance—on the occult scene, in philosophy, in theology of all persuasions, even in natural-scientific discourse. This period also witnessed the return of the... (shrink)

Art, Mimesis and the Avant-Garde explores the relationship between art and philosophy. Andrew Benjamin argues for a reworking of the task of philosophy in terms of the centrality of ontology. It is in relation to this centrality, understood through the differences between modes of being, that art, mimesis, and the avant-garde come to be presented. A fundamental part of this book is the original interpretations of important contemporary painters and their themes: Lucian Freud's self-portraits, Francis Bacon 's use (...) of mirrors, R. B. Kitaj and Jewish identity, Anselm Kiefer and iconoclasm. Apart from painting, Benjamin considers architecture, literature, and the philosophical writings of Walter Benjamin and Descartes in elaborating the various aspects of ontological difference. Benjamin develops the theory of the avant-garde as a philosophical category rather than a historical marker, thus bringing the worlds of contemporary art criticism and contemporary philosophy closer together. (shrink)

The concept of athleticism seems, at first glance, to be a minor component of Deleuze's analysis in Francis Bacon, appearing by name in the text only six times. In this article, I draw out the close link between athleticism and Deleuze's fundamental concept of intensity, arguing that this ostensibly minor term is in fact central to his account of the ‘clear and durable sensation’ produced by Bacon's painting. In tracing links between athleticism, Deleuze's aesthetic concept of ‘the fall’, (...) and his reliance on and critique of Kant's theory of intensive magnitudes, I show that athleticism in Francis Bacon names the form of intensity proper to painting. (shrink)

In 1949, Benjamin Farrington published his book Francis Bacon, Philosopher of Industrial Science. It was a Marxist take on Bacon and his significance, and, despite a degree of single-mindedness in its characterization, it presented a Francis Bacon who foretold the future stunning successes of a state-run technoscientific enterprise. Nowadays, when those successes have ceased to seem so stunning and the Soviet state that produced them is no more, Farrington’s is a reading that is both less obviously (...) ideologically charged and, as it has been for a good many years, less popular. But he had focused on an important way of understanding Francis Bacon. Now, in Stephen Gaukroger’s new book, a much more sophisticated and complex picture of Bacon the philosopher is unveiled, but one that, at root, resonates strongly with Farrington’s. (shrink)

Capital punishment—the legally authorized killing of a criminal offender by an agent of the state for the commission of a crime—stands in special need of moral justification. This is because execution is a particularly severe punishment. Execution is different in kind from monetary and custodial penalties in an obvious way: execution causes the death of an offender. While fines and incarceration set back some of one’s interests, death eliminates the possibility of setting and pursuing ends. While fines and incarceration narrow (...) one’s routes to happiness, death eliminates its possibility. Not surprisingly, there is much debate about the moral permissibility of capital punishment. This entry maps the terrain of this debate. The first section discusses justifications of the death penalty as they appear in major theories of punishment. The second section surveys moral objections to execution that apply to most justifications. The third addresses procedural criticisms, which do not target the morality of execution so much as the justice of its implementation. (shrink)

We perceive smells as perduring complex entities within a distal array that might be conceived of as smellscapes. However, the philosophical orthodoxy of Odor Theories has been to deny that smells are perceived as having a distal location. Recent challenges have been mounted to Odor Theories’ veracity in handling the timescale of olfactory perception, how it individuates odors as a distal entities, and their claim that olfactory perception is not spatial. The paper does not aim to dispute these criticisms. Rather, (...) what will be shown is that Molecular Structure Theory, a refinement of Odor Theory, can be further developed to handle these challenges. The theory is further refined by focusing on distal perception that requires considering the perceptual object as mereologically complex persisting odor against a background scene conceived of as a smellscape. What will be offered is an expansion of Molecular Structure Theory to account for distal smell perception within natural environments. (shrink)

This article is concerned with a puzzle that arises from three initially plausible assumptions that form an inconsistent triad: (1) Epistemic reasons are normative reasons (normativism); (2) reasons are normative only if conformity with them is good (the reasons/value-link); (3) conformity with epistemic reasons need not be good (the nihilist assumption). I start by defending the reasons/value-link, arguing that normativists need to reject the nihilist assumption. I then argue that the most familiar view that denies the nihilist assumption – epistemic (...) teleology – is untenable. Finally, I consider two alternative ways of accounting for the goodness of conformity with epistemic reasons: it may be good because it accords with the virtue of reasons-responsiveness, and it may be good because it is good to conform with normative reasons as such. I argue that both of these conceptions avoid the problems of epistemic teleology and merit serious consideration as potential solutions to the puzzle. (shrink)

