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Books > Humanities > Philosophy > Western philosophy > Modern Western philosophy, c 1600 to the present > Western philosophy, c 1600 to c 1800
This book outlines and analyzes John Locke's political thought
about the oceans with a focus on law and freedom at sea. The book
examines the Two Treatises of Government, in which Locke argues
that the seas are collectively owned by all humans and are governed
by universal natural laws that prohibit piracy. Locke's Two
Treatises provides a systematic political theory of the seas that
contributes to theories of international law and maritime law, but
his text does not answer the practical question of how to enforce
law effectively at sea. The book also considers how Locke
translated his theoretical ideas into practice when he was involved
in policymaking as a member of England's Board of Trade during the
1690s. On the Board, Locke waged a war against pirates by proposing
an anti-piracy treaty between Europe's major maritime states, by
successfully advocating a new English piracy law, and by supporting
the deployment of the English Navy against pirates. Locke's war
against pirates was consistent with the natural law theory in the
Two Treatises, and helped to build English empire on land and at
sea. There is also consistency between Locke's theoretical views
about slavery and his work on the Board of Trade. As a Board
member, Locke advocated forced migration and forced labor for
English convicts, which is consistent with the theory of penal
slavery in the Two Treatises and suggests that his theory was
intended to justify the enslavement of English convicts. However,
there are tensions between Locke's arguments in the Two Treatises
and the policies of forced naval service that he supported on the
Board. Locke's theories of law and freedom at sea shaped his vision
of English national identity, and influenced the English
government's policies about slavery and piracy.
This book offers new critical perspectives on the relationship
between the notions of speculation, logic and reality in Hegel's
thought as basis for his philosophical account of nature, history,
spirit and human experience. The systematic functions of logic and
pure thought are explored in their concrete forms and processual
progression from subjective spirit to philosophy of right, society,
the notion of habit, the idea of work, art, religion and science.
Engaging the relation between the Logic and its realisations, this
book shows the internal tension that inhabits Hegel's philosophy at
the intersection of logical (conceptual) speculation and concrete
(interpretative) analysis. The investigation of this tension allows
for a hermeneutical approach that demystifies the common view of
Hegel's idealism as a form of abstract thought, while allowing for
a new assessment of the importance of speculation for a concrete
understanding of the world.
Our reasoning evolved not for finding the truth, but for social
bonding and convincing. The best logical methods humans have
created provide no path to truth, unless something is assumed as
true from the start. Other than that, we only have methods for
attempting to measure uncertainty. This book highlights the
consequences of these facts for scientific practice, and suggests
how to correct the mistakes we still make. But even our best
methods to measure uncertainty might require infinite resources to
provide solid answers. This conclusion has important consequences
for when and how much we can trust arguments and scientific
results. The author suggests ways we can improve our current
practices, and argues that theoretical work is a fundamental part
of the most effective way to do science.
This collection of reading and essays on the Standard of Taste
offers a much needed resource for students and scholars of
philosophical aesthetics, political reflection, value and
judgments, economics, and art. The authors include experts in the
philosophy of art, aesthetics, history of philosophy as well as the
history of science. This much needed volume on David Hume will
enrich scholars across all levels of university study and research.
Best known for the progressive school he founded in Dessau during
the 18th century, Johann Bernhard Basedow was a central thinker in
the German Enlightenment. Since his death in 1790 a substantial
body of German-language literature about his life, work, and school
(the Philanthropin) has developed. In the first English
intellectual biography of this influential figure, Robert B. Louden
answers questions that continue to surround Basedow and provides a
much-needed examination of Basedow's intellectual legacy. Assessing
the impact of his ideas and theories on subsequent educational
movements, Louden argues that Basedow is the unacknowledged father
of the progressive education movement. He unravels several
paradoxes surrounding the Philanthropin to help understand why it
was described by Immanuel Kant as "the greatest phenomenon which
has appeared in this century for the perfection of humanity",
despite its brief and stormy existence, its low enrollment and
insufficient funding. Among the many neglected stories Louden tells
is the enormous and unacknowledged debt that Kant owes to Basedow
in his philosophy of education, history, and religion. This is a
positive reassessment of Basedow and his difficult personality that
leads to a reevaluation of the originality of major figures as well
as a reconsideration of the significance of allegedly minor authors
who have been eclipsed by the politics of historiography. For
anyone looking to gain a deeper understanding of the history of
German philosophy, Louden's book is essential reading.
What is solitude, why do we crave and fear it, and how do we
distinguish it properly from loneliness? It lies at the core of the
lives of philosophers and their self-reflective contemplations, and
it is the enabling (and disabling) condition that allows us to
seriously question how to live creatively and meaningfully. David
Farrell Krell is one of the decisive philosophical voices on how
philosophers can creatively engage their solitudes. The scale and
range of his understanding of solitudes are taken up in this book
by some of the most distinguished Continental philosophers. Authors
address the problem of solitude from different angles, and imagine
how to face and respond creatively to it. Blending philosophical
narrative and straightforward philosophical treatises, this book
provides inspiration for contemplation of our own versions of
solitude and their creative potentials. Some authors focus on the
work of historical figures in philosophy or poetry, such as
Heidegger and Hoelderlin, while others deal more directly with
Krell's work as exemplary of their own imaginings of creative
solitudes. Other authors respond more personally and creatively in
their demonstrations of how we can, and must, seek our solitudes.
