Seventeenth-century Philosophy Research Articles

The languages of sentiment

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Notes 1. Laurence Sterne, A Sentimental Journey (New York: Oxford UP, 1984), p. 117. 2. Laurence Sterne, The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman (New York: Oxford UP, 1998), p. 522. 3. The importance of ‘order’ in the book is signalled in the very first sentence, produced in medias res: ‘– They order, said I, this matter better in France –’ (SJ, 3). The fact of the interruptive dash without a sense of what it is interrupting, and of the pronoun without a referent, performs a problem of ‘order’ in itself. 4. See my ‘Moving Accidents: The Emergence of Sentimental Probability’ in The Age of Cultural Revolutions: Britain and France, 1750–1820. ed. Colin Jones and Dror Wahrman (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002). 5. Douglas Lane Patey, Probability and Literary Form (New York: Cambridge UP, 1984), pp. 221–3. 6. Daniel Garber, John Henry, Lynn Joy and Alan Gabbey, ‘New Doctrines of Body and its Powers, Place and Space’, The Cambridge History of Seventeenth-Century Philosophy, ed. Daniel Garber and Michael Ayers (New York: Cambridge UP, 2003), p. 581. 7. Henry More, Immortality of the Soul [1659], later quoted in Benjamin Camfield, A Theological Discourse of Angels and their Ministries (London: printed by R. E. for H. Brome, 1678), p. 16. 8. Archibald Cockburn, A Philosophical Essay Concerning the Intermediate State of Blessed Souls (London: printed for Bernard Lintot, 1722), p. 26. 9. Margaret Cavendish, The Description of a New World Called The Blazing World [1666] (Whitefish, MT: Kessinger Publishing, 2004), p. 56–7. 10. Thomas Brown, The Reasons of Mr. Bays's Changing his Religion (London, T. Bennet, 1690), p. 43. 11. Abraham Tucker, The Light of Nature Pursued, vol. 4 (London: printed by T. Jones; sold by T. Payne, 1768), p. 12. 12. Mary Hays, Memoirs of Emma Courtney, vol. 1 (London: printed for G. G. and J. Robinson, 1796), pp. 177–8. 13. The Sentimental Magazine, March (1773), p. 5. 14. Gilles Deleuze, Cinema, Vol. 1: The Movement-Image, trans. Hugh Tomlinson and Barbara Habberjam (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota, 1986); Jean Epstein, Esprit de Cinema (Genève: Jeheber, 1955). 15. Gilles Deleuze, A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia, trans. Brian Massumi (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1987), pp. 167–91.

Peter Mitchell. The Purple Island and Anatomy in Early Seventeenth-Century Literature, Philosophy, and Theology. Madison, NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2007. 718 pp. index. append. illus. bibl. $99.50. ISBN: 978–0–8386–4018–0.

Peter Mitchell. The Purple Island and Anatomy in Early Seventeenth-Century Literature, Philosophy, and Theology. Madison, NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2007. 718 pp. index. append. illus. bibl. $99.50. ISBN: 978–0–8386–4018–0. - Volume 61 Issue 3

In search of the ‘true prospect’: making and knowing the Giant's Causeway as a field site in the seventeenth century

AbstractThe phenomenon of the Giant's Causeway in the north of Ireland has attracted much attention over five centuries. This essay recounts the formative years between 1688 and 1708 of the Giant's Causeway as a field site and ‘philosophical landscape’ in the light of recent research on the historical geographies of scientific knowledge. This research has provided new perspectives on field science, emphasizing the spatial character of the field and its discursive formation in different spaces. A view of the field as a self-contained unit in which science is practised is rendered problematic. Instead, it is seen as part of a network of intersecting locales within which scientists and science circulate. This essay draws upon this work, exploring and mapping the spaces and techniques used by late seventeenth-century natural philosophers in London and Dublin to generate observational and conceptual knowledge of the Giant's Causeway. In doing so, the paper contributes to an understanding of the spaces of natural philosophy in the seventeenth century, of the knowledge networks within which the virtuosi operated and of the earth science field site.