We are immersed within an odorous sea of chemical currents that we parse into individual odors with complex structures. Odors have been posited as determined by the structural relation between the molecules that compose the chemical compounds and their interactions with the receptor site. But, naturally occurring smells are parsed from gaseous odor plumes. To give a comprehensive account of the nature of odors the chemosciences must account for these large distributed entities as well. We offer a focused review of (...) what is known about the perception of odor plumes for olfactory navigation and tracking, which we then connect to what is known about the role odorants play as properties of the plume in determining odor identity with respect to odor quality. We end by motivating our central claim that more research needs to be conducted on the role that odorants play within the odor plume in determining odor identity. (shrink)

Modern medical ethics in the English-speaking world is commonly thought to derive from the medical philosophy of the Scotsman John Gregory (1725-1773) and his younger associates, the English Dissenter Thomas Percival (1740-1804) and the American Benjamin Rush (1745-1813). This book is the first extensive study of this suggestion. Dr Haakonssen shows how the three thinkers combined Francis Bacon's and the Scottish Enlightenment's ideas of the science of morals and the morals of science. She demonstrates how their medical ethics (...) was a successful adaptation of traditional moral ideas to the dramatically changing medical world especially the voluntary hospital. In accounting for the dynamics of this process, she rejects the anachronism that modern medical ethics was a new paradigm. (shrink)

This paper is about an asymmetry in the justification of praising and blaming behaviour which free will theorists should acknowledge even if they do not follow Wolf and Nelkin in holding that praise and blame have different control conditions. That is, even if praise and blame have the same control condition, we must have stronger reasons for believing that it is satisfied to treat someone as blameworthy than we require to treat someone as praiseworthy. Blaming behaviour which involves serious harm (...) can only be justified if the claim that the target of blame acted freely cannot be reasonably doubted. But harmless praise can be justified so long as the claim that the candidate for praise did not act freely can be reasonably doubted. Anyone who thinks a debate about whether someone acted freely is truth-conducive has to acknowledge that reasonable doubt is possible in both these cases. (shrink)

Francis Bacon, lawyer, statesman, and philosopher, remains one of the most effectual thinkers in European intellectual history. We can trace his influence from Kant in the 1700s to Darwin a century later. The Advancement of Learning , first published in 1605, contains an unprecedented and thorough systematization of the whole range of human knowledge. Bacon’s argument that the sciences should move away from divine philosophy and embrace empirical observation would forever change the way philosophers and natural scientists interpret (...) their world. (shrink)

This selection of papers that were presented (or nearly so!) to the Boston Colloquium for the Philosophy of Science during the seventies fairly re presents some of the most disturbing issues of scientific knowledge in these years. To the distant observer, it may seem that the defense of rational standards, objective reference, methodical self-correction, even the distin guishing of the foolish from the sensible and the truth-seeking from the ideological, has nearly collapsed. In fact, the defense may be seen to (...) have shifted; the knowledge business came under scrutiny decades ago and, indeed, from the time of Francis Bacon and even far earlier, the practicality of the discovery of knowledge was either hailed or lamented. So the defense may be founded on the premise that science may yet be liberating. In that case, the analysis of philosophical issues expands to embrace issues of social interest and social function, of instrumentality and arbitrary perspective, of biological constraints (upon knowledge as well as upon the species-wide behavior of human beings in other relationships too), of distortions due to explanatory metaphors and imposed categories, and of radical comparisons among the perspectives of different civilizations. Some of our contributors are frankly programmatic, showing how problems must be formulated afresh, how evasions must be identified and omissions rectified, but they do not reach their own completion. (shrink)