Including an original chapter by David Farrell Krell, this book is
an invigorating meditation on the possibility of being
philosophical about a life through solitude, and the meaning of
this powerfully resonant and universal human experience.
Humility, Pride, and Christian Virtue Theory proposes an account of
humility that relies on the most radical Christian sayings about
humility, especially those found in Augustine and the early
monastic tradition. It argues that this was the view of humility
that put Christian moral thought into decisive conflict with the
best Greco-Roman moral thought. This radical Christian account of
humility has been forgotten amidst contemporary efforts to clarify
and retrieve the virtue of humility for secular life. Kent
Dunnington shows how humility was repurposed during the
early-modern era-particularly in the thought of Hobbes, Hume, and
Kant-to better serve the economic and social needs of the emerging
modern state. This repurposed humility insisted on a role for
proper pride alongside humility, as a necessary constituent of
self-esteem and a necessary motive of consistent moral action over
time. Contemporary philosophical accounts of humility continue this
emphasis on proper pride as a counterbalance to humility. By
contrast, radical Christian humility proscribes pride altogether.
Dunnington demonstrates how such a radical view need not give rise
to vices of humility such as servility and pusillanimity, nor need
such a view fall prey to feminist critiques of humility. But the
view of humility set forth makes little sense abstracted from a
specific set of doctrinal commitments peculiar to Christianity.
This study argues that this is a strength rather than a weakness of
the account since it displays how Christianity matters for the
shape of the moral life.
Baruch Spinoza (1632-1677) was one of the most important
philosophers of all time; he was also one of the most radical and
controversial. The story of Spinoza's life takes the reader into
the heart of Jewish Amsterdam in the seventeenth century and, with
Spinoza's exile from Judaism, into the midst of the tumultuous
political, social, intellectual, and religious world of the young
Dutch Republic. This new edition of Steven Nadler's biography,
winner of the Koret Jewish Book Award for biography and translated
into a dozen languages, is enhanced by exciting new archival
discoveries about his family background, his youth, and the various
philosophical, political, and religious contexts of his life and
works. There is more detail about his family's business and
communal activities, about his relationships with friends and
correspondents, and about the development of his writings, which
were so scandalous to his contemporaries.
This book explores the Paris Ecole Militaire as an institution,
arguing for its importance as a school that presented itself as a
model for reform during a key moment in the movement towards
military professionalism as well as state-run secular education.
The school is distinguished for being an Enlightenment project, one
of its founders publishing an article on it in the Encyclopedie in
1755. Its curriculum broke completely with the Latin pedagogy of
the dominant Jesuit system, while adapting the legacy of
seventeenth-century riding academies. Its status touches on the
nature of absolutism, as it was conceived to glorify the Bourbon
dynasty in a similar way to the girls' school at Saint Cyr and the
Invalides. It was also a dispensary of royal charity calculated to
ally the nobility more closely to royal interests through military
service. In the army, its proofs of nobility were the model for the
much debated 1781 Segur decree, often described as a notable cause
of the French Revolution.
Although indisputably one of the most important thinkers in the
Western intellectual tradition, Rousseau's actual place within that
tradition, and the legacy of his thought, remains hotly disputed.
Thinking with Rousseau reconsiders his contribution to this
tradition through a series of essays exploring the relationship
between Rousseau and other 'great thinkers'. Ranging from 'Rousseau
and Machiavelli' to 'Rousseau and Schmitt', this volume focuses on
the kind of intricate work that intellectuals do when they read
each other and grapple with one another's ideas. This approach is
very helpful in explaining how old ideas are transformed and/or
transmitted and new ones are generated. Rousseau himself was a
master at appropriating the ideas of others, while simultaneously
subverting them, and as the essays in this volume vividly
demonstrate, the resulting ambivalences and paradoxes in his
thought were creatively mined by others.
One of the most distinguished cultural and intellectual historians
of our time, Frank Turner taught a landmark Yale University lecture
course on European intellectual history that drew scores of
students over many years. His lectures-lucid, accessible,
beautifully written, and delivered with a notable lack of
jargon-distilled modern European history from the Enlightenment to
the dawn of the twentieth century and conveyed the turbulence of a
rapidly changing era in European history through its ideas and
leading figures. Richard A. Lofthouse, one of Turner's former
students, has now edited the lectures into a single volume that
outlines the thoughts of a great historian on the forging of modern
European ideas. Moreover, it offers a fine example of how
intellectual history should be taught: rooted firmly in historical
and biographical evidence.
The volume presents illuminating research carried out by
international scholars of Locke and the early modern period. The
essays address the theoretical and historical contexts of Locke's
analytical methodology and come together in a multidisciplinary
approach that sets biblical hermeneutics in relation to his
philosophical, historical, and political thought, and to the
philological and doctrinal culture of his time. The
contextualization of Locke's biblical hermeneutics within the
contemporary reading of the Bible contributes to the analysis of
the figure of Christ and the role of Paul's theology in political
and religious thought from the seventeenth century to the
Enlightenment. The volume sheds light on how Locke was appreciated
by his contemporaries as a biblical interpreter and exegete. It
also offers a reconsideration that overarches interpretations
confined within specific disciplinary ambits to address Locke's
thought in a global historic context.
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