The participation of philosophy in an ethics and politics of joy

This paper finds its inspiration in the work of the seventeenth century philosopher Benedict de Spinoza. My objective is to briefly examine three crucial aspects of Spinoza’s philosophy which are not only extremely useful to our understanding of philosophy for children but also inspirational as they challenge some of our ingrained modes of thinking and create space for new relations with knowledge, others and the self. Firstly, Spinoza’s relational ontology allows us to perceive ourselves as moments in a process of integration. In his philosophy, the understanding of connectedness is crucial to the expansion of our powers or activity. I thus suggest that the collective practice of philosophy can contribute to the enhancement of rational systems of sociability in which the understanding of connectedness is crucial. Secondly, reason and affectivity are not separate in Spinoza’s philosophy. Our power to think and affect is directly associated with our power to be affected or our openness to others. These first two aspects are also directly associated with his ethical and political project. Since, for Spinoza, joy is the passage from a lesser to a greater power to act, and virtue is equated with activity, I argue that the collective practice of philosophy can be understood in this perspective as essentially joyful, in a political and ethical sense: it increases one’s powers through the increase of power also experienced by others.

The Image of the Biblical Job, a History: Volume 3, Job in the Modern World (review)

Reviewed by: The Image of the Biblical Job, a History: Volume 3, Job in the Modern World Martin Shuster Stephen J. Vicchio. The Image of the Biblical Job, a History: Volume 3, Job in the Modern World. Oregon: Wipf & Stock, 2006. 247 pages. This book, the final volume in a three-volume monograph, represents, as Stephen Vicchio tells us in his introduction, the culmination of more than thirty years of work on the Biblical Book of Job. The first two volumes, Job in the Ancient World and Job in the Medieval World, appeared earlier this year. Beginning with Near Eastern parallels and/or precursors to the Book of Job and moving all the way through the late nineteenth century readings of the book, these three volumes represent the most sustained and most extensive treatment of the history and impact of the Book of Job in any language. Due to the difficulty of the source material (the Hebrew text of Job is not only some of the most difficult Hebrew ever written, but is also, with the conceivable exception of Hosea, some of the most corrupt) and the Herculean amount of secondary materials to be mastered, one suspects that this will remain the case for quite some time to come. The book of Job is, among other things, largely a book about the problem of evil—the philosophical and theological problem that Leibniz famously popularized in his book Essais de Théodicée sur la bonté de Dieu, la liberté de l'homme et l'origine du mal. In one sense, then, in addition to being a history of interpretations of Job, Vicchio's book also offers insight into the various responses to the problem that have been proposed by different thinkers. For that reason, Vicchio is careful, in the first volume, to establish a solid and compelling theoretical and philosophical framework. There, he exhaustively reviews the philosophical solutions given to the problem of evil, lumping [End Page 1278] them all into either deontological or teleological responses. By the former he understands those "that look backward in time to discover the cause of innocent suffering" (e.g., 'Original Sin' or 'Free Will'), while by the latter he understands those "that look forward" (e.g. 'Divine Plan') (I: 3). In addition to the variety of philosophical responses, Vicchio also outlines several "images" of Job that have been employed through the ages: the Saintly Job, the Iconoclastic Job, the Wrestler for God, and the Christ Job. Vicchio proceeds through his massive analysis by asking two questions of each Job interpretation: first, what is the philosophical solution presented and second, what is the image of Job employed. These questions lead Vicchio on a systematic historical journey of incredible breadth and scope. The third volume, Job in the Modern World, begins with the early seventeenth century and proceeds to the late nineteenth century. Taking seriously the maxim that "all translation is interpretation," Vicchio begins with an elaborate account of Job's translation into English, as commissioned by King James in 1604. Vicchio is to be commended here for his analysis, which in addition to mentioning the standard figures of such an account like John Wycliffe, William Tyndale, and Henry VIII (for his commissioning of the important Great Bible), he also mentions lesser-known or often-overlooked figures like Bede and Hugh Broughton. Vicchio then proceeds to discuss interpretations of Job in seventeenth-century philosophy. Here he includes discussions of Burton, Quarles, Hobbes, Spinoza, and Pascal. What is most interesting about this chapter is the way in which the stated claims of these philosophers (e.g. to discuss Job in a historically-conscious manner or to focus on Job as a historical figure) often deteriorate into mere proof-texts for their own particular philosophies (whether it be Hobbes's political thought, with God as the Divine King or Pascal's Christian proto-existentialism, with the authors of Job as being aware of Jesus the Christ). Following this discussion, Vicchio dedicates a whole chapter to the relationship between John Milton and Job and another chapter to the views of Job during the Enlightenment. The former is interesting largely for two reasons: first, the compelling connection that Vicchio...