Nietzsche distinguished between two forces in art: Apollonian, which represents order and reason, and Dionysian, which represents chaos and energy. Economists, Ward argues, have operated for too long under the assumption that their work reflects the scientific, Apollonian principals that inform physics when they simply do not apply to economics: 'constants' in economics stand in for variables, and the core scientific principles of prediction and replication are all but ignored by economists. Ward encourages economists to reintegrate the standard rigor of (...) the scientific method into their work while embracing the fact of the shape-shifting changeability of human beings. Economists can still aspire to scientific standards, as is demonstrated by the success of biology, in which there is considerable Dionysian variability. Economists must avoid the temptation to wish away dynamic complexity and diversity and must recognize, among other things, that the desire to take risks is fundamentally human. The second half of the book takes some first steps toward creating this new Dionysian Economics. (shrink)

Akrasia bezeichnet bei Aristoteles die tadelnswerte charakterliche Disposition, trotz einer richtigen Auffassung des Guten aufgrund körperlicher Begierden das Schlechte zu tun. Den Typus des Unbeherrschten greift Aristoteles in seinen Schriften wiederholt auf. Kleinere Abhandlungen finden sich in Magna moralia II 4–6 und Problemata XXVIII, wobei die ausführlichste Erörterung in der Nikomachischen Ethik VII 1–11 stets im Zentrum der Rezeption stand.

Hardly anyone disputes that discrimination can be a grave moral wrong. Yet this consensus masks fundamental disagreements about what makes something discrimination, as well as precisely why acts of discrimination are wrong. Benjamin Eidelson develops systematic answers to those two questions. He claims that discrimination is a form of differential treatment distinguished by its special connection to the differential ascription of some property to different people, and goes on to argue that what makes some cases of discrimination intrinsically wrongful (...) is that they manifest an attitude of disrespect for the personhood of those who are disfavored. He endeavors to specify what this attitude consists in, and to demonstrate how attending to its character can help us to better understand the moral dimensions of different forms of wrongful discrimination. The book concludes with an extended discussion of racial profiling in law enforcement. (shrink)

This book presents a contextual study of the life and work of the Cambridge Platonist Ralph Cudworth (1617-1688). Focusing on the theological basis of Cudworth's ethical philosophy, this book unlocks the hitherto ignored political aspect to Cudworth's ethical philosophy. Through a detailed examination of Cudworth's published works - particularly his voluminous "True intellectual system of the Universe" -, his posthumously published writings, and his 'freewill' manuscripts Benjamin Carter argues that the ethical and political arguments in Cudworth's philosophy develop out (...) of Cudworth's Trinitarian theology. Carter traces the link between Cudworth's trinitarianism and his ethical and political ideas by placing Cudworth's work in the turbulent religious and intellectual context of seventeenth-century England, and the University of Cambridge in particular. (shrink)

Diese Hardcover-Ausgabe ist Teil der TREDITION CLASSICS. Der Verlag tredition aus Hamburg veroffentlicht in der Buchreihe TREDITION CLASSICS Werke aus mehr als zwei Jahrtausenden. Diese waren zu einem Grossteil vergriffen oder nur noch antiquarisch erhaltlich. Mit TREDITION CLASSICS verfolgt tredition das Ziel, tausende Klassiker der Weltliteratur verschiedener Sprachen wieder als gedruckte Bucher zu verlegen - und das weltweit! Die Buchreihe dient zur Bewahrung der Literatur und Forderung der Kultur. Sie tragt so dazu bei, dass viele tausend Werke nicht in Vergessenheit (...) geraten. (shrink)

« Proust, ce vieil enfant… »Walter BenjaminEn 1954, à l’occasion de la publication du premier volume de la nouvelle édition allemande de La Recherche du temps perdu, Adorno est invité à s’exprimer à la radio de Hesse. Il ouvre son intervention par la remarque suivante : « Il me faut au préalable observer que je ne peux pas parler du livre que je présente comme le ferait un critique. Depuis trente ans,...

