AT the time Strauss published Natural Right and History the state of the question of natural right was a mixture of oblivion and fitful restoration. Natural right had disappeared from the center of discussion in political philosophy for well over a century. No philosopher of the first rank had written a treatise on, or advocated the necessity of, natural right since the time of German idealism or perhaps since Rousseau. Kant more than any other had emptied "natural right" of meaning--by (...) asserting that the moral law must be a law of reason and not a law of nature. Naturrecht in the subtitle of Hegel's great treatise on right did not mean right derived from human nature or from nature as a norm or standard: right was to be sought in the conjunction of the rational and the historical. By the middle of the last century there arose a virtually unanimous agreement between the conservative right and the radical left: the question of right had to be decided on the plane of "history" and not by reference to "nature." The attack on natural right in its explicit form had begun with the critique of modern natural right by the great conservatives of "the historical school." It was completed by Nietzsche and Heidegger who traced the "nihilism" of the age to the continuing power of the belief in trans-historical or "eternal" truths, e.g., to the belief in natural right. (shrink)

A second reason for this neglect is the form in which Descartes was led or compelled to present his soul doctrine in the Meditations. In some complex manner the Meditations is both a medieval, scholastic-Aristotelian writing, as well as the acknowledged founding writing of modern philosophy. It is traditional as "first philosophy" or speculative metaphysics of substance, and as Christian apologetics concerned with the salvation of the infidel. In accordance with both, the soul is a separate, immaterial substance with an (...) immortal destiny unprejudiced by the fate of the body. On the other hand, the Meditations is novel or modern as quest for indubitable "foundations" of the edifice of the sciences. The goal of the edifice of science is however stated only in the non-apologetic or more secular writings: the "mastery and ownership of nature," or "the enjoyment of the fruits of the earth in this life without pain," or such a wisdom as depends on knowing that "the mind depends acutely on the temperament, and the disposition of the organs of the body...". It is tempting to distinguish two Cartesian soul doctrines, the separate and immortal soul of the apologetic Meditations, and a secular soul articulated mainly outside the Meditations and especially in the Passions of the Soul, where Descartes speaks "as a physicist," addresses "the whole nature of man", never mentions any doctrine of substance, and remains utterly unperplexed about the interaction of mind and body. While such a gross distinction proves to be not without a certain homely truth, it leads us away from the Meditations, the classic document of the discovery of the modern soul doctrine. (shrink)

Richard Kennington , a professor for many years at Pennsylvania State University and the Catholic University of America, was renowned for his insight in reading and teaching early modern philosophy. Although he published articles and spoke widely, never before have his writings been collected in a book. On Modern Origins deftly shows how modern thinkers assessed the errors of the classical tradition and established in its place a philosophy that fuses a new meaning of nature and of theory with humanitarian (...) goals. This volume is an essential source for scholars seeking to understand the contemporary significance of the dawning of the modern era. (shrink)

1. [on Republic 508b] The good, as presented here, is discontinuous with the account at 505a–d, where it is the telos of all the soul pursues and does, and perhaps by implication at 505d, seeks to possess and enjoy. The good, as telos at 505a–d, is more general than that which eros seeks to be one’s own sempiternally at Symposium 206a, where the context is human, and the good is, in some sense, possessable. Thus the good as telos at 505a–d, (...) while essentially related to soul, is not limited to the soul as eros: the implication appears to be that there are other relations of the soul to the good than through eros. (shrink)

Pérez-Ramos' study of Baconian science in the New Organon departs sharply from recent interpretation. The single thesis that pervades this book is that the "over-arching ideal guiding Bacon's science" is "maker's knowledge." For Bacon "to know, in brief, means to make". This assertion is itself not made by Bacon, nor does it follow from his statement that "human knowledge and human power meet in one," for power has other forms than making alone. A philosopher who publishes his praise of Machiavelli's (...) realism, and who extends the range of application of his scientia to political knowledge does not restrict the scope of power to "making." Within limits that effectively make Bacon a "philosopher of technology" in a later sense, Pérez-Ramos has given us an original and valuable inquiry. He seeks to give full weight to the Baconian aim to "stake all on the victory of art over nature." This intention has the promise of bringing into a unity the end and the means of Baconian philosophy, the mastery of nature goal and the scientia which is its instrument, a unity not hitherto achieved by Baconian interpreters. (shrink)

This volume is the best available introduction to the achievement of Jacob Klein, which is still insufficiently recognized. Klein published his monumental study, which in English translation is called Greek Mathematical Thought and the Origin of Algebra, in two parts in 1934 and 1936. The book lacked an introduction; it needed a concluding part; and its title was somewhat misleading. In its 1968 translation Klein added a note of explanation. "This study was originally written and published in Germany during rather (...) turbulent times. Were I writing it today, the vocabulary would be less 'scholarly,' and the change from the ancient to the modern way of thinking would be viewed in a larger perspective." The present collection of twenty-two items, all but four prepared for publication by Klein, contains almost all of his writings apart from his three books, arranged chronologically, and spanning five decades. The earliest, "The World of Physics and the 'Natural' World," was originally given as a lecture at Marburg in 1932, approximately contemporary to the writing of the first study. To that study it is a useful introduction; it can also plausibly serve as a compressed draft of a possible third section of that book, as the editors suggest. (shrink)