Presidential Address 2005: On Rooted Cosmopolitanism

DOMNA C. STANTON, Distinguished Pro fessor of French at the Graduate Center, City University of New York, is the author of the forthcoming The Monarchy, the Nation, and Its Others. She is complet ing Women Writ, Women Writing: Essays on Gendered Discourse and Differences in Seventeenth-Century France and coediting two volumes, one on the seventeenth century philosopher Gabrielle Suchon, the other on seventeenth-century French fairy tales by women. Stanton is coedit ing with Judith Butler the papers from the joint MLA-CUNY Conference on Hu man Rights and the Humanities {PMLA, Oct. 2006) and chairing the MLA Task Force on Evaluating Scholarship for Ten ure and Promotion (report to be pub lished in the 2006 issue of Profession). GOOD EVENING; KALISPERA; BON SOIR; BUENASTARDES; GUTEN abend; buona sera; dobry vyecher; wan shang hao; masaa al-khair. I am pleased to be with you this evening, which marks the sym bolic end of the Modern Language Association presidency each year. Unlike other presidencies, such as those inaugurated in this capital city, the presidency of the MLA is not the performance of an imperial authority. A democratic and collaborative enterprise, the MLA is a beehive of busy bodies?the officers, the Executive Council, the in dispensable grassroots Delegate Assembly, the forty-eight committees and commissions, the division and discussion group executive com mittees, the honorary fellows and honorary members, the trustees, and last, and most important of all, the ninety-member staff, without whom the hive that is the MLA could not survive, much less thrive. To the colleagues on the Executive Council with whom I have served these past three years, my deep-felt thanks for the work we did together and the work you will go on doing next year, on a number of new initiatives, including a broad review of the annual convention, a permanent structure for long-range planning for the future of the association, and the task force on criteria for tenure and promotion, which I was pleased to chair and which will publish its report before the end of 2006. Above all, I want to thank the unparalleled staff of the MLA, all of whom I regard as colleagues in promoting the work of the association, some of whom I have known since the late 1970s and con sider friends for life. I want to acknowledge the members of the staff present this evening: my newest friend and colleague, Rosemary Feal, whom I thank for being the most supportive and enthusiastic compa gnon de route that any MLA president could ask for; Judy Goulding,

Jacob Boehme and Paul Tillich: a reassessment of the mystical philosopher and systematic theologian

Jacob Boehme, the seventeenth-century mystical philosopher, had a significant influence upon Paul Tillich. In this article I offer a reassessment of the relationship between these two thinkers by arguing for an orthodox interpretation of Boehme's doctrine of God that links him more closely with Tillich than recent commentators have suggested. Specifically, I show how Boehme and Tillich stand united against the heterodox Hegel in their presentation of a dynamic process of divinity's self-differentiation and reconciliation that completes itself apart from history rather than within history. This move, I conclude, keeps Boehme and Tillich squarely within the realm of Christian orthodoxy.

BACON’S NEW ATLANTIS: A UTOPIA FOR THE SCIENTIST, NOT FOR HUMANITY

Among the pioneers of seventeenth century philosophy and the propaganda of modern science was the well-known figure Francis Bacon. As commonly argued, his work prepared the ground for justifying the modern scientific attitude towards nature distinguished by its activism and search for mastery. This article examines Bacon’s utopian text New Atlantis from the angle of political theory in an effort to delineate the suggestions that pertain to human nature, the conditions of social order and happiness, and the relations between scientists and ordinary people. It is argued that Bacon’s imaginary society relies on a remarkable tension between revolutionary scientific activity and the traditional and conservative community.

Evidence and faith: philosophy and religion since the seventeenth century

1. The sovereignty of the good in seventeenth-century philosophy of religion 2. Cartesian philosophy of religion 3. The ascendancy of laws of evidence in early modern philosophy of religion 4. Humean philosophy of religion 5. Kantian philosophy of religion 6. Religion and the philosophical gods and giants 7. Continental and feminist philosophy of religion 8. Five major moves 9. Religions, evidence and legitimacy.