This is the first critical edition since the nineteenth century of Bacon's principal philosophical work in English, The Twoo Bookes of Francis Bacon. Of the proficience and advancement of Learning, divine and humane - traditionally known as The Advancement of Learning.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:John Gregory and the Invention of Professional Medical Ethics and the Profession of Medicine by Laurence B. McCullough, John Gregory’s Writings on Medical Ethics and Philosophy of Medicine ed. by Laurence B. McCullough, Medicine and Morals in the Enlightenment: John Gregory, Thomas Percival and Benjamin Rush by Lisbeth HaakonssenHeiner F. KlemmeLaurence B. McCullough. John Gregory and the Invention of Professional Medical Ethics and the Profession of Medicine. (...) Dordrecht, Boston, London: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1998. Pp. xv + 347. Cloth, $140.00.Laurence B. McCullough, editor. John Gregory’s Writings on Medical Ethics and Philosophy of Medicine. Dordrecht, Boston, London: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1998. Pp. xi + 254. Cloth, $105.00.Lisbeth Haakonssen. Medicine and Morals in the Enlightenment: John Gregory, Thomas Percival and Benjamin Rush. Amsterdam, Atlanta: Rodopi, 1997. Pp. x + 247. Paper, $20.50.The Scottish Enlightenment is widely appreciated for its contributions to philosophy, economics, sociology, law, chemistry, and medicine. The ideas and theories advanced by Hume, Smith, Millar, and Ferguson are still widely debated. John Gregory (1724–1773), important in his own time, is not as well known as some of his friends and colleagues. He was professor of medicine at the University of Edinburgh from 1766 to 1773, where he taught introductory lectures on the theory and practice of medicine. A set of extensive student notes from these lectures, entitled Observations on the Duties and Offices of a Physician, appeared anonymously in 1770. Two years later, Gregory himself published a revised version of his lectures under the title Lectures on the Duties and Qualifications of a Physician. These two books are said to mark the beginnings of professional medical ethics in the English-speaking world. They are also sometimes characterized as having anticipated bioethics.McCullough’s comprehensive John Gregory and the Invention of Professional Medical Ethics and the Profession of Medicine is the first modern intellectual biography of Gregory. Based on extensive research into eighteenth-century institutional context and the study of hitherto unknown manuscripts, he gives a full account of Gregory’s education at Edinburgh and Leiden, and his practice and teaching of medicine at Aberdeen, London, and Edinburgh. He stresses the importance of Gregory’s membership in the Aberdeen Philosophical Society and his close contact with Mrs. Montagu and her Circle for the understanding of his medical ethics. McCullough also shows that Bacon’s experimental method had a decisive influence on Gregory. Gregory took over Bacon’s three offices or ends of medicine: preservation of health, prolonging of life, and curing of diseases. In 1772, perhaps anticipating his premature death from hereditary gout, he added a fourth office, namely easing the pain of dying. Gregory referred mainly to Bacon (and Reid) in his Lectures to make clear how we can enlarge our medical knowledge by the method of experience and observation, pointing out that the progress of medicine had been seriously retarded by the way in which it was taught since Hippocrates. He also thought it was handicapped by the view that only professionals [End Page 535] should practice it, and claimed that even quacks have their advantages because their interest and reputation seldom suffer from the failure of the experiments necessary for the improvement of the medical profession.Gregory also argued that we should regard medicine not as a trade but as an art. In this context the principle of sympathy (or humanity) became important for him. Sympathy was the basis of the central duties in his Lectures. In a time of extreme instability of manners, when medicine was regarded more as a trade than an art, there was no physician-patient relationship based on the epistemological and moral authority of the physician. According to McCullough, it was Gregory who created “the physician-patient relationship as fiduciary. The virtues of the physician as fiduciary—openness to conviction, tenderness, and steadiness—provided for him the moral causes that would gather physicians together into a group worthy of the name, ‘profession,’ in its intellectual and moral senses” (265). The physician should no longer view his patients as moral strangers.McCullough claims that Gregory’s medical ethics is not just of historical interest, providing bioethics with its own history. It is also of... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:John Gregory and the Invention of Professional Medical Ethics and the Profession of Medicine by Laurence B. McCullough, John Gregory’s Writings on Medical Ethics and Philosophy of Medicine ed. by Laurence B. McCullough, Medicine and Morals in the Enlightenment: John Gregory, Thomas Percival and Benjamin Rush by Lisbeth HaakonssenHeiner F. KlemmeLaurence B. McCullough. John Gregory and the Invention of Professional Medical Ethics and the Profession of Medicine. (...) Dordrecht, Boston, London: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1998. Pp. xv + 347. Cloth, $140.00.Laurence B. McCullough, editor. John Gregory’s Writings on Medical Ethics and Philosophy of Medicine. Dordrecht, Boston, London: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1998. Pp. xi + 254. Cloth, $105.00.Lisbeth Haakonssen. Medicine and Morals in the Enlightenment: John Gregory, Thomas Percival and Benjamin Rush. Amsterdam, Atlanta: Rodopi, 1997. Pp. x + 247. Paper, $20.50.The Scottish Enlightenment is widely appreciated for its contributions to philosophy, economics, sociology, law, chemistry, and medicine. The ideas and theories advanced by Hume, Smith, Millar, and Ferguson are still widely debated. John Gregory (1724–1773), important in his own time, is not as well known as some of his friends and colleagues. He was professor of medicine at the University of Edinburgh from 1766 to 1773, where he taught introductory lectures on the theory and practice of medicine. A set of extensive student notes from these lectures, entitled Observations on the Duties and Offices of a Physician, appeared anonymously in 1770. Two years later, Gregory himself published a revised version of his lectures under the title Lectures on the Duties and Qualifications of a Physician. These two books are said to mark the beginnings of professional medical ethics in the English-speaking world. They are also sometimes characterized as having anticipated bioethics.McCullough’s comprehensive John Gregory and the Invention of Professional Medical Ethics and the Profession of Medicine is the first modern intellectual