Theology in America: Christian Thought from the Age of the Puritans to the Civil War (review)

Theology in America: Christian Thought from Age of Puritans to Civil War. By E. Brooks Holifield. (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2003. Pp. ix, 617. Cloth, $37.50.)This is a book of breathtaking ambition. E. Brooks Holifield analyzes sermons, polemical treatises, academic journal essays, and tomes of systematic theology-in all their sometimes hair-splitting detail-produced by 282 writers across almost two and a half centuries, from first-generation Puritan divines through Civil War era. These writers were typically ordained clergymen and local pastors, although by nineteenth century there had emerged a new class of professional theologians, epitomized by Princeton Seminary's Charles Hodge, who spent his entire career as an educator and editor. Holifield also gives attention to the theological populists (16) who scorned academic learning and insisted on their own authority to interpret Bible. In Holifield's account, early republic emerges as a great era in history of American theology; majority of his pages deal with time period covered by this journal.It is impossible to do justice to a work of such encyclopedic scope within confines of a brief review. Nevertheless, Holifield identified a number of key themes that impose order on his vast subject. book's central claim is that American always emphasized the reasonableness of (4), which meant, in early republic, that they employed a Baconian model of theological argument. No other single philosophical movement, Holifield observes, has ever exerted as much influence on theology in America as Scottish Realism exerted on antebellum theologians (175). As such, his findings comport with those of Mark A. Noll, who argued similarly for importance of commonsense theology in America's God: From Jonathan Edwards to Abraham Lincoln (2002).Holifield divides his narrative into three parts. Part 1, Origins, begins in New England, where earliest tradition of theological writing flourished from 1630s. Puritans laid foundations of theology in America during seventeenth century along Reformed lines. They began tradition of trying to find proper balance between and reason, which would be a dominant theme for next two centuries. Of course, Puritans also quickly fell out among themselves as they sought to establish orthodoxy in controversies over conversion, baptism, and other matters. Calvinist theology reached its apogee with Jonathan Edwards, one of only two individuals to merit a chapter-length treatment, other being Horace Bushnell. Edwards carried New England theology into mainstream of seventeenth-century philosophy and eighteenth-century aesthetic and ethical theory (105) while he defended such Calvinist tenets as original sin, divine sovereignty, free will, and election. After Edwards, however, Holifield describes New England tradition as irreparably fractured into Arminian, New Divinity, and Old Calvinist wings.Part 2, The Baconian Style, begins with deists of revolutionary era. Although few in number, deists' spirited attacks on those elements of Christianity that defied reason, such as biblical miracles or Trinity, scared into action. In response, enlisted Scottish philosophy to show rationality of faith while preserving necessity for revelation (178). Whatever their differing views of Christology, soteriology, or other controversial doctrines, everyone from Universalists to Old School Presbyterians claimed that their theology was built on a foundation of common sense. Holifield makes interesting observation that even groups seemingly on far fringes of denominational landscape, such as Shakers and Mormons, also based their appeal on the evidential style (340). …

“A FRAGMENT OF A VITAGRAPH”: Hiding and Revealing in Beckett, Geulincx, and Descartes

The exact nature of the relationship between a work of literature and the life of the writer who creates that work is, evidently, impossible to perfectly describe. It does not follow, however, that the problem is therefore without interest; on the contrary, attempting to trace some elements of its outline remains an endeavour of some importance. This essay considers how notions of occlusion, or hiding and revealing at once, are important to our understanding of Beckett's use of the seventeenth century philosophers Descartes and Geulincx.

Prymate (review)

Reviewed by: Prymate Trish Thomas Henley Prymate. By Mark Medoff. Directed by Edwin Sherin. Richard G. Fallon Theatre, Florida State University, Tallahassee. 2902 2004. The seventeenth-century philosopher and scientist René Descartes put forth the Aristotelian premise that humans are distinct and superior from the animal world by virtue of man's ability to reason. Mark Medoff's one-act play, Prymate, effectively collapses the Cartesian distinctions between animal and man, body and mind, emotion and reason. The play centers on a custody battle over Graham (André De Shields), an aging simian with emphysema. Scientist Esther Leeper (Phyllis Frelich) has spirited Graham into the Gila Wilderness of New Mexico in order to protect him from Avrum Belasco (Robert Walden), a fellow scientist who heads the lab at which Esther works and who plans on infecting Graham with the HIV virus to further his research. Avrum has tracked Esther and Graham to their primitive camp, bringing with him a sign language interpreter, Allison Alexkovsky-Wilcox (Heather Tom), to translate between him and Esther, who is deaf and mute, in order to convince her to bring Graham back. On the surface, Medoff's play appears to be about animal rights versus scientific research. Prymate, however, does more than merely rehearse familiar academic debates. As the play progresses it becomes evident that the characters' reasoned philosophical and political stances are actually predicated upon their emotionally based desires: lust, revenge, fear, and the quest for glory motivate both their seemingly rational arguments and the abhorrently illogical actions that they each take in the last third of the play—actions that the audience cannot help but compare to the ape's own sexually-motivated behavior. These comparisons become even more apparent as the sexual tension rises, and Avrum and Esther slowly reveal the personal history that provokes their power struggle over the ape and each other. André De Shields's portrayal of the ape, Graham, is the highlight of the production. Dressed in a khaki t-shirt, black shorts, black gloves, and boxing boots, De Shields lopes across the stage on his knuckles and the balls of his feet, the muscles in his face contorting into grimaces of rage, pain, and pleasure. De Shields's minimalist costume, designed by Colleen Musha, serves to blur the line further between human and ape. The production's major weakness lies in both its dramatic unevenness and its ambition. Toward the middle of the play, both Avrum and Esther establish why each of them should decide Graham's fate. Here the dialogue is sometimes clunky and frequently plunges into the didactic, causing the tension that has been building from the beginning of the play to abruptly fall away while Avrum and Esther rehearse tired arguments about scientific ethics and animal rights. Ostensibly, they are repeating these views in an attempt to convert Allison to their side of the debate, as they each know the other's opinion and the unlikelihood of it changing. This moment feels artificial and contrived. Rather than forwarding the action and the emotional heart of the play, it seems to be written in order to remind the audience of the different sides of an academic argument. Moments later, the play shifts into high dramatic gear as both Allison and Avrum divulge terrible secrets, the revelation of which precipitates acts of vengeance perpetrated by both Esther and Allison. Thus, the first half of the play falls flat in comparison with the dramatic events that follow. The number of topics Prymatetouches upon further dilutes the dramatic tension and muddies the effectiveness of the climactic ending. In addition to arguments about science and animal experimentation, the play raises issues pertaining to gender, disability, race, and politics that are occasionally handled less convincingly. Medoff's choice of setting, The Gila Wilderness of New Mexico, former home to the Anasazi, underscores humankind's own not-so-distant lineage from the animal world and undermines the romanticized myths we tell ourselves about where we came from and how far we have come from our ancestors. Both Graham and the humans no longer belong here; yet they are visual reminders of both ends of our lineage. The Anasazi fill in...

Melancholy and the Therapeutic Language of Moral Philosophy in Seventeenth-Century Thought