biography of Gregory. Based on extensive research into eighteenth-century institutional context and the study of hitherto unknown manuscripts, he gives a full account of Gregory’s education at Edinburgh and Leiden, and his practice and teaching of medicine at Aberdeen, London, and Edinburgh. He stresses the importance of Gregory’s membership in the Aberdeen Philosophical Society and his close contact with Mrs. Montagu and her Circle for the understanding of his medical ethics. McCullough also shows that Bacon’s experimental method had a decisive influence on Gregory. Gregory took over Bacon’s three offices or ends of medicine: preservation of health, prolonging of life, and curing of diseases. In 1772, perhaps anticipating his premature death from hereditary gout, he added a fourth office, namely easing the pain of dying. Gregory referred mainly to Bacon (and Reid) in his Lectures to make clear how we can enlarge our medical knowledge by the method of experience and observation, pointing out that the progress of medicine had been seriously retarded by the way in which it was taught since Hippocrates. He also thought it was handicapped by the view that only professionals [End Page 535] should practice it, and claimed that even quacks have their advantages because their interest and reputation seldom suffer from the failure of the experiments necessary for the improvement of the medical profession.Gregory also argued that we should regard medicine not as a trade but as an art. In this context the principle of sympathy (or humanity) became important for him. Sympathy was the basis of the central duties in his Lectures. In a time of extreme instability of manners, when medicine was regarded more as a trade than an art, there was no physician-patient relationship based on the epistemological and moral authority of the physician. According to McCullough, it was Gregory who created “the physician-patient relationship as fiduciary. The virtues of the physician as fiduciary—openness to conviction, tenderness, and steadiness—provided for him the moral causes that would gather physicians together into a group worthy of the name, ‘profession,’ in its intellectual and moral senses” (265). The physician should no longer view his patients as moral strangers.McCullough claims that Gregory’s medical ethics is not just of historical interest, providing bioethics with its own history. It is also of... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:John Gregory and the Invention of Professional Medical Ethics and the Profession of Medicine by Laurence B. McCullough, John Gregory’s Writings on Medical Ethics and Philosophy of Medicine ed. by Laurence B. McCullough, Medicine and Morals in the Enlightenment: John Gregory, Thomas Percival and Benjamin Rush by Lisbeth HaakonssenHeiner F. KlemmeLaurence B. McCullough. John Gregory and the Invention of Professional Medical Ethics and the Profession of Medicine. (...) Dordrecht, Boston, London: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1998. Pp. xv + 347. Cloth, $140.00.Laurence B. McCullough, editor. John Gregory’s Writings on Medical Ethics and Philosophy of Medicine. Dordrecht, Boston, London: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1998. Pp. xi + 254. Cloth, $105.00.Lisbeth Haakonssen. Medicine and Morals in the Enlightenment: John Gregory, Thomas Percival and Benjamin Rush. Amsterdam, Atlanta: Rodopi, 1997. Pp. x + 247. Paper, $20.50.The Scottish Enlightenment is widely appreciated for its contributions to philosophy, economics, sociology, law, chemistry, and medicine. The ideas and theories advanced by Hume, Smith, Millar, and Ferguson are still widely debated. John Gregory (1724–1773), important in his own time, is not as well known as some of his friends and colleagues. He was professor of medicine at the University of Edinburgh from 1766 to 1773, where he taught introductory lectures on the theory and practice of medicine. A set of extensive student notes from these lectures, entitled Observations on the Duties and Offices of a Physician, appeared anonymously in 1770. Two years later, Gregory himself published a revised version of his lectures under the title Lectures on the Duties and Qualifications of a Physician. These two books are said to mark the beginnings of professional medical ethics in the English-speaking world. They are also sometimes characterized as having anticipated bioethics.McCullough’s comprehensive John Gregory and the Invention of Professional Medical Ethics and the Profession of Medicine is the first modern intellectual biography of Gregory. Based on extensive research into eighteenth-century institutional context and the study of hitherto unknown manuscripts, he gives a full account of Gregory’s education at Edinburgh and Leiden, and his practice and teaching of medicine at Aberdeen, London, and Edinburgh. He stresses the importance of Gregory’s membership in the Aberdeen Philosophical Society and his close contact with Mrs. Montagu and her Circle for the understanding of his medical ethics. McCullough also shows that Bacon’s experimental method had a decisive influence on Gregory. Gregory took over Bacon’s three offices or ends of medicine: preservation of health, prolonging of life, and curing of diseases. In 1772, perhaps anticipating his premature death from hereditary gout, he added a fourth office, namely easing the pain of dying. Gregory referred mainly to Bacon (and Reid) in his Lectures to make clear how we can enlarge our medical knowledge by the method of experience and observation, pointing out that the progress of medicine had been seriously retarded by the way in which it was taught since Hippocrates. He also thought it was handicapped by the view that only professionals [End Page 535] should practice it, and claimed that even quacks have their advantages because their interest and reputation seldom suffer from the failure of the experiments necessary for the improvement of the medical profession.Gregory also argued that we should regard medicine not as a trade but as an art. In this context the principle of sympathy (or humanity) became important for him. Sympathy was the basis of the central duties in his Lectures. In a time of extreme instability of manners, when medicine was regarded more as a trade than an art, there was no physician-patient relationship based on the epistemological and moral authority of the physician. According to McCullough, it was Gregory who created “the physician-patient relationship as fiduciary. The virtues of the physician as fiduciary—openness to conviction, tenderness, and steadiness—provided for him the moral causes that would gather physicians together into a group worthy of the name, ‘profession,’ in its intellectual and moral senses” (265). The physician should no longer view his patients as moral strangers.McCullough claims that Gregory’s medical ethics is not just of historical interest, providing bioethics with its own history. It is also of... (shrink)