The concept of melancholy comprehended wide range of characteristics and conditions in seventeenth-century European culture, from the brooding introspection of the genius and the scholar to condition of delirious and delusory madness.1 Its central and most immediately identifiable characteristic, however, was the excessive and unreasonable nature of its symptomologically defining emotions of fear and sorrow. As Robert Burton noted out in The Anatomy of 'Melancholy (1621), the melancholic condition was commonly taken to be a kind of dotage without fever, having for his ordinary companions fear and sadness, without any apparent occasion.2 The presence of pervasive and unreasonable sense of fear and sorrow invariably solicited the melancholic label. Indeed, melancholic emotions were the primary substance of melancholic dotage; the ravings of the melancholically mad and their frequent obsession with single idea were often driven by an overwhelming feeling of fear and sorrow.3The concept of melancholy as mental disorder involving these specific emotions had coalesced under the gaze of medical observation in ancient Greece, and the melancholic condition was thought by many medical theorists of classical antiquity to be caused by physiological surfeit of black bile, the Greek word for which was melancholia.4 Western medicine, profoundly influenced by the Greek medical tradition, continued to diagnose and treat melancholic disturbance as physical distemper well into the nineteenth century. Yet the kind of mental anguish which early medical observers labeled melancholic bore striking resemblance to forms of emotional disorder whose point of origin was thought to be the mind itself. Various traditions of classical moral philosophy sought to treat disorders of the mind that unchecked emotion could create primarily by directing, ordering, and correcting the thought of the sufferer. Where the melancholic condition displayed qualities of the emotions as these were represented and analyzed by moral philosophers it was viewed as susceptible to philosophical treatment and insight.5Early modern English writers, no less than classical writers, thought it appropriate to apply to cases of melancholy therapies derived from the philosophic endeavor to define and achieve peace of mind. Burton argued explicitly in The Anatomy of Melancholy for the rightful authority of the philosophical of the in the treatment of melancholy; and the conceptual similarity of melancholy to moral diseases of the soul which provided the basis for this authority is evidenced in the works of several seventeenth-century moralists, as well as in the writings of the influential seventeenth-century physician and natural philosopher Thomas Willis on melancholy and the passions. Willis noted that melancholic emotions were structured and caused by the judgments of the mind rather than by the force of physiological dysfunction alone. His recognition of the importance of the mental aspects of melancholy provided the basis for his prescription of moral therapies for the government of the mind in addition to therapies for the body. Moreover, his writing on the passion of grief displays the ability of moral philosophical language to represent melancholic-like states as problems of the moral life, to be engaged through rational meditation and control.The importance of moral philosophy in understanding and treating melancholy has been largely ignored in current scholarship in the history of psychiatry and madness, which has concentrated on early modern medical concepts of mental disorder that traced its origins to the body. The historian of psychiatry and Roy Porter has, for instance, referred to Willis's medical writings as evidence for the thoroughgoing somatic grounding of disorders of thought, feeling and behavior that he alleged to have dominated the era's medical conceptualization and treatment of madness.6 While Michel Foucault insightfully noted that Willis's ostensibly chemical account of the nature of melancholy was in fact a phenomenology of the melancholic experience, he dismissed out of hand the relevance of classical moral philosophical language to the early modern treatment of madness, asserting the complete absence of moral treatments of madness until the end of the eighteenth century. …

Logic and the Art of Memory: The Quest for a Universal Language (review)

Of the traditional five canons of rhetoric—inventio, dispositio, elocutio, memoria, and actio—the most circuitous and fascinating history belongs to memoria. From its propulsion of Homeric lore to its grounding of rhetorical invention to its exile under print culture to its recent revival in public memory studies, the promiscuous and perplexing history of memory in the West may be one of the least appreciated, and perhaps least understood, elements of rhetorical and intellectual history. The publication in 1966 of Frances Yates's highly praised The Art of Memory drew the attention of contemporary scholars to the importance of mnemotechnics to the culture of late medieval and early modern Europe. 1 Yates persuasively argued that the art of memory is an integral element of European intellectual history, one that can enrich our understanding of everything from Dominican theology to Shakespearian theater. However, six years earlier, in 1960, the Italian intellectual historian Paolo Rossi published in Italian an important precursor to Yates's work entitled Clavis Universalis: Arti Della Memoria e Logica Combinatoria da Lullo a Leibniz. The book traces the encyclopaedic and mnemotechnical traditions from Aristotle through Cicero and Raymond Lull and into the early-modern period, arguing that the art of memory provides an important antecedent to the advent of method in seventeenth-century philosophy, especially in the works of Bacon, Descartes, and Leibniz. Yates, in her preface to The Art of Memory, acknowledges her debt to Rossi's work, and now this work has been made available in English translation. Stephen Clucas's translation, under the title Logic and the Art of Memory, will no doubt stimulate and supplement research into the mnemotechnical tradition in the English-speaking world, and perhaps lead us to reconsider the relationship between philosophy and rhetoric.

Herbert of Cherbury before Deism: The Early Reception of the De veritate

Perhaps more than any other seventeenth-century philosopher, Edward, Lord Herbert of Cherbury (1582-1648) has become the creature of his posthumous reputation. Since the middle years of the eighteenth century he has been widely known as 'the father of English Deism'. Despite a recent scholarly effort to question the inevitable association between Herbert and the English deists - an association forged by Charles Blount's pillaging of his manuscripts thirty years after his death - it has proved a remarkably persistent view, and one that continues to inflect modern perceptions of Herbert's writings.1 In particular, the widespread assumption survives that Herbert's purposes were overwhelmingly theological rather than philosophical, and that Herbert intended his major work, the De veritate (On Truth) exclusively as a deliberate charter for deism and natural religion.2 Modern scholarship, in short, remains very largely in thrall to the eighteenth-century characterisation of Herbert as the fountainhead of the deistic movement in England. This paper, in contrast, develops recent reassessments of Herbert's relation to 'deism' by examining how early readers of the De veritate read and responded to it. It aims to get behind the posthumous reputation Herbert acquired after the emergence of the tendency known as 'deism', and to explain the range of responses that his work provoked.The deist characterisation of Herbert does not adequately represent the perceptions his contemporaries and immediate successors had of him. The suggestion one finds made that Herbert's early readers 'had no doubt' that his purposes were essentially religious rather than 'epistemological' by no means tells the full story.3 The eighteenth-century historians of deism who placed Herbert at the front of their books were developing an account of his writings that only arose from the 1670s onwards. Before then, Herbert's readers were excited, influenced, and often confused by his writings and their purposes. For in his lifetime, Herbert was not universally taken as an unequivocal enemy of Christianity - indeed, his most perceptive modern scholar, D. P. Walker, has already suggested that 'Herbert's reputation as an anti-Christian deist began only twenty years after his death'.4 Until 1645, the only published work Herbert's readers had to gauge his purposes was the De veritate, which was first printed in Paris in 1624. And even when early readers of this were suspicious of his intentions, as several were, they did not level at him the accusations of 'deism' and 'natural religion' that now sit so heavily upon him. Herbert's reluctance to mention Christ and his ingrained anti-clericalism were indeed suspected by some of those who knew him personally. But they only became widely known after accounts of his behaviour on his deathbed in 1648 began to circulate, and after the publication of his later writings: the De religione laici with its Appendix ad sacerdotes (1645) and the posthumous De religione gentilium (1663). Before then, Herbert's early readers principally understood his De veritate in terms of two principal contemporary intellectual preoccupations. The first of these was the search for philosophical concepts of 'method' and of an axiomatic foundation for logic. The second was the elaboration of metaphysical (that is to say, 'natural' or non-revealed) proofs of the existence of God. The responses of early readers of the De veritate, in short, were not as unequivocal as those of later readers and modern scholars have tended to be.IIt has been assumed that Herbert's writings were little read in England in the twenty-five years following his death - although that there was significant continental interest is well enough known.5 In fact, however, a good number of early readers of the De veritate can be found, in England as well as across Europe. It would be wrong, however, to suggest that the book had a wide circulation, for both bibliographic and external evidence suggests that Herbert himself carefully controlled the distribution of the early manuscripts and printed copies of the book. …

America's Liberal Education

John Locke is back. After being buried under an imposing mass of historiography, which asserted the primacy of civic republicanism in American life, the seventeenth-century philosopher has risen again. But he returns not as he departed. His recent scholarly incarnations suggest that his individualism was not as possessive, nor his Reason as instrumental, as they were once thought to be. John Locke has returned as an advocate for consensual relationships, a champion of virtue, and a redeemer of innocent children. Some may still recall his swashbuckling libertarian days with a faint nostalgia, but for an increasing number of historians, Locke has indeed been reborn as a godly, pragmatic liberal. The rehabilitated John Locke plays a central role in Gillian Brown's The Consent of the Governed, which traces the career of consent in early America. Brown's book offers imaginative readings of the eighteenth-century texts that educated young minds for a lifetime of consensual relationships. As Brown sees it, Locke's formidable influence in American culture owed much to the fact that he treated norms and institutions as conventions, as things people had agreed to create. Colonial Americans rehearsed this notion as children and acted upon it as adults. Since the eighteenth century, the consent of the governed has remained the one indisputable source of authority in American life. But the nation's Lockean legacy has always been plagued by contradiction. Indeed, long before the Constitution was drafted and long after it was ratified, the ambiguities of consent occupied a prominent place in the American imagination. Brown points out that the United States was formed upon the astonishing pretense that its institutions had received the consent of the American People. If the objections were not always explicitly raised, they could hardly be avoided: Who were the People and how could they all consent? Did every social group-including women, Indians, children, the unpropertied-have the right to consent? And what about slavery? When had African-American slaves relinquished the right to direct their work?