This is the first comprehensive textbook on higher order logic that is written specifically to introduce the subject matter to graduate students in philosophy. The book covers both the formal aspects of higher-order languages -- their model theory and proof theory, the theory of λ-abstraction and its generalizations -- and their philosophical applications, especially to the topics of modality and propositional granularity. The book has a strong focus on non-extensional higher-order logics, making it more appropriate for foundational metaphysics than other (...) introductions to the subject from computer science, mathematics, and linguistics. A Philosophical Introduction to Higher Order Logics assumes only that readers have a basic knowledge of first-order logic. With an emphasis on exercises, it can be used as a textbook though is also ideal for self-study. Author Andrew Bacon organizes the book's 18 chapters around four main parts: I. Typed Language II. Higher Order Languages III. General Higher-Order Languages IV. Higher-Order Model Theory In addition, two appendices cover the Curry-Howard isomorphism and its applications for modeling propositional structure. Each chapter includes exercises that move from easier to more difficult, strategically placed throughout the chapter, and concludes with an annotated suggested reading list providing graduate students with most valuable additional resources. Key Features Is the first comprehensive introduction to higher-order logic as a grounding for addressing problems in metaphysics Introduces the basic formal tools that are needed to theorize in, and model, higher order languages Offers an abundance of: - Simple exercises throughout the book, serving as comprehension checks on basic concepts and definitions - More difficult exercises designed to facilitate long-term learning Contains annotated sections on further reading, pointing the reader to related literature, learning resources, and historical context. (shrink)

An English language translation accompanies the original Greek text of Aristotle's book about the nature of the state, constitutions, revolutions, democracy, and oligarchy.