Studies of Descartes's philosophy in Japan

Abstract Extract 1996, the fourth centenary of Descartes's birth, was the occasion for innumerable celebrations all over the world. A glance at the Bulletin cartesien, xxvi (1998), issued by Equipe Descartes, reveals that there were twenty-six colloquia—412 lectures in all. This is full testimony to the timeless and diverse interest in Descartes's philosophy today. Although not listed in the Bulletin cartesien, there were also a few, albeit modest, symposia and special issues of periodicals celebrating the birth of the seventeenth-century French philosopher in Japan. Indeed around 1996 there was a veritable flurry of publications of research on Descartes by Japanese scholars. Here, I shall report on the current state of Descartes studies in Japan, but will begin first with the history of the initial reception of Western philosophy; I shall then focus on developments after 1990.

Passion and Action: The Emotions in the Seventeenth Century Philosophy

Book synopsis: Passion and Action explores the place of the emotions in seventeenth-century understandings of the body and mind, and the role they were held to play in reasoning and action. Interest in the passions pervaded all areas of philosophical enquiry, and was central to the theories of many major figures, including Hobbes, Descartes, Malebranche, Spinoza, Pascal, and Locke. Yet little attention has been paid to this topic in studies of early modern thought. Susan James surveys the inheritance of ancient and medieval doctrines about the passions, showing how these were incorporated into new philosophical theories in the course of the seventeenth century. She examines the relation of the emotions to will, knowledge, understanding, desire, and power, offering fresh analyses and interpretations of a broad range of texts by little-known writers as well as canonical figures, and establishing that a full understanding of these authors must take account of their discussions of our affective life. Passion and Action also addresses current debates, particularly those within feminist philosophy, about the embodied character of thinking and the relation between emotion and knowledge. This ground-breaking study throws new light upon the shaping of our ideas about the mind, and provides a historical context for burgeoning contemporary investigations of the emotions.

Descartes's Critique of the Atheist Geometer

The Southern Journal of PhilosophyVolume 38, Issue 3 p. 429-445 Descartes's Critique of the Atheist Geometer Julie R. Klein, Julie R. Klein Villanova University Julie R. Klein is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Villanova University. Her primary research interests are in seventeenth century philosophy, particularly Descartes and Spinoza.Search for more papers by this author Julie R. Klein, Julie R. Klein Villanova University Julie R. Klein is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Villanova University. Her primary research interests are in seventeenth century philosophy, particularly Descartes and Spinoza.Search for more papers by this author First published: 26 March 2010 https://doi.org/10.1111/j.2041-6962.2000.tb00909.xCitations: 1 AboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Citing Literature Volume38, Issue3Fall 2000Pages 429-445 RelatedInformation

Extraterrestrials of the New World

The fact that the Earth is no longer seen as at the centre of the Universe is the reason normally put forward to explain the rejection of heliocentrism. However, this version does not hit the mark. We should remember particularly that Man's position at the midpoint of the heavens was not all glorious; in the medieval world's hierarchical vision, only Hell is lower than the Earth, above which rises the celestial sphere, the whole being transcended by divine infinity. Observing that this lowly spiritual position reflects a cosmic reality, Nicolas Oresme (d. 1382) thought it wiser to assign the central place to the Sun. Anticipating Copernicus, he even advanced the hypothesis that it was the Earth that moved rather than Heaven. In any case, the important point was less Man's place in the Universe than in Creation, which might in fact contain another Universe side by side with ours, also with an inhabited Earth at its centre, as certain reputable theologians maintained from the thirteenth century. Thus humanity's loss of the central position in Creation had already been sidelined by the hypothesis of a plurality of worlds. However, Giordano Bruno was condemned in 1600, eleven years before the heliocentrism of Copernicus and Galileo, for having defended the vision of an infinite Universe and the idea of extraterrestrial life. How should we explain the fact that in the thirteenth century the papacy was battling with the universities to persuade them to teach that God could create other worlds, whilst in the seventeenth century philosophers, scientists and freethinkers were risking their lives trying to persuade the Inquisition that solar systems similar to our own exist in the Universe?